See him picking up the threads of
history, and working them into a tissue picturesque in the extreme,
in his own vernacular too, when we English, who had not the wit
to throw off the old Roman influence,- dumbfounded too with that
French jargon which the Norman had brought into the land, the lan-
guage of the royal court, the courts of law, and the baronial castle,-
were maundering away in Latin.
history, and working them into a tissue picturesque in the extreme,
in his own vernacular too, when we English, who had not the wit
to throw off the old Roman influence,- dumbfounded too with that
French jargon which the Norman had brought into the land, the lan-
guage of the royal court, the courts of law, and the baronial castle,-
were maundering away in Latin.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v14 - Ibn to Juv
He stands still for a while, then
laughs aloud with joy and leaps into the air. ]
Peer — My king's daughter! Now I have found her and won her!
Hei! Now the palace shall rise, deeply founded!
He seizes his axe and mores away; at the same moment an Old-Looking
Woman, in a tattered green goun, comes out from the wood; an
Ugly Brat, with an ale fragon in his hand, limps after, holding on
to her skirt.
The IVoman -
Good evening, Peer Lightfoot!
Peer -
What is it? Who's there?
The Woman -
Old friends of yours, Peer Gynt! My home is near by.
We are neighbors.
Peer-
Indeed ? That is more than I know.
## p. 7861 (#53) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7861
The Woman -
Even as your hut was builded, mine built itself too.
Peer (going) -
I'm in haste --
The Woman
Yes, that you are always, my lad;
But I'll trudge behind you and catch you at last.
Peer - You're mistaken, good woman!
The Woman -
I was so before;
I was when you promised such mighty fine things.
Peer - I promised — ? What devil's own nonsense is this?
The Woman -
You've forgotten the night when you drank with my sire ?
You've forgot — ?
Peer –
I've forgot what I never have known.
What's this that you prate of? When last did we meet ?
The Woman When last we met was when first we met.
[To the Brat --
Give your father a drink: he is thirsty, I'm sure.
Peer - Father ? You're drunk, woman! Do you call him—?
The Woman
I should think you might well know the pig by its skin!
Why, where are your eyes? Can't you see that he's lame in
His shank, just as you too are lame in your soul ?
Peer Would you have me believe — ?
The Woman
Would you wriggle away?
Peer - This long-legged urchin ?
The Woman -
He's shot up apace.
Peer — Dare you, you troll-snout, father on me - ?
The Woman --
Come now, Peer Gynt, you're as rude as an ox!
[Veeping
Is it my fault if no longer I'm fair,
As I was when you lured me on hillside and lea?
Last fall, in my labor, the Fiend held my back,
And so 'twas no wonder I came out a fright.
But if you would see me as fair as before,
You have only to turn yonder girl out of doors,
Drive her clean out of your sight and your mind;-
Do but this, dear my love, and I'll soon lose my snout!
Peer — Begone from me, troll-witch!
The Woman --
Ay, see if I do!
Peer- I'll split your skull open!
The Woman -
Just try if you dare!
Ho-ho, Peer Gynt, I've no fear of blows!
## p. 7862 (#54) ############################################
7862
HENRIK IBSEN
-
Be sure I'll return every day of the year.
I'll set the door ajar and peep in at you both.
When you're sitting with your girl on the fireside bench,-
When you're tender, Peer Gynt, — when you'd pet and caress
her,
I'll seat myself by you, and ask for my share.
She there and I, we will take you by turns.
Farewell, dear my lad, you can marry to-morrow!
Peer – You nightmare of hell!
The Woman —
By-the-by, I forgot!
You must rear your own youngster, you light-footed scamp!
Little imp, will you go to your father ?
The Brat [spits at him) -
Faugh!
I'll chop you with my hatchet; only wait, only wait!
The Woman [kisses the Brat]-
What a head he has got on his shoulders, the dear!
You'll be father's living image when once you're a man.
Peer [stamping]
Oh, would you were as far -!
The Woman
As we now are near ?
Peer [clinching his hands] -
And all this — !
The Woman
For nothing but thoughts and desires !
It is hard on you, Peer!
Peer-
For nothing but thoughts and desires!
It is hard on you, Peer!
The Woman ---
For nothing but thoughts and desires!
It is hard on you, Peer!
Peer-
It is worst for another! -
Solveig, my fairest, my purest gold!
The Woman -
Oh ay, 'tis the guiltless must smart, said the Devil:
His mother boxed his ears when his father was drunk!
-
(She trudges off into the thicket with the Brat, who throw's the flagon at
Peer Gynt. )
Peer (after a long silence] -
The Boyg said, “Go roundabout! ” so one must here. -
There fell my fine palace, with crash and clatter!
There's a wall around her whom I stood so near;
Of a sudden all's ugly — my joy has grown old. —
Roundabout, lad! There's no way to be found
Right through all this from where you stand to her.
1
## p. 7863 (#55) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7863
Right through? Hm, surely there should be one.
There's a text on repentance, unless I mistake.
But what? What is it? I haven't the book.
I've forgotten it mostly, and here there is none
That can guide me aright in the pathless wood. —
Repentance ? And maybe 'twould take whole years,
Ere I fought my way through. 'Twere a meagre life, that.
To shatter what's radiant and lovely and pure,
And clinch it together in fragments and shards ?
You can do it with a fiddle, but not with a beli.
Where you'd have the sward green, you must mind not to
trample.
'Twas naught but a lie though, that witch-snout business!
Now all that foulness is well out of sight. -
Ay, out of sight maybe, not out of mind.
Thoughts will sneak stealthily in at my heel.
Ingrid! And the three, they that danced on the heights!
Will they too want to join us? With vixenish spite
Will they claim to be folded, like her, to my breast,
To be tenderly lifted on outstretched arms?
Roundabout, lad: though my arms were as long
As the root of the fir, or the pine-tree's stem,-
I think even then I should hold her too near,
To set her down pure and untarnished again. -
I must roundabout here, then, as best I may,
And see that it bring me nor gain nor loss.
One must put such things from one, and try to forget. -
(Goes a few steps towards the hut, and stops again. ]
Go in after this ? So befouled and disgraced ?
Go in with that troll rabble after me still ?
Speak, yet be silent; confess, yet conceal — ?
.
[Throws away his axe. ]
It's a holy-day evening. For me to keep tryst,
Such as now I am, would be sacrilege.
Solveig [in the doorway) –
Are you coming ?
Peer (half aloud-
Roundabout!
Solveig -
What ?
Peer -
You must wait.
It is dark, and I've got something heavy to fetch.
Solveig –
Wait; I will help you; the burden we'll share.
## p. 7864 (#56) ############################################
7864
HENRIK IBSEN
Peer- No, stay where you are! I must bear it alone.
Solveig -
But don't go too far, dear!
Peer
Be patient, my girl;
Be my way long or short
you must wait.
Solveig nodding to him as he goes -
Yes, I'll wait!
[Peer Gynt goes down the wood-path. Solveig remains standing in the open
half-door. ]
## p. 7865 (#57) ############################################
7865
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
THE SAGAS
(NINTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES)
BY WILLIAM SHARP
LTHOUGH Icelandic is now probably the oldest spoken language
in Europe, it is equally probably the least known of any
extant tongue of primary importance. One frequently sees
a lament about this neglect of so fine and important a language and
so noble a literature; but it is to be feared that the complainers are
either ignorant of the fact, or overlook it, that modern Icelandic
enshrines no literature of any real significance and importance. In
this sense the language is as much a remnant of a bygone period as
is ancient Greek. For many years past, however, scholars of several
countries have been devoting themselves to the scrupulous editing,
translation, and exposition of the immense treasures of Norwegian
literature enshrined in the ancient Icelandic language.
