Although there is practically as little doubt about the antiquity of Icelandic literature[161] as about its interest, there is unusual room for guesswork as to the exact dates of the documents which compose it. Writing seems to have been introduced into Iceland late; and it is not the opinion of scholars who combine learning with patriotism that many, if any, of the actual MSS. date further back than the thirteenth century; while the actual composition of the oldest that we have is not put earlier than the twelfth, and rather its later than its earlier part. Moreover, though Icelanders were during this period, and indeed from the very first settlement of the island, constantly in foreign countries and at foreign courts--though as Vikings or Varangians, as merchants or merely travelling adventurers, they were to be found all over Europe, from Dublin to Constantinople--yet, on the other hand, few or no foreigners visited Iceland, and it figures hardly at all in the literary and historical records of the Continent or even of the British Isles, with which it naturally had most correspondence. We are therefore almost entirely devoid of those side-lights which are so invaluable in general literary history, while yet again we have no borrowings from Icelandic literature by any other to tell us the date of the borrowed matter. At the end of our present time, and still more a little later, Charlemagne and Arthur and the romances of antiquity make their appearance in Icelandic; but nothing Icelandic makes its appearance elsewhere. For it is not to be supposed for one moment that the _Nibelungenlied_, for instance, is the work of men who wrote with the _Volsunga-Saga_ or the Gudrun lays before them, any more than the _Grettis Saga_ is made up out of _Beowulf_. These things are mere examples of the successive refashionings of traditions and stories common to the race in different centuries, manners, and tongues. Except as to the bare fact of community of origin they help us little or not at all. [Footnote 161: It is almost superfluous to insert, but would be disagreeable to omit, a reference to the _Sturlunga Saga_ (2 vols., Oxford, 1879) and the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (2 vols., Oxford, 1883) of the late Dr Vigfusson and Professor York Powell. The first contains an invaluable sketch, or rather history, of Icelandic literature: the second (though one may think its arrangement a little arbitrary) is a book of unique value and interest. Had these two been followed up according to Dr Vigfusson's plan, practically the whole of Icelandic literature that has real interest would have been accessible once for all. As it is, one is divided between satisfaction that England should have done such a service to one of the great mediaeval literatures, and regret that she has not done as much for others.] [Sidenote: _The Saga._]