tongues has been preserved in Iceland so little changed that every
Icelander still understands, without the aid of explanatory
commentaries, the oldest preserved prose written in their country
850 years ago. The principal reasons for this were probably limited
communications between Iceland and other countries, frequent
migrations inside the island, and, not least important, a long and
uninterrupted literary tradition. As a consequence, Icelandic has
not developed any dialects in the ordinary sense.

It is to their language and literature, as well as to the island
separateness of their country, that the 175 thousand inhabitants of
this North-Atlantic state of a little more than a hundred thousand
square kilometres owe their existence as an independent and separate
nation.

The Icelanders established a democratic legislative assembly, the
Althingi (Alþingi) in 930 A.D., and in the year 1000 embraced
Christianity. Hence there soon arose the necessity of writing down
the law and translations of sacred works. Such matter, along with
historical knowledge, may well have constituted the earliest
writings in Icelandic, probably dating as far back as the eleventh
century, while the oldest preserved texts were composed early in the
twelfth century. This was the beginning of the so-called saga-
writing. The important thing was that most of what was written down
was in the vernacular, Latin being used but sparingly. Thus a
literary style was evolved which soon reached a high standard. This
style, so forceful in its perspicuity, was effectively simple, yet
rich in the variety of its classical structure.

There were different categories of sagas. Among the most important