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22 INTEODrrCTION.
so antagonistic, the understanding carried the victory.
Then followed the other extreme in which
the Northern Mythos was all to be explained by the
understanding, and the genuine myths, which
existed only in the spirit and the fantasy of the Old-
Northmen, became limited to possible, actual his-
tory. The rationalism of the eighteenth century in
this as in everything else when pushed to the extreme,
became unintelligible from pure understanding,-and
foolish from excess of wisdom, and it was in the
heathen theology as in the Christian, that fiction became
falsehood, miracles, unmeaning stupidities,
truth, a dream, and idle dreams became truth,
under the treatment of mere abstract reason.
Early in the century the study of Northern An-
tiquities was elevated by the labors of two highly
distinguished Icelanders, Thormod Torfseus and
Arnas Magnseus, each of whom had a great in-
fluence in a special direction— ^the former as critic
in the field of Archseology, the latter as restorer and
publisher of Icelandic literature. Arnas Magnseus*
also wrote several keen essays, by which he gained
the reputation of a learned, circumspect and sober
critic, yet it was less by his writings than by what
he did for the discovery, preservation and publica-
,tion of the literary monuments of Iceland, that he
rendered his name immortal.
In 1702 he was sent by Frederick IV. to Iceland,
in_ order" to make, with Paul YideMn, a thorough
* Ami MagnilBSOii, born 1663; of a distinguished family, studied
in Copenhagen; and died there as Professor of History pnd Antiqui-
ties, in 1780.