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Excerpt from The Gods of the North: An Epic Poem The Eddas are written in the Icelandic tongue, then called the Suio - Gothic, and sometimes the Norrana tunga (or Norse tongue), which was formerly the language of all Scandinavia. After the introduction of Christianity, from the connection with the Empire and the Church, this tongue be came gradually deterioriated by a mixture with the German; and it is by this mixture with the German that the modern Swedish and Danish languages are formed. Iceland having been colonised by some Norwegian families previous to the corruption of the language, has thus, from its insular po sition, preserved the old language pure; and it is now called Icelandic, which, though a dead language for Scandinavia, is a living one in Iceland. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.