Note 638 — Chapter II

As in Carlyle's Early Kings of Norway, the caput mortuum of his historical method. Much more instructive works on Scandinavian history are available to the English reader. The two volumes on Scandinavia by Crichton and Wheaton (1837) are not yet superseded, though savouring strongly of the conservatism of their period. Dunham, who rapidly produced, for Gardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia series, histories of Spain and Portugal (5 vols.), Europe during the Middle Ages (4 vols.), and the Germanic Empire (3 vols.), compiled also one of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (3 vols. 1839-40), of inferior quality. But Geijer's History of Sweden, one of the standard modern national histories of Europe, is translated into English as far as the period of Gustavus Vasa (3 vols. of orig. in one of trans. 1845); and the competent History of Denmark by C.-F. Allen is available in a French translation (Copenhagen, 2 tom. 1878). Otté's Scandinavian History, 1874, is an unpretending and unliterary but well-informed work, which may be used to check Crichton and Wheaton. The more recent work of Mr. R. Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia: a Political History of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1513 to 1900 (Camb. Univ. Press, 1905), is useful for the period covered, but has little sociological value. For the history of ancient Scandinavian literature, the introduction to Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale (1883), and Prof. Powell's article on Icelandic Literature in the 10th ed. of the Encyclopædia Britannica, are preferable to Schweitzer's Geschichte der skandinavischen Literatur (1886, 2 Bde.), which, however, is useful for the modern period.