It should not be hard for the general reader to understand that the
influence which is the theme of this dissertation is real and
explicable. If he will but call the roll of his favorite heroes, he will
find Sigurd there. In his gallery of wondrous women, he certainly
cherishes Brynhild. These poetic creations belong to the
English-speaking race, because they belong to the world. And if one will
but recall the close kinship of the Icelandic and the Anglo-Saxon
languages, he will not find it strange that the spirit of the old Norse
sagas lives again in our English song and story.

The survey that this essay takes begins with Thomas Gray (1716-1771),
and comes down to the present day. It finds the fullest measure of the
old Norse poetic spirit in William Morris (1834-1896), and an increasing
interest and delight in it as we come toward our own time. The
enterprise of learned societies and enlightened book publishers has
spread a knowledge of Icelandic literature among the reading classes of
the present day; but the taste for it is not to be accounted for in the
same way. That is of nobler birth than of erudition or commercial pride.
Is it not another expression of that changed feeling for the things that
pertain to the common people, which distinguishes our century from the
last? The historian no longer limits his study to camp and court; the
poet deigns to leave the drawing-room and library for humbler scenes.
Folk-lore is now dignified into a science. The touch of nature has made
the whole world kin, and our highly civilized century is moved by the
records of the passions of the earlier society.

This change in taste was long in coming, and the emotional phase of it
has preceded the intellectual. It is interesting to note that Gray and