"
The poems in this volume are part of the wonderful fragments
which are all that remain of ancient Scandinavian poetry. Every
piece which survives has been garnered by Vigfusson and Powell in
the volumes of their "Corpus", where those who seek may find. A
long and illustrious line of poets kept the old traditions, down
even to within a couple centuries, but the earlier great harvest
of song was never again equalled. After christianity had entered
Iceland, and that, with other causes, had quieted men's lives,
although the poetry which stood to the folk in lieu of music did
not die away, it lost the exclusive hold it had upon men's minds.
In a time not so stirring, when emotion was not so fervent or so
swift, when there was less to quicken the blood, the story that
had before found no fit expression but in verse, could stretch
its limbs, as it were, and be told in prose. Something of Irish
influence is again felt in this new departure and that marvellous
new growth, the saga, that came from it, but is little more than
an influence.
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