LITERATURE
Sc a n d in a v ia ' s entrance into the historic arena of Europe was
accompanied by a vigorous development of force. The viking
expeditions not only brought trouble and disturbance to the
shores of the Tiiiit.ic and the North Sea; they also occasioned
unrest at home, but this was a fruitful unrest. The sense of their
own power, and the impressions from foreign culture, awakened
national feeling, and gave life to the creative impulse. In Denmark,
however, the foreign element at once crossed the boundary-
lines; the kingdom of the Franks reached with its victorious
religion through Saxony up to the borders of that land, and
these gave, way before it. Sweden, on the other hand, was shut
off from the western seas, and reduced to intercourse with the
Slav people of the lands surrounding the Baltic, whose culture
had no fertilising power. By her free and westward-facing position,
Norway was saved for a more independent development of
both the Scandinavian and the foreign cultural elements. At the
same time, the union of the country into one kingdom took place.
But many of the mightier chieftains would not submit to the new
condition of affairs, and in their viking-ships they sailed in search
of new homes. They found it best to seek refuge in the Faroe
Isles, and in the great, barren island they had just discovered, —
Iceland. Here there gathered a number of haughty west-Norwegian
warriors, and founded a new Norwegian colony, in which the
national characteristics throve. Through the Norwegian vikings
on British soil, Christianity came both to the mother-country and
to the colony1, at the end of the 10th century. The fruitful restlessness
of minds, however, had succeeded in preserving the rich
heathen mythology of the nation, the Ase faith, in imperishable
metrical form. Fixed in heroic stanzas, the changing events of
the age also found a sure way, through the bewildering oral traditions,
down to a generation who had learnt the art of writing in
the monks’ schools.
Whereas in Danish and Swedish hands the pen, according to
the custom of the age, would only write Latin, on Norwegian-
Icelandic soil, it was practised from the very first in the use of the
spoken language. I t is recorded that in 1117, the Icelandic chiefs at
their Althing (parliament), agreed to have the island’s laws, which
had been made 200 years before, after the pattern of those of
the mother-country, the ancient law of the west Norwegian fjord
districts, written in a book. This seems to have given the impulse
to the learned priest, A b e F b o d e (died 1148), to write
down, in his native tongue, a critical account of what tradition
related regarding events that had taken place both in Icelandic
families and in the Norwegian royal house, from the time the
Norwegian kingdom was founded and the island discovered. From
this firm root, a luxuriant historical literature now rapidly sprang.
Able men set themselves simply and plainly to write down the
tales ^ 9 sagas E j9 that had lived their fresh life from generation
to generation, handed down in commemorative verses of unchanging
metre from the time when the events described took
place. Not only did there spring up all over Iceland a number
of individualising repetitions of the chieftain-stories ^Hfamily
sagas — of the district, but tradition had preserved circumstantial
life-pictures of the famous princes of the mother-country, which
were gradually, by the help of Are Frode’s chronology, joined
together into a connected history of the kingdom. The historiography
in S n o b b k S t u b l a s o n ’s (died 1241) «Heimskringla» and
S t u b u a T o b d s s o n ’s (died 1284) «Kongesagaer» (Royal Sagas)
attains a classic perfection both in composition and style. Abbot
K a b d J o n s s o n ’s (died 1213) Thucydidean account of contemporary
events, with the talented King Sverre as its hero, is also a masterpiece.
In the course of time there appeared also a number of
unhistorical sagas about ancient Norwegian legendary heroes, or
of the heroes of the Central-European migration. To this last-
mentioned kind of saga belongs one about the Gothic king, Theo-
doric of Yerona; it is founded upon the tales of north German
sailors, and was written on Norwegian soil. At King Haakon