events of the past, which are so characteristic of the Icelanders from the oldest time to this very day. The author, a district judge in Skage Firth, gathered in his isolated home, with untiring industry, all obtainable reports of events and persons from the above period and recorded them in narrative form, without the slightest prospect that his great work would ever be printed. Then the Icelandic Literary Society was organized in 1816, and a few years later this society undertook the publication of Espolin's voluminous work, which otherwise doubtless would have had the same fate as so many other works written in former times in that far off island, and which, though being the fruit of many years' persistent and thorough study, never have seen the light of the world.
We fear that we already have wearied our readers by this survey or summary of what the Icelanders of modern times have contributed to the knowledge of the history, antiquities and language of their own country and of the whole Scandinavian North, and yet the list of scholars who have labored efficiently in this field would have to be very much amplified before it could lay any claim to being even tolerably exhaustive. This whole school of writers with its profound and comprehensive study of all the ancient documents has its root in a remarkably intense patriotism which has burned in the bosoms of the Icelanders with no less steady flame in the evil days than in the good, and which has manifested itself in many other ways in their literature, and that not alone in high-sounding phrases, but in efficient work for the weal of their country.[1]
The patriotism of the Icelanders has now and then been roused to extraordinary heights, and has especially manifested itself in loud complaints of their relations with Denmark. On account of an almost total ignorance on the part of the Danish government in regard to the affairs of Iceland, its
- ↑ Much is also done in Iceland in the way of collecting and publishing statistical materials.
