Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/77

 and the old forms not even remembered, is one of the most singular and interesting of the phenomena in the nature of man. It is strikingly illustrated in Iceland. The Icelandic youth prepare themselves now for a learned profession, as the scalds did 800 years ago, exactly from the same intellectual impulse, although in a different field; and the movement of the public mind towards intellectual occupation appears to have remained in this small community unchanged, undiminished, and only less visible because it is not now the only community in the north with the same movement. The continued tendency of mind in Iceland to literary pursuits appears when we compare them, in numbers not exceeding at present 56,000 individuals, with any equal number of the British population. The Icelanders had a printing-press among them in the first half of the 16th century; and many works in Latin and in Icelandic have been printed at Skalholt, Holen, and other places. The counties of Orkney and Shetland, with an equal population,—of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, with probably double the population,—have not at this day any such intellectual movement, or any press that could print a book, or any book produced within themselves to print. The whole Celtic population in Scotland, since the beginning of time, never produced in their language a tithe of the literature that has been composed and printed in Icelandic by the Icelanders for their own use within this century. The modern literature of Iceland, or even its saga literature, may not be considered by the critic of a very high class or value, or of merit in itself; but, in judging of the intellectuality of a people, the philosopher will regard its amount and diffusion as of much more importance than its quality. That belongs to the author, and measures merely the genius and talents of the individual: the amount and diffusion measure the intellectual con-