Early Settlers in Iceland 1 2 5 



came thither. And whether it be that the northern 

 settlers in Ireland learned the art of story-telling there, 

 or that the Irish, among the early settlers in Iceland, 

 brought with them the art into their new country, we 

 must take this becrinning of Icelandic literature to be a 

 descendant of what may be called (by a sort of bull) 

 the oral literature of the Irish. 



The settlers in Iceland seem to have been a good 

 deal self-centred. A great breadth of sea cut them off 

 from the politics of that long chain of territories which 

 we have called the Greater Scandinavia; and that Greater 

 Scandinavia lay between them and the rest of Europe. 

 Thus they preserved, with very minute care, the records 

 of the early settlements in the island ; the history of 

 the families who were descended from these early 

 settlers, who were a sort of Mayflower emigrants, and 

 formed ultimately the aristocracy of the island. About 

 the doings of all the chief men in these families stories, 

 we may believe, were composed to be recited in winter 

 days round the fire. Gradually there grew up a race 

 of story-tellers, who worked upon a plan ; so that the 

 practice of Saga-making developed into a defined art. 

 It is curious to trace the beginnings of a really great 

 literature amid these petty surroundings and trivial 

 interests. But it reminds us, to a certain extent, of the 

 befjinnin^s of other and still greater literatures. What 

 the deeds of the Icelanders were, compared to the 

 doings of the northern folk, in the native Scandinavian 

 countries, or even in their settlements in our islands, 

 such were the quarrels between two petty branches of 

 the Pelasgic race compared to the wars which, at the 

 same time, were raging between the mighty empires of 



