Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Blaðsíða 87

85
compiled about 1220) include motives also foimd in Romance
literature.1 This has nothing to do with any supposed dege-
neration of taste in Iceland: it merely illustrates that Ice-
landic writers had at all times access to the same common
stock of European story material as writers in other coun-
tries. The extent of the influence of foreign literature on
early Icelandic prose ought not to be underestimated.
It is true that literary taste in Iceland did change in the
thirteenth century. But this change is not reflected in an
increased use of foreign material so much as in a change in
the way it was used. Earlier writers, like the author of RauS-
úlfs þáttr, assimilated their sources and adapted them to en-
rich their narratives without making the borrowed material
seem out of place. Later writers were often blinded by the
glitter of Romance, and tended merely to reproduce the
worst excesses of the style of the Romances without critical
adaptation and selection of the material. Stories such as
RauSúlfs þáttr are proof of the Icelandic power of assimilat-
ing foreign influence without sacrificing native individuali-
ty, and of the non-exclusive nature of early Icelandic litera-
ture, so ready to welcome foreign ideas without necessarily
accepting them uncritically.
The same can be said of the learned and scientific litera-
ture of Iceland in the middle ages. The works on chronology
and astronomy compiled in Iceland in the twelfth century,
although they are heavily indebted to their foreign models,
show more originality and treat their sources and authori-
ties more critically than the later ones of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries.2 It is the same with grammatical
works: although the author of the twelfth century First
Grammatical Treatise knew the standard foreign grammars,
his originality and accuracy of observation in his approach
1 See Einar ól. Sveinsson, Dating the Icelandic Sagas (London
1958), pp. 112 ff.; Sigurður Nordal, Litteraturhistorie (see p. 41, note
1 above), p. 208.
2 See the articles of Nat. Beckman cited above (p. 81, note 1 above).