Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Introductory Chapters By the late Professor York Powell - I. Materials
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generation before the exodus in old, sturdy, practical,
heathen Norway; and also one or two, the latest,
that are Christian, and mirror for us the feelings
with which a Northern convert of the Celtic Church
regarded the common but absorbing problems of
life, and death, and the hereafter. A few poems
relating to actual historical events have also survived,
more or less completely embedded in the Lives of
kings or heroes, such as the Lay of the Darts,
translated by our Gray; the praise and the dirge of Eiric
Blood-axe, twice King of York; and the Raven song
on Harold Fairhair.
These compositions are all in the old Northern
tongue, but in Adam of Bremen, and his like, there
are Latin accounts of Scandinavian affairs based on
vernacular and other sources; and Saxo the Long,
the Danish monk, has in a remarkable work, which
for plan and treatment reminds one of our Geoffrey
of Monmouth, preserved many interesting facts and
traditions, often drawn from works and poems now
lost, but furnished to him in great part by Arnold
the poet, a travelled Icelander, his contemporary at
Waldemar’s Court.
The chief Continental authorities are early Latin
chronicles by Saxons, and Franks, and Aquitanians, and
contemporary notices of the Spanish-Arabic historians.
Of the many scholars that in modern days have dealt
with the analysis and synthesis of these documents–reading,
appreciating, and digesting them, and giving
their results to the public–the most useful are the
Norwegian, Munch, whose keen geographic instinct
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