Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/30

viz. between 1177 and 1202, a history of the kings of Norway down to the end of the reign of Sigurd the Crusader in 1130, and who appears to have been a foreigner, all the literary attempts among this northern branch of the one great race, during the five centuries in which the other branch, the Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon, was confining all intellectual communication in history or poetry to Latin, and within the walls of the cloisters, were composed in the vernacular tongue of the country, intelligible to, and indeed altogether addressed to, the people of all classes. This singular instance in Europe of a national literature diffused among a barbarous and rude people, who had not even received the civilisation which accompanies the Christian religion under every form, before the beginning of the twelfth century, who were pagans in short fully five hundred years after every other part of Europe was, with the exception of some districts perhaps on the coasts of the Baltic, fully Christianised, has not been sufficiently considered by historians in estimating the influence of literature on national mind, character, and social arrangement. To the influence of this rude national literature we probably owe much of what we now pride ourselves upon as the noblest inheritance from our forefathers,—that national energy, activity, independence of mind, and value for civil and political freedom, which distinguish the population of England from that of all other countries, and have done so ever since the admixture of the Northmen with the old Anglo-Saxons. It may be said that the influence of sagas or songs, of the literature, such as it may be, upon the spirit and character of a people, is overstated, and that it is but a fond exaggeration, at any rate, to dignify with the title of a national, influential literature, the rude traditionary tales and ballads of a barbarous pagan population. But a nation's literature is its breath of life, without