xlviii 
INTRODUCTION. 
songs, and for the credit they enjoyed with kings! 
and people. In fact, they have always taken 
great pains to preserve the remembrance of every 
remarkable event that happened, not only at 
home, but among their neighbors, the Norwegians, 
the Danes, the Swedes, the Scotch, the English, 
the Greenlanders, &c. The first inhabitants of 
Iceland carried with them the verses, and with 
these other historical monuments of former times, 
and the odes of these Icelandic Scalds were 
continually in every body’s mouth, containing, 
according to Torfseus, the genealogies and exploits 
of kings, princes, and heroes: and, as the poets 
did not forget to arrange them according to the 
order of time, it was not difficult for the Ice- 
landic historians to compose afterwards, from 
such memoirs, the chronicles they have left us. 
But the sciences * here, as in every other 
country, have been subject to the greatest revolu¬ 
tions, and, to use the words of Doctor Finneus, 
(who in his Hist. Eccles. Islandice compares the 
state of literature in Iceland to the four stages of 
human life) their infancy extended to the year 
1056, when the introduction of the Christian 
religion produced the first dawn of light; their 
youth to 1100, when schools were first established 
* Von Troil. 
