Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/74

tale. The comparatively safe intercourse which the Icelanders undoubtedly had with other countries gave them a higher education, that is, the means of acquiring a greater stock of information on what was doing in other countries, than any other people of those times. When we consider that these Icelandic colonists were connected by the udal law of succession with the principal families and estates in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England, and France, and were deeply interested in the conquests, revolutions, battles, or changes going on, and in which their friends and relations were the chief actors, we can understand that an historical spirit must have grown up in such a population—a great desire to know, and a great talent to remember and relate. Heritable interests and rights of families in Iceland were involved in what was going on in Normandy and Northumberland as much as in Drontheim; and the consideration in which the scald or saga-man who could give accounts of such events was held, may not be exaggerated in the sagas. In a community of such colonists, the class of scalds remembering and relating past transactions was an essential element, and must have been held in the highest honour. To return home to Iceland appears, indeed, to have been the end which the most favoured scald at the courts of kings proposed to himself. From their opportunities of visiting various countries, the Icelandic scalds were undoubtedly the educated men of the times when books did not in any way contribute to intelligence, or to forming the mind; but only extensive intercourse with men, and the information gathered from it. Having by the lapse of time no family feuds even with the people of Norway, no injuries, national or private, to avenge or to fear vengeance for from others, the Icelander could travel through other countries on private or public affairs with a degree of personal security which people of the