phetic sight, and a faith in the destinies of these half savage tribes, and a conviction also of the utter effeteness - of the Roman and Byzantine empires, before a bishop could have brought himself to translate the Bible into the vulgar dialect of his barbarous countrymen. Soon after the death of Ulfilas, the number of Christian Goths at Constantinople had so much increased as to induce Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople (397– 405), to establish a church in the capital, where the service was to be read in Gothic.1 The language of Ulfilas, the Gothic, belongs, through its phonetic structure, to the Low-German class, but in - its grammar it is, with few exceptions, far more primitive than the Anglo-Saxon of the Beowulf, or the Old HighGerman of Charlemagne. These few exceptions, however, are very important, for they show that it would be grammatically, and therefore historically, impossible to derive either Anglo-Saxon or High-German, or both,2 from Gothic. It would be impossible, for instance, to treat the first person plural of the indicative present, the Old High-German nerjamês, as a corruption of the Gothic nasjam; for we know, from the Sanskrit masi, the Greek mes, the Latin mus, that this was the original termination of the first person plural. Gothic is but one of the numerous dialects of the German race; some of which became the feeders of the literary languages of the British Isles, of Holland, Friesia, and of Low and High Germany, while others became extinct, and others rolled on from century to century unheeded, and without ever producing any 1 Theodoret. H. E. V., 30. 2 For instances where Old High-German is more primitive than Gothic see Schleicher, Zeitschrift für V. S., b. iv. s. 266. Bugge, ibid., b. v. s. 59. literature at all. It is because Gothic is the only one of these parallel dialects that can be traced back to the fourth century, whereas the others disappear from our sight in the seventh, that it has been mistaken by some for the original source of all Teutonic speech. The same arguments, however, which we used against Raynouard, to show that Provençal could not be considered as the parent of the Six Romance dialects, would tell with equal force against the pretensions of Gothic to be. considered as more than the eldest sister of the Teutonic branch of speech. There is, in fact, a third stream of Teutonic speech, which asserts its independence as much as High-German and Low-German, and which it would be impossible to place in any but a co-ordinate position with regard to Gothic, Low and High German. This is the - Scandinavian branch. It consists at present of three literary dialects, those of Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, and of various local dialects, particularly in secluded valleys and fiords of Norway,1 where, however, the literary language is Danish. It is commonly supposed 2 that, as late as the eleventh century, identically the same language was spoken in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and that this language was preserved almost intact in Iceland, while in Sweden and Denmark it grew into two new national dialects. Nor is there any doubt that the Icelandic skald recited, his poems in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, nay, even among his countrymen in England and Gardariki, without fear of not being understood, till, as it is said, William introduced Welsh, i. e. French, into England, 1 See Schleicher, Deutsche Sprache, p. 94. 2 Ibid. s. 60. and Slavonic tongues grew up in the east. But though one and the same language (then called Danish or Norrænish) was understood, I doubt whether one and the same language was spoken by all Northmen, and whether the first germs of Swedish and Danish did not exist long 7 before the eleventh century, in the dialects of the numerous clans and tribes of the Scandinavian race. That race is clearly divided into two branches, called by • Swedish scholars the East and West Scandinavian. The former would be represented by the old language of Norway and Iceland, the latter by Swedish and Danish. This division of the Scandinavian race had taken place before the Northmen settled in Sweden and Norway. The western division migrated westward from Russia, and crossed over from the continent to the Aland Islands, and from thence to the southern coast of the peninsula. The eastern division travelled along the Bothnian Gulf, passing the country occupied by the Finns and Lapps, and settled in the northern highlands, spreading toward the south and west. The earliest fragments of Scandinavian speech are preserved in the two Eddas, the elder or poetical Edda, containing old mythic poems, the younger or Snorri's Edda giving an account of the ancient mythology in prose. Both Eddas were composed, not in Norway, but in Iceland, an island about as large as Ireland, and which became first known through some Irish monks ' who settled there in the eighth century.2 In the ninth century voyages of discovery were made to Iceland by Naddodd, Gardar, and Flokki, 860-870, and soon after the distant island, distant about 750 English miles from 1 Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, p. 27; Gunnlaugssaga, c. 7. Norway, became a kind of America to the Puritans and Republicans of the Scandinavian peninsula. Harald Haarfagr (850-933) had conquered most of the Norwegian kings, and his despotic sway tended to reduce the northern freemen to a state of vassalage. Those who could not resist, and could not bring themselves to yield to the sceptre of Harald, left their country and migrated to France, to England, and to Iceland (874). They were mostly nobles and freemen, and they soon estab lished in Iceland an aristocratic republic, such as they had had in Norway before the days of Harald. This northern republic flourished; it adopted Christianity in the year 1000. Schools were founded, two bishoprics were established, and classical literature was studied with the same zeal with which their own national poems and laws had been collected and interpreted by native scholars and historians. The Icelanders were famous travellers, and the names of Icelandic students are found not only in the chief cities of Europe, but in the holy places of the East. At the beginning of the twelfth century Iceland counted 50,000 inhabitants. Their intellectual and literary activity lasted to the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the island was conquered by Hakon VI., king of Norway. In 1380, Norway, together with Iceland, was united with Denmark; and when, in 1814, Norway was ceded to Sweden, Iceland remained, as it is still, under Danish sway. The old poetry which flourished in Norway in the eighth century, and which was cultivated by the skalds in the ninth, would have been lost in Norway itself had it not been for the jealous care with which it was preserved by the emigrants of Iceland. The most important branch of their traditional poetry were short songs (hliod or Quida), relating the deeds of their gods and heroes. It is impossible to determine their age, but they existed at least previous to the migration of the Northmen to Iceland, and probably as early as the seventh century, the same century which yields the oldest remnants of Anglo-Saxon, Low-German, and High-German. They were collected in the middle of the twelfth century by Saemund Sigfusson (died 1133). In 1643 a similar collection was discovered in MSS. of the thirteenth century, and published under the title of Edda, or Great-Grandmother. This delas. collection is called the old or poetic Edda, in order to distinguish it from a later work ascribed to Snorri Sturluson (died 1241). This, the younger or prose Edda, consists of three parts: the mocking of Gylfi, the speeches of Bragi, and the Skalda, or Ars poetica. Snorri Sturluson has been called the Herodotus of Iceland; and his chief work is the "Heimskringla," the world-ring, which contains the northern history from the mythic times to the time of King Magnus Erlingsson (died 1177). It was probably in preparing his history that, like Cassiodorus, Saxo Grammaticus, Paulus Diaconus, and other historians of the same class, Snorri collected the old songs of the people; for his "Edda," and particularly his "Skalda," are full of ancient poetic fragments. The "Skalda," and the rules which it contains, represent the state of poetry in the thirteenth century; and nothing can be more artificial, nothing more different from the genuine poetry of the old “Edda" than this Ars poetica of Snorri Sturluson. One of the chief features of this artificial or skaldic poetry was this, that nothing should be called by its rdiny. |