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connections with the other countries of the North, as it hath had since? We must be sensible, that almost all that could be then known in Iceland of what passed in other nations, consisted in popular rumours, and in a few songs, which were handed about by means of some Icelandic Scald, who returned from thence into his own country.
What course then ought an historian to persue, amid such a wide field of contrary opinions, where the momentary gleams of light do not enable him to discover or trace out any certain truth. In the first place, I think he ought not to engage himself and his readers in a labyrinth of entangled and useless researches; the result of which, he is pretty sure, can be only doubt. In the next place, he is to pass rapidly over all those ages which are but little known, and all such facts as cannot be set clear from fiction. The interest we take in past events is weakened in proportion as they are remote and distant. But when, besides being remote, they are also doubtful, unconnected, uncircumstantial and confused, they vanish into such obscurity, that they neither can, nor ought to engage our attention. In those distant periods, if any events occur, which ought not wholly to be past over in silence, great care should be taken to mark the degree of probability
