ABSTRACT
Morris’s first encounter with Iceland was literary, and a consequence of the enormous expansion of antiquarian studies which began towards the end of the eighteenth century. At that time, an awakened interest in England’s ancient Germanic past was bringing it out of the shadow of classical Greek and Latin literature, under which it had lain in obscurity for many centuries. To some extent, these developments were part of a wider movement in European culture, as a result of which, through the advancement of science, most old fields of study were being carefully re-examined, and many new ones developed. It was in all a remarkable period of intellectual enquiry. Nordic and Germanic studies appealed – in Germany and Scandinavia too – to a kind of nationalistic sentiment, which sought not merely to investigate old matters out of curiosity, but also to assert their enduring value as cultural monuments, speaking, as was often thought, with quintessential purity from the very heart and origin of the modern nation. 2 Unfortunately, very little purely Germanic literature had survived from the Anglo-Saxon era, and even less of an overtly pagan nature. It was left to scholars to make what inferences they could about the pagan past from such sources as the unique Old English epic Beowulf, some short poems and fragments of longer ones, and one or two pagan charms.
