Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/45

is very great. It is also more than probable, that the poetry of which we have fragments in the Elder Edda, was not confined to Norway and Iceland, but also known in Denmark and Sweden, where we find it, precisely as in Norway, cropping out in the popular literature of the middle ages, in a Christian and romantic garb it is true, but with unmistakable marks of its heathen origin. The oldest Norse poets, of whom we have tolerably satisfactory knowledge, display in their productions much of that simple but grand spirit which is so conspicuous in the songs of the Edda, a character quite the opposite of the peculiar affectation, which the later development of skaldship assumed. When we, therefore, consider that within the group of Edda-poems itself it is easy to point out, relatively speaking, older and younger lays, poems, on the one hand, which by their very spirit and accent betray the fact that they belong to the restless, bloody age of the vikings, and poems, on the other hand, which bear testimony of an earlier and more refined culture; then all this seems to indicate that in these old songs we have only a few remnants of a poetry, which in an early age resounded throughout the North, and that we do not with, perhaps, the single exception of the Völuspá, know all these glorious songs that have come down to us, as they were in the period of their full bloom, but only from the time when they had begun to decay. It is difficult at present to form any conception of how extensive in quantity this poetic literature must have been. The fact is, that this whole countless number of Norse traditions are the themes of so many separate songs. Of these traditions, a part have come down to us in a tolerably well-preserved condition; others we are able to recognize only from faint outlines; and of others again scarcely more than the name remains. It would lead us too far away from our purpose if we should undertake to prove that all the myths and traditions of the North are based on ancient poems, but the correctness of the statement is admitted by all scholars, and this being granted, it follows that Old Norse poetry must