The whole history of this strange flowering of the human mind,
in so remote a land, severed by tempestuous seas from the rest of
Europe, and for the greater part of the year swept by polar winds, –
a land strangely arid and bleak, and yet tortured by volcanic fires
and boiling waters,- is one of singular interest. Whether Iceland
was really the Ultima Thule of the ancients, need not concern us.
for a time certainly it was the Ultima Thule of the Northern peoples
to whom we are so closely allied. The Scandinavians have ever been
a freedom-loving people, and when once their first pioneers discov-
ered, then settled in, Iceland, it was not long till scores of immigrants
came from over sea, and made the great island of the North their
new home. Nor was Iceland the mere haven of wild and desperate
spirits, as so often alleged; for some of the best blood of the Scan-
dinavian race gladly sought that asylum to be free from the tyranny
which oppressed them within the kingly realms at home. Slowly a
small but powerful republic arose, and with its growth there devel-
oped a remarkable literature, of which much has been preserved to
us, and of which the Sagas in particular have passed into the epic
literature of the world.
Climate and environment have long been recognized as powerful
formative influences in the evolution of literature. Nowhere is this
-
## p. 7866 (#58) ############################################
7866
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
more clearly exemplified than in the history of Iceland. In the rude
ages when the sword was the sole arbiter of the fate of races, it
might well have been believed that a small section of the turbulent
Norsemen, who had for greater independence and freedom exiled
themselves to a remote and inclement land, would not have devel-
oped a literature remarkable for beauty and even epic grandeur.
But when we think of how social life was constituted in those days,
and what were the climatic conditions and what the immediate
environment of those who dwelt in Iceland, we understand more
readily how the Sagas came into being. Here was an indomitable
and highly intelligent people, proud of their racial traditions and im-
aginatively haunted by a marvelously complex folk-lore.
For some
months in the year they could pursue their usual vocations and avo-
cations; but with the first coming of polar snows in October, and the
rapid dwindling of the solar light, there came an inevitable restric-
tion of most outdoor employment. The seas were too wild for the
fishers; the mountain regions were blocked by snow to the most
adventurous hunters; and even the plains in the milder southern
regions of the island were so swept by blizzards of hail and long
buried in heavy snow-drifts that neither the shepherd nor his flocks
could subsist. The sustained darkness of the winter season, added to
these other conditions, almost inevitably, in the instance of a people
already long emerged from barbarism, involved two things: a greater
attention to domestic comfort, and the growth of what it was once
the fashion to call the “polite arts. ” When men could no longer
wield the sword or steer the war-galley, when in a dark land of frost
and snow all save the most urgent journeying was relinquished, it
was natural that the sound of the harp, the voice of the singer,
and the heroic recitals of the saga-man or skald should occupy the
enforced leisure of the self-exiled race. It has been urged that the
same theory should be applied in the instance of the Eskimo, who
for many hundreds of years have dwelt in similar conditions, yet
have never produced even any oral literature worthy of the name.
But the Eskimo are as distinct from the Icelanders of the past or
present as the Lapps of Spitzbergen from the Russians of the south;
nor did they come to a new land with a heritage of splendid racial
traditions and inspired by national hopes and ideals.
It was inevitable, therefore, that the skald or saga-man should
gradually become a factor of great importance in the evolution of
Icelandic life. He was the conserver of the past, the exponent of the
stirring events of the present, the prophet of great things to be.
The Norsemen of that day lived at a period as remarkable as the
early Elizabethan epoch was for the men living in it. The skald
could sing of a mythic past, of a less remote traditionary era, and of
## p. 7867 (#59) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7867
the great deeds of the sea-kings of Norway; he could chant with
all the stir and force of actuality of what the vikings were doing
around the coasts of the world, and latterly, of how small bands of
the Summer Sailors were essaying the West Atlantic itself, against
the rumors of a great new land over sea: and they could raise the
hopes and dreams of their hearers by enlarging on the theme of a
new empire for the Children of the North.
As, after all, no stories ever appeal so strongly as those which
narrate the heroic deeds, the adventures, the vicissitudes of those
near to us by blood and race, it was natural that the Sagas should
mainly concern themselves with the epical setting of the simple facts
in the life of some heroic Norseman. Primarily, the Sagas are met-
rical chronicles of the sea-kings or Scandinavian chiefs. In his Pro-
legomena to the Sturlunga Saga,' Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson writes as
follows of the famous Nial's Saga,' which he avers has always and
justly been ranked foremost. The Nial's Saga,' I may add, is com-
monly dated about the year 1000; that is, its relegation is between
970 and 1014. In many respects, says Dr. Vigfusson, it stands alone,
belonging to no school. It is peculiar alike in matter, style, and
spirit.
a
“In area the widest, in interest the most universal; giving the Althing,
the focus of Icelandic political life, for its centre, but noticing men and places
throughout the whole Scandinavian empire. The Saga of Law par excellence,
it is based on that most important element of early society; and the lesson it
teaches is of a Divine retribution, and that evil brings its own reward in spite
of all that human wisdom and courage, even innocence, can do to oppose it.
Hence, while inspiring the deepest interest and the warmest pleasure, it has
almost the character of a sacred book, and is read with reverence. The very
spirit indeed of Early Law seems to breathe through its pages, showing the
modern English reader the high ideal which his kinsmen strove long ago to
attain. ”
Naturally, as Dr. Vigfusson adds, to judge of this work fairly it
ought to be read in the original; for much of the subtle beauty of
its style, the admirable play of its dialogue, and at times the very
technical peculiarity of its matter, must of necessity be lost in any
translation, however faithful.
«The subject, like a Greek trilogy, falls into three divisions, each containing
its own plot and dramatis persona; all three loosely connected in one saga
by the weaker and later parts of the work. (1) The first plot (founded, as we
believe, on a now lost (Gunnar's Saga') tells of the friendship between Gun-
nar, the simple-minded brave chief, the ideal hero of his age, and the wise
lawyer Nial, a man of good counsel and peace who never bore weapons. The
cold envious heart of Hallgerda, which is here contrasted with the proud
honesty of Bergthora, has caused the death of her two former husbands; and
## p. 7868 (#60) ############################################
7868
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
at length, though she is unable to break the tie that binds Gunnar to his
trusted counselor, Hrut's prophecy and Nial's forebodings are finally fulfilled,
and after a brave defense the Lithend chief is slain in his own house by his
half regretful foes. His son and Nial avenge his death. Then comes an epi-
sode abroad which is merely a link to connect the second and most important
of the three dramas with the foregoing one, and to introduce fresh characters
on the scene. (2) Nial is now the central figure; his character is heightened,
he is almost a sage and prophet; the writer's highest skill is lavished on this
part of the Saga. The death of Thrain, slain by the sons of Nial, at length
brings down on himself and his house the fate which he is powerless to avert.
The adoption of Hoskuld, his foeman's son, by which he strives to heal the
feud, is but a step to this end. Eventually, to further his foster-son's interests,
he obtains for him one of the new (priesthoods) which were set up in con-
sequence of the great constitutional reform he had carried. Upon this, the
hatred of the old aristocracy whose position he had thus assailed broke out in
the guile of Valgard and his cunning son Mord, who sowed hatred between
the Whiteness Priest and his foster-brethren. A fancied slight at last rouses
these latter to murder the innocent Hoskuld. Nial, cut to the heart, still
strives for peace; but a few bitter words undo all his work, and the end he
has foretold is near. The scenes at the Althing, which relieve the story by
introducing portraits of every great chief of that day in Iceland, boldly and
humorously depicted, are very noteworthy. Flosi, the widow's kinsman, driven
unwillingly to action, now takes up the holy duty of blood-revenge; and by
his means Nial and his wife and sons perish in the smoke of their burn-
ing homestead. This awful catastrophe closes the second part. (3) Of the
concluding drama Flosi is the hero, and the plot tells of the Burner's fate.
