those that have been handed down to us,
and the. lover of northern antiquities will
find an ample store of information upon the
subject, in the second volume of M. Mallett’s
work. It is there -stated that there have been
two poems of this name, the first and most
ancient of which was compiled by Soemund
Sigfussen, surnamed the learned, born in
Iceland about the year 1057 . This author
had studied in Germany, and chiefly at
Cologne, along with his countryman Are
Frode, who distinguished himself by his
love for literature. Soemund was one of
the first who ventured to commit to writing
the ancient religious poetry * which many
people still retained by heart. This first collection
being too voluminous, Snorro Stur-
leson, about one hundred and twenty years
after, undertook to select from it whatever
was most important in the old mythology,
and thus to compile a shorter and far more
intelligible system.
But the sciences'^' here, as in every other
country, have been subject to the greatest
* “ Three pieces alone of this collection, though perhaps
the best of it, have come down to us.” Northern
Antiquities.
f Von Troil.
revolutions, and, to use.the words of Dr, Fin-
neus (who, in his Hist. Eccles. Islandice,
compares the state of literature in Iceland to
the four stages of human life), their infancy
extended to the year 1056, when the introduction
of the Christian religion produced
the first dawn of light; their youth to 1100,
when schools were first established, and the
education and instruction of young men
began to be more attended to -than before;
their manhood lasted till about the middle
of the fourteenth century, when the sciences
gradually decreased, and were almost wholly
extinct, no work of any merit appearing.
History now drooped her head, poetry had
no relish, and all the other sciences were
enveloped in darkness. The schools began
to decay, and, in many places; they even
had none at all. It was very uncommon for
any one to understand Latin, and few priests
could, with fluency, read their breviary and
ritual.
The reformation produced in Iceland a
new dawn of learning; and a few rays of
that light which has blazed over Europe,
from the discovery of printing, shed a gleam