Reference List BARING. The Russian People. George H. Doran Company. BRUCKNER. Literary History of Russia. Charles Scribner's Sons. BARING. Landmarks in Russian Literature. The Macmillan Company. OLGIN. Guide to Russian Literature. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Translations: Wiener's "Anthology of Russian Literature" (2 vols.). G. P. Putnam's Sons. Jarintzov's "Russian Poets and Poems." Longmans, Green & Co. Deutsch and Yarmolinsky's "Modern Russian Poets: An Anthology." Harcourt, Brace and Company. Bechhofer's "A Russian Anthology in English." Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., London. A number of Russian novels in Everyman's Library. E. P. Dutton & Company. A few Russian books in the Modern Library. Boni & Liveright. Tolstoy's works. Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Dostoevsky's works. The Macmillan Company. Turgenev's works. Charles Scribner's Sons. A few volumes of Lermontov, Gogol, Gorky, and Andreev. Alfred A. Knopf. Goncharov's "Oblomov." The Macmillan Company. Gogol's "Dead Souls." Frederick A. Stokes Company. Chekhov's works. The Macmillan Company. Gorky's autobiographical volumes. The Century Co. Suggested Topics The characteristics of the Russian people. A study of Pushkin and other Russian poets. Gogol's "Dead Souls"-its vivid pictures of Russian life. Character sketch of Raskolnikov, in "Crime and Punishment." The Russian revolutionary movement as handled in Russian novels. Tolstoy, the man and his ideas. A study of Anna Karenina and her tragic fortunes. A few of Tolstoy's tales. Russian short stories-their general characteristics. The genius of Russian literature. CHAPTER XI SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE The blood of the Vikings has been an important-perhaps the most vital-element in the making of the English race. America owes much to the dependable Scandinavian folk who have come in such large numbers to cast in their lot with us. Ethnologists tell us that the people of the Scandinavian countries represent today the purest strain of that ancient race which settled in Europe so many centuries ago, and which has affected so profoundly the thought and civilization of the whole world. Let us remember also that Northmen produced great literature as much as a thousand years ago, and that their successors have made in our own day significant contributions to European letters. On all accounts, therefore, the people of these northern regions fittingly find a place in our chronicle. Land and people. The population of the Scandinavian countries numbers only a little more than ten million people. Almost half of the territory and more than half of the population belong to Sweden. Norway and Denmark have about two and a half million people each, while the population of Iceland numbers eighty-five thousand. The racial Teutonic stock common to these countries has made its home there continuously from prehistoric times. The Scandinavians are related in race and language, as we have seen, to other Germanic peoples. Generally speaking, all the Northland spoke the same language until the tenth century of the Christian Era; then there came to be a marked divergence between the speech of Norway and Iceland on the one hand and of Sweden and Denmark on the other. From the fourteenth century forward, Sweden developed a speech somewhat different from that of Denmark, with an infusion of German, French, and classical words. The people of Iceland speak and write essentially the same language as did their ancestors of the Viking age. Norwegian was influenced by Swedish and later by Danish. By the close of the fourteenth century, Danish had become the language of Norway. Dialectical changes have since produced in Norway a modified speech-Dano-Norwegian, or Danish with a considerable Norwegian element. The adventurous Northmen, largely from Norway, displayed their greatest activity in the eighth and ninth centuries. They settled in the British Isles, on the coast of France, in the Lowlands, on the Rhine, and in Finland and Russia. Their journeys took them as far south as Italy. Runic inscriptions of the Northmen have been discovered in Greece, and some twenty-five thousand Arabian coins of the Viking age have been found in Sweden, a striking witness to the trade and piracy of the Vikings. The consolidation of Norway under Harold Fairhair drove the flower of the Norwegian chieftains to Iceland, where they settled during the period from 870 to 930 and took over the small Celtic element from Ireland which had preceded them. In Denmark the separate kingdoms were united under one government in the ninth century, and Christianity was introduced. Norway became Christian at the end of the tenth century, Iceland in 1000, and Sweden a century later. Iceland joined Norway in 1262, and its remarkable separate history came to a close. Shortly thereafter Norway, Denmark, and Iceland were united. By the Union of Calmar, in 1397, all Scandinavia came under one government. Sweden, however, in 1523 dissolved the union. It will be recalled that in the seventeenth century Sweden became for a period one of the chief European powers and produced a great leader in the person of Gustavus Adolphus. Norway separated from Denmark in 1814, and until 1905 was united to Sweden. Today Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have separate governments; Iceland and Denmark have the same king but are otherwise not united governmentally. |