Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/29

 It was the human mind in a state of barbarous energy and action, and with the vitality of freedom, conquering the human mind in a state of slavish torpidity and superstitious lethargy. The paucity of numbers of these Danes or Northmen was not compensated by any superiority of the weapons, discipline, or tactics they used; but they were men fighting to acquire property by plunder or conquest, who had laws and institutions which secured to them its enjoyment; and they had as opponents only a population of serfs or labourers, with no property in the soil, no interests to fight for, nothing to lose or to defend but what they could save as well by flying or submitting as by fighting.

It might be surmised by a philosophic reader of the history of those times, that all the vigorous action and energy of mind of these barbarous Danes or Northmen could not be showing itself only in deeds of daring enterprise abroad,—that some of it must be expending itself at home, and in other arts and uses than those of a predatory warfare. It will not, at least, surprise such a reader that some of this mental power was applied at home in attempts, however rude, at history and poetry; but he will be surprised to find that those attempts surpass, both in quality and quantity, all that can be produced of Anglo-Saxon literature during the same ages, either in the Anglo-Saxon language or in the Latin. These literary attempts also, or, to give them their due title, this body of literature, is remarkably distinguished from that of the Anglo-Saxons, or of any other people of the same period, by being composed entirely in the native national tongue, and intended to instruct or amuse an audience of the people; and not in a dead language, and intended merely for the perusal of an educated class in the monasteries. With the exception of Theodoric the Monk, who wrote in Latin in the time of King Swerrer,