Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/43

 in the Latin language, we must wonder that so many of these historical tales had been committed to writing in Iceland; not that so many which once were extant in the traditionary state have not been preserved.

Every intelligent reader of English history who is startled at this view of the comparative literature and intellectual condition of the two branches, the pagan and the Christian, of the one great northern race, between the 8th and the 13th centuries, will desire information on the following points: —Who were the scribes, collectors, or compilers, who preceded Snorro Sturleson in writing down, gathering, or reducing to history, those traditionary narratives called Sagas which had floated down on the memory, in verse or in prose, from generation to generation? Who were the original authors of these compositions; and what was the condition of the class of men, the Scalds, who composed them? What were the peculiar circumstances in the social condition of the Northmen in those ages, by which such a class as the Scalds was kept in bread, and in constant employment and exertion among them, and even with great social consideration; while among the Anglo-Saxons, a cognate branch of the same people, the equivalent class of the Bards, Troubadours, Minstrels, Minnesingers, was either extinct, or of no more social influence than that of the Court Jesters or the Jougleurs?

Snorro Sturleson tells us, in the preface to his work, that "the priest Are hinn Frode (hinn Frode is applied to several writers, and means the Wise, the Learned; le Prud'homme perhaps of the Norman-French, although antiquaries render it into the more assuming Latin appellative, Polyhistor), was the first man in Iceland who wrote down in the Norse tongue both old and new narratives of events." The Landnama Saga (Liber Originum Islandiæ), which treats of the first occupation of Iceland by the Norwegians, and