When authors of small nations, such as Denmark and Holland, have been known to complain about the limited circle they can hope to reach, how true, how pathetically true, is this of Iceland, with its scant eighty thousand inhabitants of poor fishermen and farmers thinly spread over the lordly spaces of their far-away, rugged and barren island!  What audience can an author expect there?  Nor is it to be thought that his very difficult mother-tongue will permit a comprehension of his work among the reading public of the other Scandinavian lands.

It stands to reason—­whatever enthusiasts on the subject have said to the contrary—­that, by its very nature, the drama can attain independent and legitimate growth only in centers of human habitation, where the stage—­very necessarily—­epitomizes the tendencies of the times, and, if occupied by a real literature in every sense, is the self-expression of a great community.  As late as 1886 a sober-minded author on Scandinavian literature was able to say, with some justice, ’Iceland lacks all conditions for a dramatic literature.’  And the situation has not changed essentially since.  Whatever has been done in that line in recent times is to all intents and purposes due to stimulation from abroad and, in so far, artificial.  So far, none of the more ambitious native efforts have been on the program of the stage of Reykjavik to be performed by the very estimable amateur players of that town.

The above is by no means said in a spirit of reproach.  On the contrary, all honor to the patriotic men who, by writing dramas in their mother-tongue, are willing to forego the emoluments and recognition to be gained from audiences in more favored lands:  for the sake of enriching their native literature; for the sake of showing both the world and their own people that neither in this art are they inferior to other nations; for the sake of demonstrating to their satisfaction that a contribution of Iceland to world-literature is no more an impossibility now than in the older times, when it enriched us with lore and history, and gave the world what Greece and Rome did not, the realistic novel.

Three authors divide the honors in this field:  Matthias Jochumsson, a gifted lyric poet, now in his old age; the promising young playwright, Johann Sigurjonsson; and Indridi Einarsson, now in his prime, whose most original contribution to Icelandic literature is herewith presented.  The poet having excellent command of English, I am fortunate to be able (with his permission) to quote ipsissima verba on his life and development.

’I was born in the North of Iceland, on April 30, 1851, and was a farmer’s boy of good old family.  My chief work at home was haymaking in summer, and in winter being a shepherd.  Every spring I was up all the long bright nights, watching the flock that they should not damage the cultivated soil by eating the young grass.  I think that solitude (from the eighth to fourteenth year of my life) has