[6-3] Prolegomena, _Sturlunga Saga_, p. lxix.

[7-1] Snorri, the Icelandic historian, says that "it was more than 240
years from the settlement of Iceland (about 870) before sagas began to be
written" and that "Ari (1067-1148) was the first man who wrote in the
vernacular stories of things old and new."

[7-2] "Among the mediaeval literatures of Europe, that of Iceland is
unrivalled in the profusion of detail with which the facts of ordinary
life are recorded, and the clearness with which the individual character
of numberless real persons stands out from the historic background....
The Icelanders of the Saga-age were not a secluded self-centred race;
they were untiring in their desire to learn all that could be known of
the lands round about them, and it is to their zeal for this knowledge,
their sound historical sense, and their trained memories, that we owe
much information regarding the British Isles themselves from the ninth to
the thirteenth century. The contact of the Scandinavian peoples with the
English race on the one hand, and the Gaelic on the other, has been an
important factor in the subsequent history of Britain; and this is
naturally a subject on which the Icelandic evidence is of the highest
value." Prefatory Note to _Origines Islandicae_.

[8-1] _Studies on the Vinland Voyages_ (Copenhagen, 1889) and _Eiriks
Saga Raudha_ (Copenhagen, 1891).

[8-2] Of the same opinion are Professor Hugo Gering of Kiel, _Zeitschrift
für deutsche Philologie_, XXIV. (1892), and Professor Finnur Jonsson of
Copenhagen, _Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie_, II.
646.