1 24 Norway and the Norwegians 



elements ? So if the Icelandic literature has had an 

 origin not dissimilar to that of so many other modern 

 European ones, the fact certainly need not surprise us ; 

 but it is well worth notincj. 



For this Saga literature, though it cannot take rank 

 with such great creations as we associate with the names 

 of Shakespeare or Goethe or Dante, is far finer, and 

 far more worthy of study than most men suppose. 



We can partly trace, and partly surmise its growth. 

 It sprang up, we have said, in the west of the island. 

 The new settlers there, cut off from their old interests, 

 and yet full of the energy which their past lives of 

 adventure begat, threw themselves eagerly and vividly 

 into their fresh life, so that small, and, as we should 

 judge it, petty as that life really was, it became in their 

 hands almost heroic ; and under the imported influence 

 of the Celtic bias that way it became fit for treatment 

 in literary art. 



Most people seem to have only a very vague and 

 general idea of what the true Saga is. They confuse the 

 Icelandic Saga with the German 8age, a tale, and fancy 

 that the word may be applied to almost any Scandina- 

 vian story or history written at any period. But, pro- 

 perly speaking, the expression Saga Literature should be 

 taken to denote a very distinct and a strictly prescribed 

 outcome of the northern imagination. We will devote 

 the rest of this chapter to an account of the birth and 

 the development of the Icelandic Saga, and to a descrip- 

 tion of its peculiar characteristics. 



The idea of this tale-telling was not native among 

 the Icelanders. Tales, very like the northern Sagas, 

 had been told in Ireland before ever the Northmen 



