[36]. Mál, song, discourse, speech, a word cognate with the Anglo-Saxon mal, mæl, the Greek μέλος, &c. Háva-mál signifies the discourse or canticle of the sublime; i. e. deity. Odin himself was supposed to have given these precepts of wisdom to mankind.
CHAPTER XXVI
——“Litera scripta manet,”
The poet saith. Pray let me show my vanit-
Y, and have “a foreign slipslop now and then,
If but to prove I’ve traveled; and what’s travel,
Unless it teaches one to quote and cavil?”
THE modern literature of the Icelanders is of quite a different character from that in heathen times, and in the early history of the country, from the tenth to the sixteenth century. They seem as much devoted to poetry as their ancestors, and their style of versification is similar; but they court the muse in a different strain. The poetry of the modern Icelanders does not abound in mythology, hyperbole, and fable; and it may reasonably be supposed that works of imagination have lost something of the hue of romance that is thrown around the productions of a heroic age. A study of the works of foreign authors—translations from eminent christian poets, in Norway, Germany, England, and the United States, are favorite pursuits of the modern Icelanders; and works of this description are among the most popular published in the country.
Among the original writers and translators of the present century, none rank as high as Jon Thorlakson. Receiving a scanty salary of less than fifty dollars a year, as parish priest of Bægisa, and laboring hard as a farmer, he yet found time to translate from English and German writers, and to compose original poetry, to the extent of several octavo volumes, About the year 1818, his case attracted the attention of a learned society in London, and a sum of money was forwarded to him to smooth his declining years; but he survived only till 1821, being over seventy years of age at the time of his death. His translation of Milton was published in Icelandic, in octavo—double columns—a volume of over 400 pages, in 1828. The “Essay on Man,” and a volume of original poetry of great merit were published in 1842. Among his original poems are two versions of the story of Inkle and Yarico.
The style of versification in vogue among the early Icelandic writers was very peculiar. Its harmony was dependent, not so much on rhyme and the number of syllables in a line, as upon peculiar alliterations. Their language abounding in consonants, this seemed easier than rhymes, which were seldom used. Some of their kinds of verse had regular alliterations at the commencement of the lines; other varieties, just so many alliterations in a line, or alliterations in a similar position in certain words of corresponding lines. The following is a very good example. It is from an “Address to the New Year,” or, more literally, “The sight of the New Year.”