NORDAL LAUDS ICELAND IN FIRST NORTON TALK

Speaking to a large audience yesterday afternoon in the Fogg Art Museum Professor Sigurthur Nordal outlined the history and unique literary life of medieval Iceland. He was introduced by Dr. F. S. Cawley '10, Assistant Professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature, as the fifth incumbent of the chair of poetry endowed in memory of Professor Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard.

Professor Nordal will give his second address on December 4 in the large Lecture Room of Fogg Museum at 4 o'clock, when he will take up the Icelandic verse in more detail under the topic "The Old Poetry." The other two talks in this course fall on the following Mondays at the same time and place.

Professor Nordal first apologized for his subject in fluent English, as his audience was unfamiliar with the language, but cited the similarity between his subject and the countless books in any language "which you must not read, but must know and read about."

"Scholars have acclaimed the literature of this handful of people living on an artic island as the greatest medieval literature extant before the appearance of Dante's writings," he said. He pointed out further that the Icelandic sagas are the last surviving purely Teutonic literature completely untouched by classic tradition or influence and that as such they are completely original products.

The idea prevalent that the natives of modern Iceland have degenerated in strength and culture the lecturer showed to be false. Anthropologists have proved that Icelanders of today are of greater stature than their ancestors, and their literary efforts are also of great merit. He remarked that the collection of 17th and 18th century Icelandic literature is the most complete collection of a foreign language in Widener Library.

"There have been no other people," said Professor Nordal, "who have given so much thought to poetry under such adverse conditions. Their literature is directly the result of their history; their vigor for conquest turned to a tendency to recount their heroic deeds of the past when they found themselves isolated on a barren island and unable to push on further."

The first permanent settlement of Iceland was made in 870 when a band of hardy Vikings, unwilling to bear the despotism of Harold of Norway, crossed over and established the settlement of Reykjavik. They were of the first Viking stock, and set up a remarkable commonwealth with a written constitution which suited the people by its liberality. It provided for no king or executive, and was administrated by a supreme court.

The Vikings soon found themselves isolated by the breaking up of their Norwegian-built ships. There was no timber on the island which they could use to build new ones and the barreness of the soil soon drove the nation into extreme poverty. They lived very peacefully, especially during the 11th and 12th centuries, using all their energy in fighting the cold and repairing the damage done by volcano eruption