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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI. Runes--Character of a runic antiquarian--Epochs in Norse literature--The Edda--The Kjsempe-Visor--The latter overvalued. When the Northmen first began to write, they wrote in runes. Runes are marks cut upon wood or stone. English Lexicographers are in the habit of writing about the Runic language, and spelling the word with a capital letter, just as if there was such a country as Runia, or Runland. You can, in strictness, as well talk of a Runic language as you can of an alphabetic one. The runic alphabet was of no value in perpetuating long compositions. It served only for short inscriptions, such as are, at this moment, found upon the stones and rocks of the North. It might support a literature that consisted only of gravestones and sign-posts; very moral, inasmuch as it showed which way to go, and what we were to come to, but still confined. It could do no more than this. Yet, long before the introduction of written letters, the Northmen had a mythology and a literature. How was this transmitted by them to posterity? They had long nights and long memories. They cheered the continuous gloom of the long winter months, by relating the exploits of their fathers (for as then cards and tobacco were not) and, so doing, their recollections grew retentive, perforce. A certain Skald (poet) at a certain court is said to have sung sixty lays in succession. Great was the knowledge of runic inscriptions that perished with Arndt, the most eccentric of the eccentric class of antiquarians. Ohlenschlager, who studied Icelandic under him, describes him, as follows, and the stories that I heard concerning him, from those who had been in contact with him, convince me that he was scarcely caricatured. He was born at Altona. His travels lay in the regions of ant...