The Story of Viga-Glum

I HAVE heard the question asked, "What interest can attach to the language and literature of a small and remote island, the inhabitants of which never exceeded 60,000 in number?" The population of Iceland has always been insignificant, and its territory barren, but we must recollect what the race was, which this population represented, and whose language it is that has come down to us as a living tongue, on this half desert spot in in the Northern Ocean. The Sagas, of which this tale is one, were composed for the men who have left their mark in every corner of Europe, and whose language and laws are at this moment important elements in the speech and institutions of England, America, and Australia. There is no page of modern history in which the influence of the Northmen and their conquest must not be taken into account--Russia, Constantinople, Greece, Palestine, Sicily, the coasts of Africa, Southern Italy, France, the Spanish Peninsula, England, Scotland, Ireland, and every rock and island round them, have been visited, and most of them at one time or another, ruled by the men of Scandinavia. The motto on the sword of Roger Guiscard was a proud one-- Appulus et Calaber Siculus mihi servit, et Afer." (Raumer, Hohenstaufen, b. i. circa 473). The remoteness or insignificance of Iceland, therefore, affords no adequate measure of the interest which belongs to its language, its literature, and its history. All this has been fully discussed by Mr. Laing in his prefaces to the Heimskringla, and by Mr. Dasent in the essay prefixed to his excellent translation of the Nial’s Saga. But there is another point of view in which these Icelandic stories possess a great and peculiar interest in relation to their history of literature. Taken altogether, they are the first prose literature which exists in any modern language spoken by the people.