286 



TH1 STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



Ambrose, anil Lartantius. best known by his 

 'work "Divine Institute.-." St. A.UgU8tini 



I). . left his ren.nl in his "City of God," 

 and St. Jerome made a Latin version of the 

 Old Testament 



Legal wr many, and from them 



"Code," "Institutes." etc., 



the foundation of what is now known Bfl tin- 

 Roman Law. 



SCANDIN V\ IAN LITERATURE 



The scant allusion* to Scandinavians found in 

 :1 literature refer to the people of Den- 

 mark and tin- southern part of Sweden. The 

 languages of the different countries comprising 

 Scandinavia are clo-ely allied and the old Scandi- 

 navian, or Icelandic, was the literary language 

 of all the-e lands until about the year 1100. 



northern sea rovers, in the Viking days, 

 had settled along the coasts of the \\estern Is- 

 land-, and when Iceland was discovered, in the 

 middle of the Ninth Century; these people, 

 headed 1 >y a widow of a king of Dublin, became 

 settlers in the new land. From these colonies 

 came a poetry which in beauty and power was 

 not equaled in any Teutonic language for cen- 

 This poetry took the form of lays, dirges, 

 battle songs, and songs of praise, and in the 

 ire also found genealogical and mytho- 

 logical poems which seem to have been written 

 in honor of one famous family. To a certain 

 shrewdness, plain straightforwardness, and a 

 stern way of looking at life, was added a com- 

 plex form and a regularity of rhyme, caught 

 from the Latin and Celtic poetry. Scarcely a 

 name among the authors of this poetry is known, 

 the exact dates of the writings cannot be found, 

 but they were the result of the spirit of the old 

 Vikings who led lives of wild adventure, in war 

 and storm, coming into contact with the culti- 

 vated imagination of the more civilized races. 

 The Saga, or prose epic, was also a form of liter- 

 expniim in those early days. 



It has been said that in Iceland the art of 

 poetry took the place of music and a mocking 

 or a laudatory verse was common writing. The 

 generation of Icelandic poets have been 

 likened to the troubadours of other lands; nearly 

 all were of Celtic ancestry, they attached them- 

 selves to the kings and earls of neighboring 

 land-, shared Iheir adventures and made verse 

 in which they praised their victories and re- 

 corded their deaths. The Saga was the out- 

 growth of this verse and is the story of some 

 hero. In its purest form it belongs to the days 

 of i he Kleventh Century when the descendants 

 of heroes recited the exploits of their ancestors 

 and of the great kings of Denmark and Norway. 

 The later Sagas show Irish influence. When 

 these had been transmitted orally through two 

 or three generations they were written down 

 and t his became the form followed by all scholars. 

 In the Thirteenth Century the Saga was lost in 

 plain biography. A work known as the "Sagas 

 of the Norwegian Kings" gives a connected 

 series of biographies of the kings of Norway to 

 the middle of the Twelfth Century. This 'was 

 composed by the Icelandic historian Snorro 

 (1178^1241), the greatest author known in old 

 Scandinavian literature. During this century 



the Norwegian kings employed Icelanders in 

 translating the French romances of Charlemagne 

 and Arthur and these made the Romantic 



Two remarkable collections in this old litera- 

 ture are known under the title of "Edda," the 

 translation of the word, or title being great - 

 grandmother. In the one known as the ''Prose 

 or Younger Edda" is a strange sort of history of 

 the gods or mythical kings. This was probably 

 written during the last half of the Twelfth Cen- 

 tury and said to have been completed by Snorro 

 in the year 1222. The "Elder" or poetic "Ed- 

 da " was collected in Iceland. The poems be- 

 long to the Eighth or Ninth Centuries, and treat 

 of the earliest Scandinavian legends. From the 

 "Eddas" comes our knowledge of Scandinavian 

 mythology and ancient religious faith. 



"Annals" are the sole material for the early 

 history of Iceland and these end with the year 

 1430. Of many theological works the one most 

 noted was "John's Book," written late in the 

 Seventeenth Century, plain in style and much 

 read. Proverbs and folk- tales were plentiful, 

 and have come down to the present day. 



Among earlier languages we find no Swedish 

 and no literature of Sweden existed before the 

 Thirteenth Century. The oldest form in which 

 it is found as a written language is in a series of 

 manuscripts known as the "Common Laws." 

 Another code, "On Conduct of Kings." a hand- 

 book of morals and politics was collected and 

 both these belong to the Thirteenth Century. 

 The name of St. Bridget, or Birgitta, an inter- 

 esting character in history, is found in connec- 

 tion with religious works, the most important 

 being a collection known as "Revelations," a 

 record of her visions and meditations to which 

 her father-confessor added a version of the first 

 five books of Moses. The translation of the 

 Bible was continued by the monk Budde, who 

 died in 1484. 



The earliest specimens of Swedish poetry are 

 the folk-songs of uncertain date. The first book 

 printed in the Swedish language appeared in the 

 year 1495. Neither the Renaissance nor the 

 Reformation much influenced literature in 

 Scandinavia. The Carmelite monks, the two 

 brothers Petri, studied theology under Luther 

 and went back to Sweden to teach the new faith. 

 They wrote psalms and plays, and Olans Petri 

 found time to add an historical "Chronicle." 



The last half of the Sixteenth Century was a 

 blank save for the literature connected with 

 the University of Upsala, which had been 

 founded in the year 1477; but under the reign 

 of Charles IX. (1600-1611) literature gained 

 life with the general prosperity of the country. 

 Buraeus, the royal librarian studied all known 

 sciences and made a jumble of his own convic- 

 tions, recording them in several unreadable 

 volumes. Through his patient study, however, 

 he roused interest in a knowledge of Scandi- 

 navian language and mythology. The Swedish 

 drama began during these years, the greatest 

 dramatist being Messinius (1579-1636), whose 

 lyrics have something of the charm of the old 

 ballads. His first historical comedy was " Disa," 

 and his first tragedy "Signill." He planned to 

 write the history of his land in fifty plays, but 