The great suit against them at the Althing fails by a legal technicality;
and the ensuing battle is stayed by Hall and Snorri, by whose award they
are exiled. But Kari, Nial's son-in-law, who alone escaped from the fire,
pursues them with unrelenting vengeance; one by one they fall by various
fates: and when in the real battle of Clontarf, 1014, those of them who have
hitherto evaded their destiny perish, fighting against the new Faith, by the
swords of the Irish, his revenge is at length complete, and Flosi and he are
reconciled. )
The reader of the Nial's Saga' and other literature of the kind
will readily see how natural was the growth of this Icelandic litera-
ture; but it is only the close student who will observe how the short
saga of the individual becomes the more complex saga of a family or
a tribal section of the race. This transformation took place when
some of the smaller sagas were combined by one narrator of excep-
tional power and welded into a harmonious whole. An analogous
process is afforded in the instance of the Kalevala, and possibly in
that of Homer. Of these composite sagas the finest are Nial's Saga'
already alluded to, (Gudmund's Saga,' and the Eyrbyggia Saga.
Doubtless sagas such as these, and indeed nearly all oral lore, go
through an actual process of attenuation on the one hand and of
embellishment on the other, with each succeeding generation.
## p. 7869 (#61) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7869
Let us consider for a moment how the (Heimskringla' – the chief
glory and pride old Norse literature came to be
written by
Snorri Sturluson. In him, says a recent authority, we have a Mac-
aulay of the thirteenth century,-a man to whom all who wish to
be good story-tellers, to interest the mind and stir the heart, may
well apprentice themselves: a man in a remote valley of Iceland, that
sunless land of snow and ice, that howling wilderness of lava and
cinder-heaps, over which Night broods so many weary hours of the
year. Surely Newman had forgotten Snorri when he laid it down as
an axiom that (Science, literature, and art refuse to germinate in
frost. You should see the place, the site of his abode with the bath
of hewn stone, in that valley of bogs and reek, and you would be
lost in amazement if you
did.
See him picking up the threads of
history, and working them into a tissue picturesque in the extreme,
in his own vernacular too, when we English, who had not the wit
to throw off the old Roman influence,- dumbfounded too with that
French jargon which the Norman had brought into the land, the lan-
guage of the royal court, the courts of law, and the baronial castle,-
were maundering away in Latin. ”
It was in the midst of this gloomy and remote Iceland that the
great epic of the Scandinavian race was put together. But here I am
not dealing specifically with the Eddas as distinct from the Sagas:
and it should be remembered, too, that the ancients applied this
name only to the work of Snorri; though it is uncertain whether
Snorri himself, the composer of the New Edda,' called it so.
manuscript written fifty years after his death, there occurs this inter-
polation: “This book is called the Edda; it is compiled by Snorri
Sturluson. ”
The saga proper, says Dr. Vigfusson, is a kind of prose epic.
In a
never
“It has its fixed laws, its set phrases, its regular epithets and terms of
expression; and though there is, as in all high literary form, an endless
diversity of interest and style, yet there are also bounds which are
overstepped, confining the saga as closely as the employment and restrictions
of verse could do. It will be best to take as the type the smaller Icelandic
saga, from which indeed all the later forms of composition have sprung. This
in its original form is the story of an Icelandic gentleman, living some time in
the tenth or eleventh centuries. It will tell first of his kin, going back to the
(settler) from whom he sprung, then of his youth and early promise before
he left his father's house, to set forth on that foreign career which was the
fitting education of the young Northern chief. After these Wanderjahre
passed in trading voyages and pirate cruises, or in the service of one of the
Scandinavian kings as poet or henchman, the hero returns to Iceland a proved
man, and the main part of the story thus preluded begins. It recounts in
fuller detail and in order of time his life in Iceland, his loves and feuds, his
chieftainship and lawsuits, his friendships and his enmities, his exploits and
## p. 7870 (#62) ############################################
7870
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
renown, and finally his death; usually concluding with the revenge taken for
him by his kinsmen, which fitly winds up the whole. This tale is told in an
earnest straightforward way, as by a man talking in short simple sentences,
changing when the interest grows high into the historic present, with here and
there an (aside) of explanation. There is no analysis of character: the actors
(present themselves in their action and speech. The dialogue, which is crisp
and laconic, full of pithy saws, and abounding in quiet grim humor or homely
pathos expressed in a few vivid words, is never needlessly used, and is there-
fore all the more significant and forcible. If the hero is a poet, we find most
aptly interwoven many of his extemporary verses. The whole composition,
grouped round a single man and a single place, is so well balanced and so
naturally unfolded piece by piece, that the great art shown therein often at
first escapes the reader. A considerable choice of words, a richness of alliter-
ation, and a delicate use of syntax, are always met with in the best sagas.
The story-teller is absorbed in his subject: no description of scenery, no reflec-
tions of his own, ever break the flow of the tale. He is a heathen with the
heathen, a wrathful man with the avenger, and a sorrowful man with the
mourner, as his style reflects the varied feelings of his dramatis persona.
The plot is nearly always a tragedy, and the humor dark and gloomy (the
hearty buffoonery of Bandamanna is the marked exception); but this is
relieved by the brighter and more idyllic home and farm scenes, and by the
pathos and naiveté which are ever present.
«The constant epic allusions to the Cold days, the continual reference to
Law, the powerful use and vivid reality of the supernatural element, the moral
standpoint of the story-teller himself appreciating so fully the pride of birth,
the high sense of honor, the quick sharp wit, ready hand, and dauntless heart
of his heroes, and last and most important the constant presence of women in
the story, which give it that variety and interest we admire so much in
Homer,- are all noteworthy characteristics of the saga. ”
»
-
The State which grew up from such beginnings as have already
been indicated, resulted, as also hinted, in a form of life and social
habit peculiar to the island. Here again I may fall back upon that
foremost exemplar of old Icelandic life and literature, Dr. Vigfusson,
in his Prolegomena to the 'Sturlunga Saga,' for an admirable précis
of the conditions out of which saga-telling as an art arose. The
geographical characteristics of the new land, he says,
“precluded centralization or town life; while the spirit of independence, the
circumstances of the freeholders, were far too strong to permit the growth
of a feudalism of the English or French type. The power of the chiefs
was great, but it depended on custom and law which rigidly defined its influ-
ence; and though in later times the increased wealth and family alliances of
the great men, and the influence of the ecclesiastical power, brought many
changes, these had as yet affected but little the state of things with which we
are here concerned. Each cluster of dales opening on a separate bay —
nay, each dale itself - possessed an individuality and life of its own, within
the circle of which a man's days were mainly passed; and the more so as
## p. 7871 (#63) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7871
nearly every firth had been originally the (claim) of a single settler, who
had divided it out by gift or sale among his kinsmen or dependents, late
comers being obliged to buy of the earlier settlers where and how they could.
Thus a series of almost family) groups was formed, each living its own life
amid its own interests, cares, and politics.
« But for all this isolation, there were for every Icelandic yeoman two great
outlets: the one the Althing, the other the sea. The former strengthening the
bonds which made the island one State, by bringing together men from every
quarter yearly at regular intervals, and exercising much the same sort of
influence on Iceland as the feasts, fairs, and games of Tara, Ohud, and the
Isthmus had on the scattered tribes of Ireland, Arabia, and Hellas; keeping
up the ties which made them one in civilization if not in polity. The second,
the sea, besides being the field for adventure and trade in which every young
chief proved himself, was also the road that led to the motherlands of Scandi-
navia, and the only path by which the arts, sciences, and fashions might
reach these (dwellers at the gates of the world. The importance of the for-
eign trade alone is amply illustrated by its effect on the literature and even
vocabulary of Iceland. In the old days the inhabitants of each homestead
passed their lives in a varying round of labor. In spring the fishing, in sum-
mer the hay harvest and in a few farmed localities the grain harvest also, in
autumn killing and salting meat for the winter, furnished constant occupation;
while in winter, after the wood-cutting and stump-grubbing had supplied a
store of fuel, the indoor occupations of weaving and spinning, boat-building,
and making or mending the farm implements, filled up the time.
