SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
brave and hospitable; on the debit side were quarrelsomeness,
litigiousness and obstinacy.
There are comments on food and local costume and
on houses so constructed that "many a farmer mows a
pretty load of hay from the top of his roof" .
The reviewers were disappointed that the Bishop had
said nothing of the language of Norway.
English readers must have been surprised and envious
to read that "Every person is at liberty to pursue the
game", especially in the mountains, which is "no unfair
presumption of the thinness of inhabitants" - and that
in Norway a nobleman lost the privileges of his rank if
he failed to reside on his land.
The book included a note on the use of 'skies', introducing
the word over IOO years before the NED dates
it - the people "have skies, or long and thin pieces of
board, so smooth, that the peasants wade through snow
with them as swiftly as ships under full sail ... In war ...
a party of these skie-men are equal to light troops."
In I786, The Gentleman's Magazine 1 2 gave a full
account of a 'curious Foreign Article' - the Diplomatarium
Arna-Magnceanurn exhibens Monumenta Diplomatica
quae collegit, et Universitati Havniensi Testimento
reliquit, Arnas Magnceus; Historiam atque Jurem Daniae,
Norwegice, et Vicinarum Regionum, illustrantia . . . It was
edited by 'Grimus Johannes Thorkelin' of the University
of Copenhagen and the first two volumes had recently
been published. The Magazine announces "the first
appearance of this grand collection of charters and other
writs" with much pleasure, since "it is hitherto unexampled;
for Rhymer's Fcedera only exhibits historic
writings, whereas this contains private deeds of all kinds" .
The Magazine, pointing out that by its nature the work
admits of no extracts, stresses its "vast utility to Northern
history . on such monuments the truth of later history
chiefly rests".
12 Gentleman's Magazine LVI Pt. 2 (1786), 773.