But the dominant tone in Northern poetry is war; it is in descriptions of battle, or in accounts of the death of heroes, that the ancient English or ancient Scandinavian poets excelled In Finnish poetry, on the other hand, there is little or nothing about war.

These peaceful people never had any warlike history; their life was agricultural for the most part, with little or no violence except such as the excitement of hunting and fishing could produce.

Therefore they had plenty of time to think about nature, to love nature and to describe it as no other people of the same period described it.

Striking comparisons have been made between the Anglo-Saxon Runes, or charm songs, and Finnish songs of the same kind, which fully illustrate this difference.

Like the Finns, the early English had magical songs to the gods of nature--songs for the healing of wounds and the banishing of sickness.