The only
breaks in the year of labor in the heathen times, when time was still counted
by pentads and neither Sunday nor saint's day gave a partial holiday, were
the three or four great feasts of the year, which were kept in greater state
and with more exact observance in consequence. The High Summer festival
was passed by the chiefs and their families at the Althing, held yearly at
midsummer, the time of the old heathen festival of the sun; the Althing lasted
about a fortnight, and all the chiefs and a certain number of the freemen of
each district were expected to attend. This meeting was at once a court, a
council, and a merry-making, and probably in the Cold days) a religious feast;
it decided all matters concerning the common-weal, and such cases as con-
cerned several districts and could not therefore be settled at the local moots.
We have above the kind of influence it exercised on the life of the people,
and the opportunities for social intercourse it afforded; we hear of games of
hurling and football, of match-making, of feasting, and above all of the recital
of stories by those who could tell best the legends and traditions of their
several districts,- a feature which is highly noteworthy with respect to the
origin and development of the Saga in Iceland. We hear also of spring and
autumn sacrifices, which no doubt coincided with and were held at the district
Things. But the greatest holiday of all was Yuletide, which sometimes lasted
a fortnight, when friends, neighbors, and kinsmen would assemble at some
farm in the dale and pass the time eating, drinking, and merry-making. The
homely life of those days, while it kept every man in his own place, yet toler-
ated no formal separation of ranks; and the meanest thrall shared with the
highest chief in the hospitality and relaxation of the season. In early days
>
## p. 7872 (#64) ############################################
7872
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
religious solemnities were celebrated at this time, and the fitting sacrifices
always concluded with a feast. Weddings and Arval feasts too were oppor-
tunities for great gatherings of guests down to much later times, and often
lasted many days.
“It was amid such scenes that the Saga came into being. There was no
music, no dancing, no drama in the old times in Iceland; so that hearing and
telling stories, and repeating verses, formed (besides athletic sports) the staple
amusement of the assembled guests. The local heroes and the local traditions
furnished the chief topics: for the Icelanders were a practical rather than a
religious people, and though they had legends of superstitious character,
they preferred truth to fiction, and so the plain unvarnished tale of some
great local chief's career abroad and adventures at home was woven into the
permanent shape of the saga. ”
The great period of Icelandic literature was before the twelfth
century. Thereafter much of the simplicity and epic beauty of the
older poets waned; and commentators began to play havoc either
with amended originals, with interpolations of personal bias or cur-
rent vogue, or even with pseudo-antique imitations. In the literary
age the chief poets were members of the famous Sturlung family:
Snorri and his two nephews, Sturla and Olaf the White Poet, in par-
ticular. It would be useless to give a mere enumeration of names,
which would leave in the ear of the reader simply a series of bar-
baric sounds, that would convey no definite meaning to his mind;
but mention at least may be made of the few great ones of the
earlier time.
Such men were Egill, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and
the friend of Athelstan; Kormak (whose name has a strangely Cel-
tic sound in our ears, being phonetically identical with Corinac), the
hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Hakon's poet, called Skaldspoiler
because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer
Eiriks-mal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Ethelred's court, and fell at the
hands of a brother bard Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet,
who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's hench-
man, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod (and here again we
have a Celtic reminder, for the familiar Gaelic forename Norman is,
in the vernacular, Tormaid or Tormod, though its pronunciation is
different), the poet who dies singing at Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar
the Black, Arnor the earl's poet; and of those whose poetry was
almost confined to Iceland, there were Gretti, Biorn, and the two model
Icelandic masters Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman,- the two
latter however both of the twelfth century.
With the end of the Literary Age, towards the close of the thir-
teenth century, the greatness of Iceland waned. Thereafter, for two
hundred and fifty years (from 1284 to 1530), the epoch of mediæval-
ism prevailed; an epoch of great vicissitudes from within and without,
## p. 7873 (#65) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7873
including the eruptions of 1362 and 1389, and devastating epidemics.
During this long period, when the Continental influence — chiefly
Norse, however — prevailed, mediæval poetry and romances were all
the vogue.
With the Reformation in 1530 the period of decay for
the Northern Island realm set in; and for three hundred and twenty
years its historians had to chronicle a record which would have sad-
dened the hearts of the old vikings who made Iceland a power in
the Northern world. In the seventeenth century there was a brief
renaissance,- of great results, however, for the ultimate preservation
of much of the ancient Icelandic literature. With the eighteenth cen-
tury came the lowest ebb in Icelandic destinies. In the seventh
year of that century, small-pox destroyed one third of the population;
in 1759 a terrible famine occurred, in which 10,000 perished; in
1762 the sheep plague devastated the island; in 1765 an alarming
volcanic eruption happened, followed eighteen years later by the
great eruption of 1783. But though from 1850, or from the earlier
free constitution in Denmark, the fourth or modern period of Ice-
land opened more auspiciously, the country has not yet produced a
new literature. With increasing wealth and population, with home
rule, and with increased advantages of all kinds, Iceland, while cer-
tainly sending out into the world many eminent scholars and men
of action, has not yet succeeded in recovering any of her ancient lit-
erary glory.
It is then to the long early period of the Commonwealth that we
must look for that Icelandic literature which is the glory of the North-
ern races. This period of the Commonwealth extends over about four
hundred years; that is, from the first settlement by colonists from
the Western Isles and Norway in 870, to the submission to the Nor-
wegian kings and the subsequent national changes towards the close
of the thirteenth century. This period again is divisible into three
sections: the Heroic Age, the Saga-building Period, and the Literary
Age. Up to close upon the middle of the tenth century, it is the
poetry of the West Islands, rather than that of the Norse immigrants,
which has to be accepted as the basis of Icelandic literature. For a
hundred years thereafter — that is, from 930 to 1030 — the Icelandic
poets were mostly singers abroad; vikings whom the old restless
spirit of adventure carried far west, far south, or back up to that tur-
bulent East whence their forbears had come. The early period of
saga-telling is a brief one, and is coincident with the entry of Christ-
ianity into the island, and while the events of the later sagas were
in actual occurrence. Broadly, this is from 1030 to 1100.
For one
hundred and eighty years thereafter there comes the period known as
the Literary Age, in which flourished Ari and his school, Thorodd, the
historic saga-writers, Snorri and his school, and the famous Sturla.
XIV-493
## p. 7874 (#66) ############################################
7874
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
It was in the first half of the twelfth century that vernacular writing
began. If the civil wars which prevailed from near the beginning of
the thirteenth century until the fall of the great houses after the
second civil wars, which culminated years later in the submission to
the Norwegian kings,- if all these interfered in some respects with
the development of literature, it is significant to note that here in
remote Iceland, as in Rome in the past and the mediæval Italy and
Elizabethan England, a period of stress and strife seems in many
ways to have enhanced the literary sense, and to have proved advan-
tageous for the cultivation of letters. “In the opinion of those most
competent to judge,” writes one of the few American critics who
have interested themselves in this Old World saga literature, this
early Icelandic literature has never been surpassed, if equaled, in all
that gives value to that portion of history which consists in spirited
delineations of character, in faithful and lively pictures of events,
among nations in a rude state of society. ”
Although the sagas were first written about the middle of the
twelfth century, the greater sagas were not composed into their
present shape till about 1220. To that year or thereabouts is dated
the 'Egla Saga'; the Laxdaela' about 1230, the Niala' about 1240,
and the Eyrbyggia' about 1260. Snorri who died in 1241, and Sturla
who died in 1284, are the two great names which are the ornament
of that heroic period of Icelandic literature which makes a large part
of the thirteenth century so memorable to its students. The oldest
existing manuscript, however, does not go so far back.
posed to be the Flatöe Manuscript, so called from its discovery in
the monastery which bore that name. This Flatöe Manuscript is of
incalculable value apart from its literary interest; for it contains the
sagas devoted to the history of the pre-Columbian discoveries of the
Northmen. This manuscript was known to be in existence as early
as the year 1395; that is, about one hundred years before the re-
discovery of the American continent by Cabot and Columbus. One
of the sagas included within its scope, that known as the Saga of
Thorfinn, was actually written in Greenland, where during the years
1006 and 1007 the colonists as the saga-man says, who had resorted
thither from Iceland, "sought amusement in reciting history. ”
Jardar the Dane is supposed to have been the first person who
made a voyage northward to Iceland, though its early name of Snow-
land was given to it by the pirate Nododd about the year 864.
