Thus the wandering singers served as newspapers. And their best songs were remembered and repeated (and improved upon) to serve as history from that time on. But history might also be made in another way. The skalds of the northern races accompanied their chiefs on their battles in order to sing of them afterwards. But they were there as historians, not merely as poets. ‘Ye shall be here that ye may see with your own eyes what is achieved this day,’ King Olaf is recorded to have told his skalds on the eve of the battle of Stiklastad (1030), ‘and have no occasion, when ye shall afterward celebrate these actions in song, to depend on the reports of others.’ The skalds were there, that is, as true witnesses of the events, as the specialized repositories of historical information. We cannot suppose that their reports were altogether truthful. They were doubtless expected to ‘forget’ many things that might seem inglorious. But their songs often passed to the people. And, if the king or chief had made a bad record with them, be sure the songs became changed in people’s mouths to show him in his true character. And very often the people, or their own singers, made the narrative songs themselves, dealing out praise or blame by their own justice without fear or favor. In religion song was a matter of the highest importance, as it has always been. A prophet might reveal the will of the gods, but, unless he were a poet or had a poet to help him, he could not make people remember it. And so in all primitive races the priests were poets and musicians. By the beauty and impressiveness of their songs they proved their right to interpret the divine will. And only in poems could they preserve their doctrine for their successors. But in time the priests generally had to give up their prestige to those who were first of all poets and singers. The gods of Greece were interpreted and made known to the people by the poets. The Teutonic and Norse gods were made known in the epics and sagas. No one else spoke to the people with the same religious conviction as the poet. And so the poets have always, until the most recent times, partaken of a certain religious sanctity. Dante and Milton served as interpreters of religion to their fellow creatures--as beings set apart ‘to justify the ways of God to men.’ III