SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

240 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
They naturally went on to welcome':' the Antiquitates
Celto-Scandicae, sive Series Rerum gestarum inter
N ationes Britannicarum insularum et gentes septentrionales,
by the Rev. James Johnstone, Member of the Royal
Societies of Edinburgh and Copenhagen. This consisted
of passages culled from Snorri, Landndmabok, Egils
saga, Njala, Orkneyinga saga, Olafs saga Tryggvasonar,
Speculum Regale, etc. But though mainly a compilation
from works already printed, the reviewers considered it
"a valuable accession to English history, by throwing its
connection with that of the Northern nations into one
point of view" .
The Orkneyinga saga had been noticed by The Critical
Review 14 in I78I - it had been published in Copenhagen
"on account of its being the most ancient document of
the history of Orkney; and because the British antiquaries
seemed not to be in possession of it" .
In the same year, The Gentleman's Magazine 1.> had
reviewed Johnstone's Anecdotes of Olaue the Black, King
of Man . . . (with) XVIII Eulogies on Haco King of
Norway by Snorro Sturlson [sic] Poet to that Monarch.
The tone of this review is strikingly different from that of
the same periodical in I786 already quoted. Why, in
effect, should We bother about battles less interesting to
us than those of the cranes and pigmies, recounted in
language unredeemed by Homeric or Addisonian
elegance?
The reviews of Norse literary works or English imitations
of them cannot have given the reader much
inducement to read further and enjoy - with a few
notable exceptions. Mallet's Remains of the Mythology
and Poetry of the Celies, particularly of Scandinavia ­
to give it the title of its first English translation -betrays
in that title a regrettable but common ethnological con-
1.3 ibid. I061.
14 Critical Review 5I (178I). 467-8.
15 Gentleman's Magazine LI (I78I). 522.