There is little question however but that Iceland was known to the
Irish Gaels, and possibly also to the Britons, before this. We have
the authority of Ari Frode, in the 'Landnama Book,' in testimony of
the fact that when the first Norsemen entered Iceland they found
Irish monks already residing there.
This is sup-
## p. 7875 (#67) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7875
It is seldom that the characteristics of a race are more clearly
shown in the physiognomy of its literature than in the instance of
the Icelanders and the Icelandic sagas. Their mental and physical
intrepidity are proverbial; and this quality is exemplified again and
again throughout the early and late sagas and Eddas. Directness,
simplicity, and intrepidity, whether of mind or body,- these qualities
distinguish the Northmen of old, and the many characteristics of the
national expression of their life. For the rest, we find in the sagas,
along with the development of individual and national epic themes, a
great many superstitions; some of them folk-lore survivals, and others
integral portions of the sombrely imaginative Scandinavian. While
the combative spirit displayed throughout this early literature has its
counterpart in the Celtic sagas, it is not combined as there with the
same fantasy, color, and vivacity we find in the best early Gaelic
chronicles. But throughout we hear in them the clash of swords, the
surge of the sea, the blowing of the north wind, the full simple
heroic words of the heroic man, the full simple words of passion and
devotion of heroic women, and above all and through all the influ-
ence of mighty forces of destiny and fate. In the later sagas this
element of the workings of fate degenerates into so-called religious
teaching, but even here the old pagan spirit is observable; as in
the almost passionate emphasis laid upon the doctrine of retribution
for sin, and in the sombre pictures of the life which awaits the
sinner in the next world. As an anonymous writer has said:–«We
recognize in the old saga literature the same bold indomitable spirit
that led the Northmen victoriously up the Areopagus at Athens;
gave the swing to sword and battle-axe in the streets of Constanti-
nople; enabled them to seize Novgorod and found the line of pre-
Slavonic czars who ruled until 1598; and that caused the cheek of
Charlemagne to turn pale, while priest and monk on trembling knees
put up the suffrage, (From the fear of the Normans, good Lord
deliver us. ) )
Here is an instance illustrative of the physical courage of the old
Northern mind. It is from the death-song of Ragnar Lodbrok, a
poem belonging to the close of the eighth century, and with the
peculiar alliterative effects characteristic of the metrical literature
of that period :-
WE HEWED with our swords
quick goes all to my heirs.
Grim stings the adder;
snake house in my heart;
but soon Vithris's lance
shall stand fast in Ella.
Rage will swell my sons
## p. 7876 (#68) ############################################
7876
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
to hear their father's doom;
ne'er will those gallant youths
rest till avenged.
We hewed with our swords;
full fifty times my lance,
the messenger of death,
raged through the battle.
It was my boyhood's play
to stain my lance with blood.
Methinks than I, no king
can boast of brighter deeds.
We must to Asar call,
and without grief I go.
We hewed with our swords;
home invite we the Diser,
the maidens of Odin.
With them and the Asar
high seated shall we
there the mead quaff;
fled are my life's hours,
yet I die smiling.
So likewise Harold, the valiant rover, tells us of his own courage,
lamenting that after all a Russian maid, Elizabeth daughter of Jani-
slaus, should refuse him. We give only a part of the poem :-
My ship hath sailed round the isle of Sicily;
Then were we all splendid and gay.
My mirror-laden ship then swiftly along the waves,
Eager for the fight,
I thought my sails would never slacken:
And yet a Russian maid disdains me.
With the men of Drontheim I fought in my youth.
They had troops much greater in numbers,
Dreadful was the conflict;
Young as I was, I left their young king dead in
the fight:
And yet a Russian maid disdains me.
Well do I know the eight exercises:
I fight with courage,
I keep a firm seat on horseback,
And skilled am I in swimming.
## p. 7877 (#69) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7877
Along the ice glide I on skates,
I excel in darting the lance,
I am dexterous at the par:
And yet a Russian maid disdains me.
As an example of prose narrative, here is a brief excerpt descript-
ive of the death of the Jarl Ronald, A. D. 1046, as told in the famous
Orkney Saga':-
EARL RONALD lay at Kirkwall and collected thither all sorts
of supplies for the winter, having with him a large following
whom he entertained regardless of cost. A little before Jule, the
earl started with a numerous retinue for the Lesser Papa to fetch
malt. In the evening, as they sat a long time baking their
limbs at the fire, the man who kept it up said the fuel was get-
ting short. On which the jarl made a slip of the tongue. He
said, “We shall be old enough when this fire is burnt out. ” But
he meant to have said, “We shall be warm enough. ” And when
he perceived it he said, “I made a slip of the tongue [misspoke];
I never did so before, that I can mind. This reminds me of
what King Olaf, my foster-father, said at Sticklestad when I
observed his slip of the tongue.
He said that if ever I made a
slip of the tongue, I must make up my mind to have a short
time left to live. Maybe my kinsman Thorfinn is alive. ” At
this moment they heard people all round the house. Earl Thor-
finn was come, and they set fire to the buildings and heaped
up a great pile before the doors. Thorfinn permitted all but the
earl's men to go out. And when most of the people had come
out, a man came into the doorway, dressed in linen clothes only,
and begged Thorfinn to give the deacon a helping hand. At the
same moment he placed his hand on the balk of wood (across
the door), sprang right over it and beyond the ring of men, and
fled away in the darkness of the night. Earl Thorfinn bade
them follow after him, and said, “There fared the earl: it was
one of his feats of strength and nobody's else. ” The men set off
in search, separating into knots. Thorkell Foster searched along
the shore, when they heard a dog bark among the rocks. Earl
Ronald had his lapdog with him. The earl was captured, and
Thorkell bade his men kill him, offering them money. But all
the same they refused. So Thorkell himself slew him, for he
knew that one or the other of them would have to do it. Earl
Thorfinn now came up, and blamed not the deed. They spent
(
## p. 7878 (#70) ############################################
7878
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
the night on the island slaughtering the whole of Ronald's fol-
lowers. Next morning they laded the merchant ship with malt,
then went aboard, placing in the prow and stern the shields
which Ronald and his men had, and no more men upon her
than had come with the earl, and then rowed to Kirkwall. As
Ronald's men supposed that it must be the earl and his followers
coming back, they went to meet them unarmed. Earl Thorfinn
seized and killed thirty, most of them being King Magnus's men
and friends of his. One retainer of the King's he let go, bidding
him fare to Norway and tell King Magnus the news.
It is however in the rough metres of Scandinavian poetry that
one most easily apprehends the genius of this Northern people. To
take an extract (not much earlier in date than the foregoing, namely
in 1014) from the famous Nial's Saga. The extract in question is
known as the “Spaedom of the Norns,' and is supposed to have been
based on the vision of some man of Caithness gifted with second-
sight to foretell the result of the great battle of Clontarf. The
expression in it “web of spears, however, points to a much earlier
legend. Here is the literal translation of the Spaedom as given by
Sir G. Dasent:-
S"
EE! warp is stretched
For warrior's fall;
Lo, weft in loom,
'Tis wet with blood;
Now, fight foreboding,
'Neath friends' swift fingers
Our gray woof waxeth
With war's alarms,
Our warp blood-red,
Our weft corse-blue.
