Note Footnote 3: — PART II

According to both Jónsson3 and Mogk4, the Rímur and other forms of rhyming verse in early Norse poetry originated in the Mediaeval Latin Church Hymns introduced into Iceland in the thirteenth century. The similarity between the rhyming metres of the Latin and many (though not all) of the forms of verse used in the Rímur is very striking. Whether the influence of Latin hymns in Iceland was directly responsible for the change, however, as Jónsson and Mogk believe, or whether the Latin hymns only influenced Norse verse indirectly through the medium of French poetry, is problematical. Perhaps these compositions owe their origin to the fashion of turning all kinds of material, likely and unlikely, into rhyming verse—a fashion which originated in France, and from the latter part of the twelfth century onwards gradually made its way over most of the West and North of Europe. The rhyming chronicles of the fourteenth century in England may be mentioned as one instance of this fashion, and the rhyming paraphrases of the splendid prose of Iceland are an outcome of the same movement.