Viking Tales: Norse Legends, Myths, and Adventures from the Age of the Vikings

Few men wrote or read in the olden days. Skalds, singers, learned songs from hearing them sung. At last people began to write more easily. Then they said:

"These stories are very precious. We must write them down to save them from being forgotten."

After that many men in Iceland spent their winters in writing books. They wrote on sheepskin; vellum, we call it. Many of these old vellum books have been saved for hundreds of years, and are now in museums. Some leaves are lost, some are torn, a...