This woof is y-woven
With entrails of men;
This warp is hard weighted
With heads of the slain;
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom iron-bound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for our shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our war-winning woof.
## p. 7879 (#71) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7879
Now war-winner walketh
To weave in her turn,
Now Sword-swinger steppeth,
Now Swift-stroke, now Storm;
When they speed the shuttle
How spear-heads shall flash!
Shields crash, and helm-gnawer
On harness bite hard !
Wind we, wind swiftly
Our war-winning woof,
Woof erst for king youthful,
Foredoomed as his own.
Forth now we will ride,
Then, through the ranks rushing,
Be busy where friends
Blows blithe give and take.
Wind we, wind swiftly
Our war-winning woof;
After that let us steadfastly
Stand by the brave king;
Then men shall mark mournful
Their shields red with gore,
How Sword-stroke and Spear-thrust
Stood stout by the prince.
Wind we, wind swiftly
Our war-winning woof,
When sword-bearing rovers
To banners rush on.
Mind, maidens, we spare not
One life in the fray;
We corse-choosing sisters
Have charge of the slain.
Now new-coming nations
That island shall rule,
Who on outlying headlands
Abode ere the fight;
I say that king mighty
To death now is done,
Now low before spear-point
That Earl bows his head.
## p. 7880 (#72) ############################################
7880
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
Soon over all Ersemen
Sharp sorrow shall fall,
That woe to those warriors
Shall wane nevermore.
Our woof now is woven,
Now battle-field waste,
O'er land and o'er water
War tidings shall leap.
Now surely 'tis gruesome
To gaze all around,
When blood-red through heaven
Drives cloud-rack o'erhead:
Air soon shall be deep-hued
With dying men's blood,
When this our spaedom
Comes speedy to pass.
So cheerily chant we
Charms for the young king;
Come, maidens, lift loudly
His war-winning lay:
Let him who now listens
Learn well with his ears,
And gladden brave swordsmen
With bursts of war's song.
Now mount we our horses,
Now bare we our brands,
Now haste we hard, maidens,
Hence, far, far away.
Among the old historic songs which preceded the great saga epoch
there is one attributed to Thiodolf (others say to Hornklofi), which
Dr. Metcalfe affirms in those days would be equivalent in popularity
and significance to the once famous Lillibullero' or the later Ye
Mariners of England. '
H
AVE you heard of the fight
At Hafrsfjord
'Tween a high-born king
And Kiotni the Rich ?
Came ships from the est,
All keen for the fray,
With silver inlaid,
And agape were their beaks.
## p. 7881 (#73) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7881
They were manned with Udallers,
And piled with white shields,
And West Country spears,
And Gallic swords.
Bellowed the Bare-sarks
In Hilda's train;
The Wolf-skins howled
'Mid the din of iron.
They put to the proof
One who taught them to fly,
The dauntless King Harold,
The Lord of Utstein.
He launched from the shore
In view of the stir;
What a thumping of shields
Ere Haklang fell!
He tired right soon
Of facing King Harfagr;
To an island fled he,
The thick-throated ruler.
Under the row-seat
The wounded they huddled,
With backs stuck up
And faces bent down.
In the storm of stones,
As they fled, they cast
On their backs their shields,
Bright roof of Valhalla.
Wild with fear, they fled home
Around Jadar's shores,
On their mead-bowls intent,
From Hafrsfjord.
The Hornklofi mentioned above, whose name signifies “horn-
cleaver,” was really a poet named Thorbjorn. In the Fagrskinna
there are some lines of great interest by him, describing the court of
the King, the famous Harold Fairhair, a contemporary of Alfred the
Great.
The skald relates an imaginary conversation between a Valkyr
and some ravens, who, being the constant companions of Harold in
his expeditions, were able to gratify the lady's curiosity about him.
In literal prose it runs:
## p. 7882 (#74) ############################################
7832
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
L
ISTEN, ye ring-bearers [i. e. , nobles),
While I recount the accomplishments
Of King Harold,
The immensely rich;
I must tell of the colloquy
Which I heard between
A white fair-haired maid
And a raven.
Wise was the Valkyr;
She knew the voice of birds.
The white-throated one,
The sharp-sighted one,
Spoke to the air-cleaver,
Who sat on a point of the rocks:
«Why here, ye ravens ?
Whence are ye come,
With gory beak,
At the approach of day?
Flesh sticks to your claws,
The reek of carrion comes from your mouth:
Surely you set off by night,
For ye knew that corpses lay on the plain. ”
He of the plumed skull shook his feathers;
The eagle's sworn brother
Dried his beak,
And bethought him of an answer :-
« We've followed Harold,
Halfdan's son,
The young noble,
Ever since the egg we left.
"I thought you'd know the King,
He who abides at Hvin,
The lord of the Northmen,
Who owns the deep galleys,
The ruddy-rimmed shields,
The tarred oars,
The weather-stained awnings.
«He'll drink his Yule feast at sea,
If he alone shall decide,
This courageous chief,
## p. 7883 (#75) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7883
And play Frey's game.
The youth loathes the fireside
And sitting at home;
The warm ladies' bower,
And cushions stuffed with down. ”
The Valkyr then asks whether Harold is munificent to his men :-
“Many a present
His warriors get,
Who in Harold's court
Throw with the dice;
They're with money endowed,
And handsome swords,
With German armor,
And Eastern slaves.
« Then are they glad,
The skillful men-at-arms,
Agile to jump
And swing the oars,
Till they break the loops
And snap the thole-pins;
Splash goes the water
At the word of the King.
laughs aloud with joy and leaps into the air. ]
Peer — My king's daughter! Now I have found her and won her!
Hei! Now the palace shall rise, deeply founded!
He seizes his axe and mores away; at the same moment an Old-Looking
Woman, in a tattered green goun, comes out from the wood; an
Ugly Brat, with an ale fragon in his hand, limps after, holding on
to her skirt.
The IVoman -
Good evening, Peer Lightfoot!
Peer -
What is it? Who's there?
The Woman -
Old friends of yours, Peer Gynt! My home is near by.
We are neighbors.
Peer-
Indeed ? That is more than I know.
## p. 7861 (#53) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7861
The Woman -
Even as your hut was builded, mine built itself too.
Peer (going) -
I'm in haste --
The Woman
Yes, that you are always, my lad;
But I'll trudge behind you and catch you at last.
Peer - You're mistaken, good woman!
The Woman -
I was so before;
I was when you promised such mighty fine things.
Peer - I promised — ? What devil's own nonsense is this?
The Woman -
You've forgotten the night when you drank with my sire ?
You've forgot — ?
Peer –
I've forgot what I never have known.
What's this that you prate of? When last did we meet ?
The Woman When last we met was when first we met.
[To the Brat --
Give your father a drink: he is thirsty, I'm sure.
Peer - Father ? You're drunk, woman! Do you call him—?
The Woman
I should think you might well know the pig by its skin!
Why, where are your eyes? Can't you see that he's lame in
His shank, just as you too are lame in your soul ?
Peer Would you have me believe — ?
The Woman
Would you wriggle away?
Peer - This long-legged urchin ?
The Woman -
He's shot up apace.
Peer — Dare you, you troll-snout, father on me - ?
The Woman --
Come now, Peer Gynt, you're as rude as an ox!
[Veeping
Is it my fault if no longer I'm fair,
As I was when you lured me on hillside and lea?
Last fall, in my labor, the Fiend held my back,
And so 'twas no wonder I came out a fright.
But if you would see me as fair as before,
You have only to turn yonder girl out of doors,
Drive her clean out of your sight and your mind;-
Do but this, dear my love, and I'll soon lose my snout!
Peer — Begone from me, troll-witch!
The Woman --
Ay, see if I do!
Peer- I'll split your skull open!
The Woman -
Just try if you dare!
Ho-ho, Peer Gynt, I've no fear of blows!
