52 
LETTEES FEOM HIGH LATITUDES. 
and still more bloody political convulsions, which for 
too long a period rendered the sword of tire warrior so 
much more important to European society than the pen 
of the scholar, the Icelandic settlers, devoting the long 
leisure of their winter nights to intellectual occupations, 
became the first of any European nation to create for 
themselves a native literature. Indeed, so much more 
accustomed did they get to use their heads than their 
hands, that if an Icelander were injured he often 
avenged himself, not by cutting the throat of his anta¬ 
gonist, but by ridiculing him in some pasquinade,— 
sometimes, indeed, he did both; and when the King 
of Denmark maltreats the crew of an Icelandic vessel 
shipwrecked on his coast, their indignant countrymen 
send the barbarous monarch word, that, by way of 
reprisal, they intend making as many lampoons on 
him as there are promontories in his dominions. 
Almost all the ancient Scandinavian manuscripts are 
Icelandic; the negotiations between the Courts of the 
North were conducted by Icelandic diplomatists; the 
earliest topographical survey with which we are ac¬ 
quainted was Icelandic; the cosmogony of the Odin 
religion was formulated, and its doctrinal traditions 
