Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/214

antiquarian research was, and still continues to be, the principal literary occupation of the educated classes in Sweden and Denmark, and that which led, more than any other branch of literature, to distinction and substantial reward from government. Peringskiold, Torfæus, Arne Magnusen, Schoning, and many other antiquaries of great learning, research, and talent in their own antiquarian pursuits, dug for celebrity in this mine of the Heimskringla, and generally threw away the sterling ore to bring home the worthless pebble. Dates were determined, localities ascertained, royal genealogies put to rights,—the ancestor of the Danish dynasty proved, to the satisfaction of all men, to have been a descendant of Odin called Skiold, and not Dan,—and a great deal of such learned dust was raised, swept into a heap, and valued as dust of gold; but the historical interest, the social condition, the political institutions of the Northmen, as delineated in the Heimskringla, were not laid before the public by those great antiquaries: and possibly these were subjects of which they could not safely treat. These profound scholars, so laboriously and successfully occupied, appear to have forgotten altogether, in their zeal to do each other justice, and amidst the compliments they were interchanging on their own merits, that there was a Snorro Sturleson entitled to his share in the honours. His work was treated as some of the classics have been by their learned commentators—the text overwhelmed, buried, and forgotten, under annotations and unimportant explanations of it. It is pleasing to observe how the natural taste of a people selects what is good in their literature, what is adapted to the mind of all, with more just tact than even the educated classes among them. While the merit of Snorro was hid from the educated under a mass of learned rubbish, the people both in Norway and Denmark had a true feeling for it; and in 1594 a trans-