## p. 7862 (#54) ############################################
7862
HENRIK IBSEN
-
Be sure I'll return every day of the year.
I'll set the door ajar and peep in at you both.
When you're sitting with your girl on the fireside bench,-
When you're tender, Peer Gynt, — when you'd pet and caress
her,
I'll seat myself by you, and ask for my share.
She there and I, we will take you by turns.
Farewell, dear my lad, you can marry to-morrow!
Peer – You nightmare of hell!
The Woman —
By-the-by, I forgot!
You must rear your own youngster, you light-footed scamp!
Little imp, will you go to your father ?
The Brat [spits at him) -
Faugh!
I'll chop you with my hatchet; only wait, only wait!
The Woman [kisses the Brat]-
What a head he has got on his shoulders, the dear!
You'll be father's living image when once you're a man.
Peer [stamping]
Oh, would you were as far -!
The Woman
As we now are near ?
Peer [clinching his hands] -
And all this — !
The Woman
For nothing but thoughts and desires !
It is hard on you, Peer!
Peer-
For nothing but thoughts and desires!
It is hard on you, Peer!
The Woman ---
For nothing but thoughts and desires!
It is hard on you, Peer!
Peer-
It is worst for another! -
Solveig, my fairest, my purest gold!
The Woman -
Oh ay, 'tis the guiltless must smart, said the Devil:
His mother boxed his ears when his father was drunk!
-
(She trudges off into the thicket with the Brat, who throw's the flagon at
Peer Gynt. )
Peer (after a long silence] -
The Boyg said, “Go roundabout! ” so one must here. -
There fell my fine palace, with crash and clatter!
There's a wall around her whom I stood so near;
Of a sudden all's ugly — my joy has grown old. —
Roundabout, lad! There's no way to be found
Right through all this from where you stand to her.
1
## p. 7863 (#55) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7863
Right through? Hm, surely there should be one.
There's a text on repentance, unless I mistake.
But what? What is it? I haven't the book.
I've forgotten it mostly, and here there is none
That can guide me aright in the pathless wood. —
Repentance ? And maybe 'twould take whole years,
Ere I fought my way through. 'Twere a meagre life, that.
To shatter what's radiant and lovely and pure,
And clinch it together in fragments and shards ?
You can do it with a fiddle, but not with a beli.
Where you'd have the sward green, you must mind not to
trample.
'Twas naught but a lie though, that witch-snout business!
Now all that foulness is well out of sight. -
Ay, out of sight maybe, not out of mind.
Thoughts will sneak stealthily in at my heel.
Ingrid! And the three, they that danced on the heights!
Will they too want to join us? With vixenish spite
Will they claim to be folded, like her, to my breast,
To be tenderly lifted on outstretched arms?
Roundabout, lad: though my arms were as long
As the root of the fir, or the pine-tree's stem,-
I think even then I should hold her too near,
To set her down pure and untarnished again. -
I must roundabout here, then, as best I may,
And see that it bring me nor gain nor loss.
One must put such things from one, and try to forget. -
(Goes a few steps towards the hut, and stops again. ]
Go in after this ? So befouled and disgraced ?
Go in with that troll rabble after me still ?
Speak, yet be silent; confess, yet conceal — ?
.
[Throws away his axe. ]
It's a holy-day evening. For me to keep tryst,
Such as now I am, would be sacrilege.
Solveig [in the doorway) –
Are you coming ?
Peer (half aloud-
Roundabout!
Solveig -
What ?
Peer -
You must wait.
It is dark, and I've got something heavy to fetch.
Solveig –
Wait; I will help you; the burden we'll share.
## p. 7864 (#56) ############################################
7864
HENRIK IBSEN
Peer- No, stay where you are! I must bear it alone.
Solveig -
But don't go too far, dear!
Peer
Be patient, my girl;
Be my way long or short
you must wait.
Solveig nodding to him as he goes -
Yes, I'll wait!
[Peer Gynt goes down the wood-path. Solveig remains standing in the open
half-door. ]
## p. 7865 (#57) ############################################
7865
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
THE SAGAS
(NINTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES)
BY WILLIAM SHARP
LTHOUGH Icelandic is now probably the oldest spoken language
in Europe, it is equally probably the least known of any
extant tongue of primary importance. One frequently sees
a lament about this neglect of so fine and important a language and
so noble a literature; but it is to be feared that the complainers are
either ignorant of the fact, or overlook it, that modern Icelandic
enshrines no literature of any real significance and importance. In
this sense the language is as much a remnant of a bygone period as
is ancient Greek. For many years past, however, scholars of several
countries have been devoting themselves to the scrupulous editing,
translation, and exposition of the immense treasures of Norwegian
literature enshrined in the ancient Icelandic language.
The whole history of this strange flowering of the human mind,
in so remote a land, severed by tempestuous seas from the rest of
Europe, and for the greater part of the year swept by polar winds, –
a land strangely arid and bleak, and yet tortured by volcanic fires
and boiling waters,- is one of singular interest. Whether Iceland
was really the Ultima Thule of the ancients, need not concern us.
for a time certainly it was the Ultima Thule of the Northern peoples
to whom we are so closely allied. The Scandinavians have ever been
a freedom-loving people, and when once their first pioneers discov-
ered, then settled in, Iceland, it was not long till scores of immigrants
came from over sea, and made the great island of the North their
new home. Nor was Iceland the mere haven of wild and desperate
spirits, as so often alleged; for some of the best blood of the Scan-
dinavian race gladly sought that asylum to be free from the tyranny
which oppressed them within the kingly realms at home. Slowly a
small but powerful republic arose, and with its growth there devel-
oped a remarkable literature, of which much has been preserved to
us, and of which the Sagas in particular have passed into the epic
literature of the world.
Climate and environment have long been recognized as powerful
formative influences in the evolution of literature. Nowhere is this
-
## p. 7866 (#58) ############################################
7866
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
more clearly exemplified than in the history of Iceland. In the rude
ages when the sword was the sole arbiter of the fate of races, it
might well have been believed that a small section of the turbulent
Norsemen, who had for greater independence and freedom exiled
themselves to a remote and inclement land, would not have devel-
oped a literature remarkable for beauty and even epic grandeur.
But when we think of how social life was constituted in those days,
and what were the climatic conditions and what the immediate
environment of those who dwelt in Iceland, we understand more
readily how the Sagas came into being. Here was an indomitable
and highly intelligent people, proud of their racial traditions and im-
aginatively haunted by a marvelously complex folk-lore.
For some
months in the year they could pursue their usual vocations and avo-
cations; but with the first coming of polar snows in October, and the
rapid dwindling of the solar light, there came an inevitable restric-
tion of most outdoor employment. The seas were too wild for the
fishers; the mountain regions were blocked by snow to the most
adventurous hunters; and even the plains in the milder southern
regions of the island were so swept by blizzards of hail and long
buried in heavy snow-drifts that neither the shepherd nor his flocks
could subsist. The sustained darkness of the winter season, added to
these other conditions, almost inevitably, in the instance of a people
already long emerged from barbarism, involved two things: a greater
attention to domestic comfort, and the growth of what it was once
the fashion to call the “polite arts. ” When men could no longer
wield the sword or steer the war-galley, when in a dark land of frost
and snow all save the most urgent journeying was relinquished, it
was natural that the sound of the harp, the voice of the singer,
and the heroic recitals of the saga-man or skald should occupy the
enforced leisure of the self-exiled race. It has been urged that the
same theory should be applied in the instance of the Eskimo, who
for many hundreds of years have dwelt in similar conditions, yet
have never produced even any oral literature worthy of the name.
But the Eskimo are as distinct from the Icelanders of the past or
present as the Lapps of Spitzbergen from the Russians of the south;
nor did they come to a new land with a heritage of splendid racial
traditions and inspired by national hopes and ideals.
