The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature | Page 3

study of classical
antiquity, was to give a new impetus to science and literature, and by
the changes it introduced to effect a total revolution in the laws which
had previously governed them." Were Warton writing his history
to-day, he would have to account for later eras as well as for the
Elizabethan, and the method would be the same. How far the Old Norse
literature has helped to form these later eras it is not easy to say, but the
contributions may be counted up, and their literary value noted. These
are the commission of the present essay. When the record is finished,
we shall be in possession of information that may account for certain
considerable writers of our day, and certain tendencies of thought.

CONTENTS.
Prefatory Note
Introductory
I. The Body of Old Norse Literature
II. Through the Medium of Latin Thomas Gray The Sources of Gray's
Knowledge Sir William Temple George Hickes Thomas Percy Thomas
Warton Drake and Mathias Cottle and Herbert Walter Scott
III. From the Sources Themselves Richard Cleasby Thomas Carlyle
Samuel Laing Longfellow and Lowell Matthew Arnold George Webbe
Dasent Charles Kingsley Edmund Gosse
IV. By the Hand of the Master William Morris' works " " " 1 " " " 2 " "

" 3 " " " 4 " " " 5 " " " 6 " " " 7 " " " 8
V. In the Latter Days Echoes of Iceland in Later Poets Recent
Translations

I.
THE BODY OF OLD NORSE LITERATURE.
First, let us understand what the Old Norse literature was that has been
sending out this constantly increasing influence into the world of
poetry.
It was in the last four decades of the ninth century of our era that
Norsemen began to leave their own country and set up new homes in
Iceland. The sixty years ending with 930 A.D. were devoted to taking
up the land, and the hundred years that ensued after that date were
devoted to quarreling about that land. These quarrels were the origin of
the Icelandic family sagas. The year 1000 brought Christianity to the
island, and the period from 1030 to 1120 were years of peace in which
stories of the former time passed from mouth to mouth. The next
century saw these stories take written form, and the period from 1220
to 1260 was the golden age of this literature. In 1264, Iceland passed
under the rule of Norway, and a decline of literature began, extending
until 1400, the end of literary production in Iceland. In the main, the
authors of Iceland are unknown[2].
There are several well-marked periods, therefore, in Icelandic literary
production. The earliest was devoted to poetry, Icelandic being no
different from most other languages in the precedence of that form.
Before the settlement of Iceland, the Norse lands were acquainted with
songs about gods and champions, written in a simple verse form. The
first settlers wrote down some of these, and forgot others. In the
_Codex Regius_, preserved in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, we
have a collection of these songs. This material was published in the
seventeenth century as the _Sæmundar Edda_, and came to be known
as the Elder or Poetic Edda. Both titles are misnomers, for Sæmund
had nothing to do with the making of the book, and Edda is a name
belonging to a book of later date and different purpose.
This work--not a product of the soil as folk-songs are--is the fountain
head of Old Norse mythology, and of Old Norse heroic legends.
_Völuspá_ and _Hávamál_ are in this collection, and other songs that

tell of Odin and Baldur and Loki. The Helgi poems and the Völsung
poems in their earliest forms are also here.
A second class of poetry in this ancient literature is that called
"Skaldic." Some of this deals with mythical material, and some with
historical material. A few of the skalds are known to us by name,
because their lives were written down in later sagas. Egill
Skallagrímsson, known to all readers of English and Scotch antiquities,
Eyvind Skáldaspillir and Sigvat are of this group.
Poetic material that is very rich is found in Snorri Sturluson's work on
Old Norse poetics, entitled _The Edda_, and often referred to as the
Younger or Prose Edda.
More valuable than the poetry is the prose of this literature, especially
the Sagas. The saga is a prose epic, characteristic of the Norse
countries. It records the life of a hero, told according to fixed rules. As
we have said, the sagas were based upon careers run in Iceland's stormy
time. They are both mythical and historical. In the mythical group are,
among others, the _Völsunga Saga_, the _Hervarar Saga_, _Friðthjófs
Saga_ and _Ragnar Loðbróks Saga_. In the historical group, the
flowering time