more than
recognise the name, if even that, of the great fights of Hafrsfirth or
Sticklestead. The language and history of Greece and Rome, their laws
and religions, have been always held part of the learning needful to an
educated man, but no trouble has been taken to make him familiar with
his own people or their tongue. Even that Englishman who knew Alfred,
Bede, Caedmon, as well as he knew Plato, Caesar, Cicero, or Pericles,
would be hard bestead were he asked about the great peoples from whom
we sprang; the warring of Harold Fairhair or Saint Olaf; the Viking
(1) kingdoms in these (the British) Western Isles; the settlement of
Iceland, or even of Normandy. The knowledge of all these things would
now be even smaller than it is among us were it not that there was one
land left where the olden learning found refuge and was kept in being.
In England, Germany, and the rest of Europe, what is left of the
traditions of pagan times has been altered in a thousand ways by foreign
influence, even as the peoples and their speech have been by the influx
of foreign blood; but Iceland held to the old tongue that was once the
universal speech of northern folk, and held also the great stores of
tale and poem that are slowly becoming once more the common heritage of
their descendants. The truth, care, and literary beauty of its records;
the varied and strong life shown alike in tale and history; and the
preservation of the old speech, character, and tradition--a people
placed apart as the Icelanders have been--combine to make valuable what
Iceland holds for us. Not before 1770, when Bishop Percy translated
Mallet's "Northern Antiquities", was anything known here of Icelandic,
or its literature. Only within the latter part of this century has it
been studied, and in the brief book-list at the end of this volume may
be seen the little that has been done as yet. It is, however, becoming
ever clearer, and to an increasing number, how supremely important is
Icelandic as a word-hoard to the English-speaking peoples, and that in
its legend, song, and story there is a very mine of noble and pleasant
beauty and high manhood. That which has been done, one may hope, is but
the beginning of a great new birth, that shall give back to our language
and literature all that heedlessness and ignorance bid fair for awhile
to destroy.

The Scando-Gothic peoples who poured southward and westward over
Europe, to shake empires and found kingdoms, to meet