The authentic historical literature of Scandinavia opens about the middle of the ninth century; that of Iceland with its Norwegian discovery, when the copiously and irregularly inflected tongue, the “delight of philologists and the traveller’s despair,” was apparently in its highest form. The learned Bishop of Skálholt (Hist. Eccl. Isl.) assigns four distinct ages to the classical productions of his native island:
I. Infancy: from the first colonisation (A.D. 874), when every man appears to have been a Skáld[272] or bard, ending with the introduction of Christianity in A.D. 1000. The Sturlunga (i. 107) asserts that all the Sagas of that date were committed to writing before the death of Bishop Brandr (A.D. 1201).
II. Youth: when colleges and schools were introduced, ending with A.D. 1110.
III. Manhood and zenith of splendour: from that time till A.D. 1350.
IV. Decline and fall between the mid-fourteenth century and the Reformation.
Thus the Augustan age endured for the unusually long period of some two and a half centuries.
The island, though scantily peopled, enjoyed immense advantages for study. It had taken the first great step in civilisation, SLAVERY, and while carl and thrall tilled the field, Jarl, clerk, and franklin found ample leisure for literature. The long rigorous winters, when neither farming, fishing, fighting, nor seafaring was possible, proved highly favourable for reading, writing, and reciting; and hence the phenomenon that the history of mediæval Iceland is more complete than that of any European country. The extensive piratical wanderings of the race gave, moreover, a cosmopolitan complexion to its compositions. Some modern writers wonder to see such display of literary activity, especially during the last fifty or sixty years of the Commonwealth, when society was convulsed by sanguinary feuds, and when every man slept weaponed. As we often find in history, it was this very turbulence which gave the spur; after the union with Norway, the island became peaceful, and her poets and historians found their occupation going or gone. The noble Icelandic prose, which in terse, picturesque, and crystal-clear expression, vied with Latin, and which equalled Greek in distinctness and combination of words, was no longer written; and between the fifteenth and the mid-sixteenth centuries men of letters contented themselves with transcribing and annotating their classics.
The poetry of the Augustan age was, at first, simple and sufficient as the prose—it reminds us of Firdausi’s Shah-nameh. But presently, as is ever the case with a decaying literature, came the Skáld, whose highest merit was that of calling nothing by the right name, of saying common things in an uncommon or rather in an unintelligible way. Space forbids even an outline of his system, the vast variety of quaint conceits, the abuse of metaphor, of “Kenningar” (circumlocution), of simile, and of allegory, and the prodigious complication of metres, which formed his stock-in-trade; suffice it to say that he used 150 synonyms for an island, fifty for a wave,[273] and a greater number for gold. Thus Rask remarks that with a half-a-hundred terms for a ship there is no word for “benevolence.” The Skáld’s vocabulary added to the copiousness of Arabic, the polysynthesis of Sanskrit; his inversions and transpositions of speech are so complicated, that modern commentators after quoting the lines, mostly number the words or subjoin the construction.
It is interesting to observe the family likeness between the two distant cousins, Persian and Icelandic. Hafiz, for instance, from Alif to Ya, is one long example of Skáldic poetry; he sings the praises of wine when he means, or is understood to mean, heavenly love, and his verse, like that of Ultima Thule, requires for every line a dictionary—not of words, but of the double entendres which lurk under words. Grimm, when pronouncing Icelandic to be the “true source of all the Teutonic languages,” cannot but remark its Oriental turn. It is in fact after the Slav, the purest type of the Indo-European, which has been so modestly called the “Indo-Germanic” family.
The Reformation stirred up the popular mind, and the result, as usual, was a revival of literary energy. But the produce—theology with poetry religious and ethical; history, or rather continuations of the old annals; criticism, exegesis, and grammatical studies—showed decline in matter as well as in manner. The originality, the strong individuality of the old pagan, was succeeded by the mechanical industry of the copier, who had other models to work from. This modern period still continues. The love of letters, inspired by soil and climate, even now characterises the Icelander despite his poverty and isolation. During the last century abundant good work has been done in editing and publishing the classical literature, and some excursions have been made into the regions of science, mechanics, and political economy.