Note 586 — Chapter II

Maurer had long been a student of Icelandic lore, and his Isländische Volkssagen der Gegenwart gesammelt und verdeutscht (Leipzig, 1860) is greatly illustrative of the early north. Conybeare (Place of Iceland in the History of European Institutions, preface) says: “To any one writing on Iceland the elaborate works of the learned Maurer afford at once a help and difficulty: a help in so far as they shed the fullest light upon the subjects; a difficulty in that their painstaking completeness has brought together well-nigh everything that can be said.”