Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/22

In the same manner as in the Scandinavian languages, we can trace a national unity in the literature of the North from the most ancient times down to the present. A very natural division is one into two literary epochs, that of ancient, and that of modern times. The latter extends of course a good way back, and among its products are found many works which are really older than much of what we are accustomed to class with the ancient literature. The truth is that there is not only a wide difference in time, but also a great difference in the character of these two literary epochs. That part of the Scandinavian literature which we call the ancient epoch is a pure unadulterated expression of the northern popular spirit, while the modern epoch is more or less influenced by streams of culture from the rest of Europe. This fact becomes singularly apparent in the circumstance that the ancient literature, having its root in oral tradition, extending back to the most hoary antiquity, and losing in force and vigor exactly in proportion to the strength of foreign, external influences upon it—employs the mother tongue as its organ, and thus becomes in the truest sense of the word a popular literature, while the literature of modern times developed out of the Roman culture, which was introduced with Christianity, and in the beginning made use of the Latin language as the vehicle of its thought. In a history of the modern literature of the northern nations it is therefore necessary to show how the national and popular element exerted itself to cast off the foreign yoke which the foreign culture had put upon it, until it at length gained the necessary strength to establish a truly national literature which from its energy and fulness is able to