INTRODUCTION. 
xlvii 
subject to Norway, she continued one of the few 
countries in Europe and the only one in the north, 
where the sciences were cultivated and held in 
esteem. The poetical and historical works of her 
inhabitants have bid defiance to time; her ancient 
chronicles show what clear notions they had of 
morality, philosophy, natural history, and astro¬ 
nomy ; her divines read the works of the fathers 
of the church ; and no fewer than two hundred 
and forty poets, some of them known and es¬ 
teemed at foreign courts, are enumerated in the 
Skaldartal (or list of poets), among the most 
eminent of whom are the above-mentioned Snorro 
Sturleson, Olaf Hintaskald, and Sturla Thordsen, 
all of whom lived in the thirteenth century. 
It appears extraordinary *, says M. Mallet, ta 
hear a historian of Denmark cite for his autho¬ 
rity the writers of Iceland; a country cut off as 
it were from the rest of the world, and lying 
almost under the northern pole. But this 
wonder ceases when the reader is informed that 
from the earliest times the inhabitants of that 
island had a particular fondness for history, and 
that from among them have sprung those poets, 
who, under the name of Scalds , rendered them¬ 
selves so famous throughout the north for their 
* Percy’s Northern Antiquities. 
