The early history of the North was traditionary, until the introduction of Christianity, with which Roman letters were also introduced. These were easily adapted to express the various sounds of their languages; and being much more convenient and applicable to reduce their songs, tales, and histories into, than the characters heretofore used, they were soon after embodied in them. The letters in use, previous to the introduction of the Roman alphabet, were Runic. This alphabet consisted of sixteen letters, which are said to be Phoenician in their origin, and to have been introduced by Odin. They were used to sculpture important events on rocks and monuments, many of which are still found in various parts of the North, as well as in Great Britain. In another place, a more particular account will be given of these _Runes_, as they are called, accompanied by translations. It does not appear that the Runic letters had ever been employed to much extent, on parchment, to record passing events, or to preserve the lays, which memory alone had transmitted from generation to generation. Like all other people of antiquity, the Scandinavians had their bards, synonymous with the rhapsodists of Greece. They were known by the name of _Skalds_, and were both poets and historians. 'They were the companions and chroniclers of kings, who liberally rewarded their genius, and sometimes entered the lists with them in trials of skill in their own art. A regular succession of this order of men was perpetuated--a list of two hundred and thirty in number, of the most distinguished in the three kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, among whom are several crowned heads, and distinguished warriors of the heroic age. Canute the Great retained several Skalds at his court, among whom was one from Iceland, 'who,' says Snorre Sturleson, 'having composed a short poem on Canute, went, for the purpose of reciting it, to the king, who was just rising from table, and thronged with suitors. The impatient poet craved an audience from the king for his lay, assuring him that it was very short. The wrath of Canute was kindled, and he answered the Skald with a stern look: 'Are you not ashamed to do what none but yourself has dared--to write a _short_ poem upon me? Unless, by the hour of dinner to-morrow, you produce a _drapa_, above thirty strophes long, on the same subject, your life shall pay the penalty.' The inventive genius of the poet did not desert him. He produced the required poem, and was liberally rewarded by the king with fifty marks of silver.[7] The improvisatores of modern times forcibly remind us of the northern Skalds, who, without the genial skies and classic land of Italy to excite their imagination, produced their lays with equal facility, and expressed their ideas, which correspond with the wildness and rigidity of the North, as the Italian bards assimilate their effusions with the mildness of their climate, and the delightful