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writing, while the scientific tendency reigned supreme and historical 
subjects had not vet been exhausted. Some of these sagas are doubtless 
founded on genuine traditions, though the facts are now so inter- 
mingled with fictitious elements as to make it impossible to separate 
the one from the other. Others, on the other hand, are pure fiction, 
mostly centring round some famous hero, possessed of rare magic 
weapons and going through some stock adventures, such as fighting 
trolls and monsters, and always in the end winning a glorious victory. 
But these sagas are unlike the Icelandic sagas in one essential parti- 
cular: they all end well. 
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Icelanders translated a 
number of sagas from Latin, both of religious and secular character. 
And in the fourteenth century they began to write novels, the heroes 
of some of them being Icelanders who are known to have existed; 
others were written in the style of the Fornaldarsgur, and yet others 
after the manner of foreign chivalric romances. 
As regards other branches of literature, mention should here be made 
of the remarkable collection of laws (Grigés) from republican times; of 
the two codes (Jdrnsifa and Jénsbok) which came with the union with 
Norway; of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, which contains the Scandinavian 
mythology and Skéldskaparmél, i. e. a scientific treatise giving a com- 
plete analysis of Scaldic versification (a kind of poetic gradus); of four 
articles on linguistics, the first of which, dating from about 1140, dis- 
cusses Icelandic phonetics, and how the Latin alphabet should be ad- 
apted for the requirements of the Icelandic language. The author 
of this article proves himself an able phonetician. Translations were 
also made of a great many homilies, and a number of articles written 
on geography, on natural history, on mathematics, on chronology, etc. 
The Icelanders of that age could have said of themselves: “Nothing 
of what is human do I account foreign to myself (Humani nihil a 
me alienum puto). 
Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century, the small Icelandic na- 
tion had created a wonderful literature which has ever since been 
her vital nerve and an ever-flowing fountain of strength. This litera- 
ture she has preserved by diligently copying the manuscripts and 
handing them down from generation to generation until the time of 
collecting (by Arni Magnusson, 1663—1730) and printing them began, 
But not content with the mere custodianship of these literary treasures, 
the Icelanders have to the best of their ability tried to increase and