Court Poetry 1 2 1 



— may be cited Hornklofi, of the court of Hakon the 

 Good; Glum Geirason, the bard of Harald Grey fell; 

 Einar, Earl Hakon's poet; Halfred Vandriedaskald 

 (the Troublesome Bard), who was a devoted friend of 

 Olaf Tryggvason ; and Sigh vat, the poet of St. Olaf, who 

 must have left a long poem describing all the achieve- 

 ments of that hero. Of most of the works of these 

 court poets we have only very few remains, by com- 

 parison with what they may reasonably be conjectured 

 to have written. 



This later court poetry is genuinely Icelandic ; most 

 of the bards about the persons of the kings having been 

 by birth Icelanders. The little Eepublic held a unique 

 position among the Scandinavian nations for its literary 

 achievements. But for all that this later court poetry 

 is Icelandic in origin, the true power of Icelandic 

 literature does not lie in the direction of poetry, but of 

 prose. It is by the development of the prose tale, the 

 Saga, that Iceland has won for herself a permanent and 

 no mean place in the literary history of the world. 



The growtli and character of this literature deserve to 

 be spoken of in a chapter to themselves. 



