IN NORTHERN MISTS 



For one thing, man's power of grasping reality varies greatly ; 

 in primitive man it is clouded to a degree which we modern human 

 beings can hardly understand. He is as yet incapable of dis- 

 tinguishing between idea and reality, between belief and knowl- 

 edge, between what he has seen and experienced and the explana- 

 tion he has provided for his experience. 



But even with those who have long outgrown the primitive 

 point of view, imagination steps in, supplying detail and explana- 

 tion wherever our information fails us and our knowledge falls 

 short; it spreads its haze over the first uncertain outlines of per- 

 ception, and the distant contours are sometimes wholly lost in its 

 mists of legend. 



This is a universal experience in the history of intellectual 

 life. In the domain to which this work is devoted, it makes itself 

 felt with perhaps more than its usual force. 



The inquiry embraces long periods. In all times and 

 countries we have seen the known world lose itself in the 

 fogs of cloudland — never uniformly, it is true, but in constantly 

 changing proportions. Here and there we have a glimpse, 

 now and again a vision over wider regions; and then the 

 driving mists once more shut out our view. Therefore, all 

 that human courage and desire of knowledge have wrested in 

 the course of long ages from this cloudland remains vague, un- 

 certain, full of riddles. But for this very reason it is all the more 

 alluring. 



We saw that to the eyes of the oldest civilization in history 

 and down through the whole of antiquity, the North lay for the 

 most part concealed in the twilight of legend and myth; here 

 and there genuine information finds its way into literature, but 

 is again effaced. At the beginning of the Middle Ages the dark 

 curtain thickens. 



Again there is a glimmer of light, first from the intermingling 

 of nations at the time of the migrations, then from new trading 

 voyages and intercourse, until the great change is brought about 

 by the Norsemen, who, with their remarkable power of expan- 

 sion, overran western and southern Europe and penetrated 

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