ed pages and present a circumstantial account of the early
mythological and factual history of the two nations. Even a merely
literal translation of them might well consume years of labor. But
Grundtvig's plan went much farther than mere literal translation. Wishing
to appeal to the common people, he purposed to popularize the books and
to transcribe them in a purer and more idiomatic Danish than the accepted
literary language of the day, a Danish to be based on the dialects of the
common people, the folk-songs, popular proverbs, and the old hymns. It
was a bold undertaking, comparable to the work of Luther in modelling the
language of the German Bible after the speech of the man in the street
and the mother at the cradle, or to the great effort of Norway in our
days to supplant the Danish-Norwegian tongue with a language from the
various dialects of her people. Nor can it be said that Grundtvig was
immediately successful in his attempt. His version of the sagas sounds
somewhat stilted and artificial, and it never became popular among the
common people for whom it was especially intended. Eventually, however,
he did develop his new style into a plain, forceful mode of expression
that has greatly enriched the Danish language of today.

For seven years Grundtvig buried himself in "the giant's mount," emerging
only occasionally for the pursuit of various studies in connection with
his work or to voice his views on certain issues that particularly
interested him. He discovered a number of errors in the Icelandic version
of Beowulf and made a new Danish translation of that important work; he
engaged in a bitter literary battle with Paul Mueller, a leader among the
younger academicians, in defence of the celebrated lyric poet, Jens
Baggesen, who had aroused the wrath of the students by criticising their
revered dramatist, Oehlenschlaeger; and he fought a furious contest with
the greatly admired song and comedy writer, John L. Heiberg, in defence
of his good friend, Bernhard Severin Ingemann, whose excellent but overly
sentimental lyrics had invited the barbed wit of the humorist. But
although Grundtvig's contributions to these disputes were both able and
pointed, their main effect was to widen the breach between him and the
already antagonistic intellectuals.

In 1817 Grundtvig published the second part of _World Chronicles_, and a
few issues of a short-lived periodical entitled "Dannevirke" which among
other excellent contri