The Icelanders have never waged war against any nation. But in the
thirteenth century they were engaged in a civil war which ended in
their submitting to the authority of the Norwegian king in the
sixties (this authority was transferred to the King of the Danes in
1380). It is interesting that, during the next few decades after
this capitulation, saga-writing seems to reach a climax as an art,
in family sagas like Njáls saga, "one of the great prose works of
the world" (W. P. Ker). It is as if the dangers of civil war and the
experiences gained in times of surrender had created in the authors
a kind of inner tension--as if their maturity had found full
expression in the security of peace. However, with the first
generation born in Iceland in subjection, the decline of saga-
writing seems to begin. This can hardly be a mere coincidence. On
the contrary it was brought about by a number of different factors.
Subsequently, in the fourteenth century, saga-writing becomes for
the most part extinct. From c. 1400-1800 there is hardly any prose
fiction at all. Hence the fact that several centuries remain
unrepresented in this work (though the gap might have been reduced
to four or five centuries had literary-historical considerations
alone been allowed to influence the present selection).
But the sagas continued to be copied and read. After the setting up
of the first printing press (c. 1530), and after the Reformation (c.
1550), religious literature grew much in bulk, both translations
(that of the Bible was printed in 1584) and original works, and a
new kind of historical writing came into being. Side by side with
scholars, we have self-educated commoners who wrote both prose and,
especially, poetry.
In Iceland, being a "poet" has never been considered out of the
ordinary. On the contrary, a person unable to make up a verse or two
would almost be considered exceptional. Yet, this requires
considerable skill as the Icelanders are the only nation that has
preserved the ancient common Germanic alliteration (found in all
Germanic poetry till late medieval times). We frequently find this
device accompanied by highly complicated rhyme schemes. Despite this
rather rigid form, restrictive perhaps, yet disciplinary in its
effect, exquisite poetry has nevertheless been produced. This
poetry, however, is not within the scope of this introduction.
Suffice it to say that from what exists of their verse it is clear
that poets have been active at all times since the colonization of
the country. It is this uninterrupted flow of poetry that above all
has helped to preserve the language and the continuity of the
literary tradition.
During the centuries we have been discussing--especially, however,
the seventeenth--the Icelanders probably wrote more verse than any
other nation has ever done--ranging in quality, to be sure, from the
lowest to the highest. When, in the sixteenth century, they had got
paper to take the place of the more expensive parchment, they could
universally indulge in copying old literature and writing new, an
opportunity which they certainly made use of. It was their only
luxury--and, at the same time, a vital need.
We have said that the Icelanders had never waged war against any
other people. But they have had to struggle against foreign rulers,
and against hardships caused by the nature of their country. After
the Reformation, the intervention of the Crown greatly increased,
and, at the same time, its revenues from the country. A Crown
monopoly of all trade was imposed (in 1602). Nature joined forces
with mismanagement by the authorities; on the seas surrounding the
island pack-ice frequently became a menace to shipping, and there
also occurred unusually long and vicious series of volcanic
eruptions. These culminated in the late eighteenth century (1783),
when the world's most extensive lava fields of historical times were
formed, and the mist from the eruption was carried all over Europe
and far into the continent of Asia. Directly or indirectly as a
consequence of this eruption, the greater part of the live-stock,
and a fifth of the human population of the country perished.
Still the people continued to tell stories and to compose poems. No
doubt the Icelanders have thus wasted on poetical fantasies and
visionary daydreams much of the energy that they might otherwise
have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace
existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the
heroic deeds of the past. In the evening, the living-room
(baðstofa), built of turf and stone, became a little more cheerful,
and hunger was forgotten, while a member of the household read, or
sang, about far-away knights and heroes, and the banquets they gave
in splendid halls. In their imagination people thus tended to make
their environment seem larger, and better, than life, as did Hrolfur
with his fishing-boat in the story When I was on the Frigate.