. . .Accordingly, in 1591, Vedel issued from the private printing-press in his house called Liljeborg at Ribe in Jutland, a selection of 100 mediaeval ballads, under the title of Et Hundred udvalgte danske Viser.  This volume is one of the landmarks of Scandinavian, and indeed of European, literary history.  Vedel made another collection, this time of ancient love-ballads, which he called Tragica; it was not published until 1657, long after his death.  But the volume of 1591 is the fountain-head of all that has since been written about the Heroic Ballads of the North, and it is impossible to overrate the services of Vedel in preserving what was even then ready to disappear.  It seems, moreover, that he was careful of the text, and later scholarship has come more and more to place confidence in his transcripts.

p. 8This was, unfortunately, not the case with the next pioneer in the same field, although he deserves great credit also.  Peter Petersen Syv (1631. . . Read More