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to hold its own in the political union which, on account of
dynastic complications, united Norway with Denmark from the
conclusion of the 14th century, after the visitations of the plague.
The Norwegian intellectual life sank into a heavy torpor.
The result of the union with Denmark and the Hanseatic
mercantile power was that the upper classes gradually acquired
a Danish and north German stamp of culture. When the Lutheran
reformation, by dictation from Denmark, had been accomplished,
and the church become a government institution, the more
remunerative ecclesiastical appointments were generally filled with
men who had received their theological training at the new Danish
university. The language of the church, and the official language
on the whole became Danish; and Danish was the Bible that
Lutheranism gave to the people. Only as the language of the
law did the national idiom for a time hold out against the
intruding sister-language. The political unity was not able to
touch the ancient form of law, wrhich not even Roman law had
been allowed to set its stamp upon. The wording adopted at the
codification of the transmitted laws at the close of the 13th
century, must certainly have sounded rather antiquated; but at
any rate it obliged the judges to keep up their acquaintance with
the language of the vanished golden age. At last, however, it
became necessary to translate the Old Norwegian law-book into
Danish, and a Danish revision of the code was also printed in
1604. At the same time, the lower classes obtained the
appointment, by the authorities, of regular writers (sorenskrivere) to assist
the jury-courts; within a generation, even the jurisdiction was
placed in the hands of these legal writers, who even when they
were not of Danish birth, wrote nothing but Danish. The
appointment of authorised attorneys in all judicial proceedings completed
the victory of Danish as the legal language.
In the mean time, the study of the Old Norwegian
law-writings had saved the knowledge of the national literary language
down to a time when humane studies made their way into the
country with the Lutheran doctors from Copenhagen, Rostock and
Wittenberg universities. Some codices of the royal sagas were
found still in preservation, and soon became the subject of study
and translation. Their account of the national power of past
ages inspired the first attempt at a literature in the new language.
Efforts to produce topographical descriptions and local chronicles
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