But soon after thrusting out from the land "we heard a harsh grating sound against our bows, and found we were on the edge of what seemed to be a boundless sheet of ice on its way from the Baltic to the North Sea, which appeared willing to rest for the night off the harbour of Elsinore." The next day, the ice having shifted a little, Dasent landed safely on Swedish soil, and again taking a sledge, and carrying his provisions with him, he at last reached Stockholm, by dint of travelling night and day in the bitterest of weather, on the twenty-fifth day after going on board ship in the Thames.
At Stockholm he remained about four years, paying however occasional visits to England, and visiting Frankfort-on-the-Main, and other places in Germany, with the Cartwright family.
It was during his stay in Stockholm that he developed that genuine and lasting love of Scandinavian literature and the mythology of the North, with which his name has always been so conspicuously associated. Encouraged by the great Jacob Grimm to master the languages of the North, he soon devoted himself to the study of the Sagas. Few human records, indeed, exist which portray society in its primitive form so graphically, abundantly, and truthfully as the Sagas of Iceland.
"It is with the everyday life of the Icelanders that we feel ourselves thoroughly at home. In the hall of the gallant Gunnar at Lithend, or with the peaceful and lawskilled Njal at Bergthorsknoll, we meet men who think and act as men of noble minds and gentle hearts have ever acted, and will never cease to act, so long as human nature remains the same. Gisli, the generous outlaw,
