n attaining facilities of prose expression. But
there is no reason for believing that even the Teutonic tongues
falsified the general law that poetry comes before prose. And
certainly this was the case with Icelandic--so much so that, uncertain
as are the actual dates, it seems better to relinquish the Iceland of
poetry to the first volume of this series, where it can be handled in
connection with that Anglo-Saxon verse which it so much resembles. The
more characteristic Eddaic poems--that is to say, the most
characteristic parts of Icelandic poetry--must date from Heathen
times, or from the first conflicts of Christianity with Heathenism in
Iceland; and this leaves them far behind us.[160] On the other hand,
the work which we have in Provencal before the extreme end of the
eleventh century is not finished literature. It has linguistic
interest, the interest of origins, but no more.

[Footnote 160: Iceland began to be Christian in 1000.]

[Sidenote: _Difficulties with it._]

Although there is practically as little doubt about the antiquity of
Icelandic literature[161] as about its interest, there is unusual room
for guesswork as to the exact dates of the documents which compose it.
Writing seems to have been introduced into Iceland late; and it is not
the opinion of scholars who combine learning with patriotism that
many, if any, of the actual MSS. date further back than the thirteenth
century; while the actual composition of the oldest that we have is
not put earlier than the twelfth, and rather its later than its
earlier part. Moreover, though Icelanders were during this period, and
indeed from the very first settlement of the island, constantly in
foreign countries and at foreign courts--though as Vikings or
Varangians, as merchants or merely travelling adventurers, they were
to be found all over Europe, from Dublin to Constantinople--yet, on
the other hand, few or no foreigners visited Iceland, and it figures
hardly at all in the literary and historical records of the Continent
or even of the British Isles, with which it naturally had most
correspondence. We are therefore almost entirely devoid of those
side-lights which are so invaluable in general literary history, while
yet again we have no borrowings from Icelandic literature by any other
to tell us the date of the borrowed matter. At the end of our present
time, and still more a little later, Charlemagne and Arthur and the
romances of antiquity make their ap