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development than the contemporaneous Norwegian-Icelandic ones.
Yet, even at the beginning of the 13th century, the unity was so
prevalent, that the denomination «Danish tongue» is frequently
used as a common designation of all the Scandinavian languages,
contemporaneously with the individual appellation «Norwegian
tongue», applied to the language of the Norwegians. This
last-mentioned language was spoken, not only in Norway and Iceland,
the Faroe Islands and Greenland, but also, for some time, in parts
of Ireland and northern Scotland, in the Isle of Man, the Hebrides,
the Shetland Islands and the Orkneys (in the last two groups
of islands, even far into modern times), and moreover in certain
parts of what is now Sweden (Båhuslän, a district of Dalecarlia,
Jemtland and Herjeådalen).
2. The old Norwegian literature reached its highest
development at the hand of chieftains and ecclesiastics in the 13th
century; and this high standing, so far as Iceland was concerned,
lasted for some time into the following century, in Norway the
decadence occurred earlier. After the civil wars had swept away the
old chieftains’ families, there was formed in the course of the 13th
century a new nobility which had no connection with the common
people. This nobility upheld neither the independence of the
language nor of the country; and when, at the beginning of the 14th
century, the old royal family died out, the countrv at first had
a half Swedish royal house, after which the regal power went
entirely out of the country. The consequence of this lack of
national interest on the part of the persons in power was that in
the 14th century all independent literary life had become extinct
in Norway. In the middle of the century, after the devastations
of the great plague, even the copying of the old sagas ceased, and
with it all knowledge of the old literature. What was
henceforth written, besides copies of the laws, was exclusively public
documents, decrees and announcements from magistrates and priests,
and mercantile contracts.
These deeds and letters, although from a literary point of view
without interest, are, so far as language is concerned, of the greatest
importance — in the first place, on account of the information which
they give us of the splitting up of our language into dialects.
While the literature of the 13th century gives only faint
indications of differences in the pronunciation and vocabulary used in
different parts of the country, these differences appear much more plainly
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