thousand ways by foreign influence, even as the peoples and their
speech have been by the influx of foreign blood; but Iceland held
to the old tongue that was once the universal speech of northern
folk, and held also the great stores of tale and poem that are
slowly becoming once more the common heritage of their
descendants. The truth, care, and literary beauty of its
records; the varied and strong life shown alike in tale and
history; and the preservation of the old speech, character, and
tradition -- a people placed apart as the Icelanders have been --
combine to make valuable what Iceland holds for us. Not before
1770, when Bishop Percy translated Mallet's "Northern
Antiquities", was anything known here of Icelandic, or its
literature. Only within the latter part of this century has it
been studied, and in the brief book-list at the end of this
volume may be seen the little that has been done as yet. It is,
however, becoming ever clearer, and to an increasing number, how
supremely important is Icelandic as a word-hoard to the English-
speaking peoples, and that in its legend, song, and story there
is a very mine of noble and pleasant beauty and high manhood.
That which has been done, one may hope, is but the beginning of a
great new birth, that shall give back to our language and
literature all that heedlessness and ignorance bid fair for
awhile to destroy.

The Scando-Gothic peoples who poured southward and westward over
Europe, to shake empires and found kingdoms, to meet Greek and
Roman in conflict, and levy tribute everywhere, had kept up their
constantly-recruited waves of incursion, until they had raised a
barrier of their own blood. It was their own kin, the sons of
earlier invaders, who stayed the landward march of the Northmen