The compositions of the Skalds were called Sagas, many of
which have come down to us, and contain valuable materials of
history, and a faithful picture of the state of society at the
time to which they relate.
ICELAND
The Eddas and Sagas have come to us from Iceland. The following
extract from Carlyle's lectures on "Heroes and Hero Worship" gives
an animated account of the region where the strange stories we
have been reading had their origin. Let the reader contrast it for
a moment with Greece, the parent of classical mythology:
"In that strange island, Iceland,--burst up, the geologists say,
by fire from the bottom of the sea, a wild land of barrenness and
lava, swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet
with a wild, gleaming beauty in summer time, towering up there
stern and grim in the North Ocean, with its snow yokuls
[mountains], roaring geysers [boiling springs], sulphur pools, and
horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste, chaotic battlefield of
Frost and Fire,--where, of all places, we least looked for
literature or written memorials,--the record of these things was
written down. On the seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy
country, where cattle can subsist, and men by means of them and of
what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men these, men
who had deep thoughts in them and uttered musically their
thoughts.
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