It was inevitable, therefore, that the skald or saga-man should
gradually become a factor of great importance in the evolution of
Icelandic life. He was the conserver of the past, the exponent of the
stirring events of the present, the prophet of great things to be.
The Norsemen of that day lived at a period as remarkable as the
early Elizabethan epoch was for the men living in it. The skald
could sing of a mythic past, of a less remote traditionary era, and of
## p. 7867 (#59) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7867
the great deeds of the sea-kings of Norway; he could chant with
all the stir and force of actuality of what the vikings were doing
around the coasts of the world, and latterly, of how small bands of
the Summer Sailors were essaying the West Atlantic itself, against
the rumors of a great new land over sea: and they could raise the
hopes and dreams of their hearers by enlarging on the theme of a
new empire for the Children of the North.
As, after all, no stories ever appeal so strongly as those which
narrate the heroic deeds, the adventures, the vicissitudes of those
near to us by blood and race, it was natural that the Sagas should
mainly concern themselves with the epical setting of the simple facts
in the life of some heroic Norseman. Primarily, the Sagas are met-
rical chronicles of the sea-kings or Scandinavian chiefs. In his Pro-
legomena to the Sturlunga Saga,' Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson writes as
follows of the famous Nial's Saga,' which he avers has always and
justly been ranked foremost. The Nial's Saga,' I may add, is com-
monly dated about the year 1000; that is, its relegation is between
970 and 1014. In many respects, says Dr. Vigfusson, it stands alone,
belonging to no school. It is peculiar alike in matter, style, and
spirit.
a
“In area the widest, in interest the most universal; giving the Althing,
the focus of Icelandic political life, for its centre, but noticing men and places
throughout the whole Scandinavian empire. The Saga of Law par excellence,
it is based on that most important element of early society; and the lesson it
teaches is of a Divine retribution, and that evil brings its own reward in spite
of all that human wisdom and courage, even innocence, can do to oppose it.
Hence, while inspiring the deepest interest and the warmest pleasure, it has
almost the character of a sacred book, and is read with reverence. The very
spirit indeed of Early Law seems to breathe through its pages, showing the
modern English reader the high ideal which his kinsmen strove long ago to
attain. ”
Naturally, as Dr. Vigfusson adds, to judge of this work fairly it
ought to be read in the original; for much of the subtle beauty of
its style, the admirable play of its dialogue, and at times the very
technical peculiarity of its matter, must of necessity be lost in any
translation, however faithful.
«The subject, like a Greek trilogy, falls into three divisions, each containing
its own plot and dramatis persona; all three loosely connected in one saga
by the weaker and later parts of the work. (1) The first plot (founded, as we
believe, on a now lost (Gunnar's Saga') tells of the friendship between Gun-
nar, the simple-minded brave chief, the ideal hero of his age, and the wise
lawyer Nial, a man of good counsel and peace who never bore weapons. The
cold envious heart of Hallgerda, which is here contrasted with the proud
honesty of Bergthora, has caused the death of her two former husbands; and
## p. 7868 (#60) ############################################
7868
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
at length, though she is unable to break the tie that binds Gunnar to his
trusted counselor, Hrut's prophecy and Nial's forebodings are finally fulfilled,
and after a brave defense the Lithend chief is slain in his own house by his
half regretful foes. His son and Nial avenge his death. Then comes an epi-
sode abroad which is merely a link to connect the second and most important
of the three dramas with the foregoing one, and to introduce fresh characters
on the scene. (2) Nial is now the central figure; his character is heightened,
he is almost a sage and prophet; the writer's highest skill is lavished on this
part of the Saga. The death of Thrain, slain by the sons of Nial, at length
brings down on himself and his house the fate which he is powerless to avert.
The adoption of Hoskuld, his foeman's son, by which he strives to heal the
feud, is but a step to this end. Eventually, to further his foster-son's interests,
he obtains for him one of the new (priesthoods) which were set up in con-
sequence of the great constitutional reform he had carried. Upon this, the
hatred of the old aristocracy whose position he had thus assailed broke out in
the guile of Valgard and his cunning son Mord, who sowed hatred between
the Whiteness Priest and his foster-brethren. A fancied slight at last rouses
these latter to murder the innocent Hoskuld. Nial, cut to the heart, still
strives for peace; but a few bitter words undo all his work, and the end he
has foretold is near. The scenes at the Althing, which relieve the story by
introducing portraits of every great chief of that day in Iceland, boldly and
humorously depicted, are very noteworthy. Flosi, the widow's kinsman, driven
unwillingly to action, now takes up the holy duty of blood-revenge; and by
his means Nial and his wife and sons perish in the smoke of their burn-
ing homestead. This awful catastrophe closes the second part. (3) Of the
concluding drama Flosi is the hero, and the plot tells of the Burner's fate.
The great suit against them at the Althing fails by a legal technicality;
and the ensuing battle is stayed by Hall and Snorri, by whose award they
are exiled. But Kari, Nial's son-in-law, who alone escaped from the fire,
pursues them with unrelenting vengeance; one by one they fall by various
fates: and when in the real battle of Clontarf, 1014, those of them who have
hitherto evaded their destiny perish, fighting against the new Faith, by the
swords of the Irish, his revenge is at length complete, and Flosi and he are
reconciled. )
The reader of the Nial's Saga' and other literature of the kind
will readily see how natural was the growth of this Icelandic litera-
ture; but it is only the close student who will observe how the short
saga of the individual becomes the more complex saga of a family or
a tribal section of the race. This transformation took place when
some of the smaller sagas were combined by one narrator of excep-
tional power and welded into a harmonious whole. An analogous
process is afforded in the instance of the Kalevala, and possibly in
that of Homer. Of these composite sagas the finest are Nial's Saga'
already alluded to, (Gudmund's Saga,' and the Eyrbyggia Saga.
Doubtless sagas such as these, and indeed nearly all oral lore, go
through an actual process of attenuation on the one hand and of
embellishment on the other, with each succeeding generation.
## p. 7869 (#61) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7869
Let us consider for a moment how the (Heimskringla' – the chief
glory and pride old Norse literature came to be
written by
Snorri Sturluson. In him, says a recent authority, we have a Mac-
aulay of the thirteenth century,-a man to whom all who wish to
be good story-tellers, to interest the mind and stir the heart, may
well apprentice themselves: a man in a remote valley of Iceland, that
sunless land of snow and ice, that howling wilderness of lava and
cinder-heaps, over which Night broods so many weary hours of the
year. Surely Newman had forgotten Snorri when he laid it down as
an axiom that (Science, literature, and art refuse to germinate in
frost. You should see the place, the site of his abode with the bath
of hewn stone, in that valley of bogs and reek, and you would be
lost in amazement if you
did.
See him picking up the threads of
history, and working them into a tissue picturesque in the extreme,
in his own vernacular too, when we English, who had not the wit
to throw off the old Roman influence,- dumbfounded too with that
French jargon which the Norman had brought into the land, the lan-
guage of the royal court, the courts of law, and the baronial castle,-
were maundering away in Latin. ”
It was in the midst of this gloomy and remote Iceland that the
great epic of the Scandinavian race was put together. But here I am
not dealing specifically with the Eddas as distinct from the Sagas:
and it should be remembered, too, that the ancients applied this
name only to the work of Snorri; though it is uncertain whether
Snorri himself, the composer of the New Edda,' called it so.
manuscript written fifty years after his death, there occurs this inter-
polation: “This book is called the Edda; it is compiled by Snorri
Sturluson. ”
The saga proper, says Dr. Vigfusson, is a kind of prose epic.
In a
never
“It has its fixed laws, its set phrases, its regular epithets and terms of
expression; and though there is, as in all high literary form, an endless
diversity of interest and style, yet there are also bounds which are
overstepped, confining the saga as closely as the employment and restrictions
of verse could do. It will be best to take as the type the smaller Icelandic
saga, from which indeed all the later forms of composition have sprung. This
in its original form is the story of an Icelandic gentleman, living some time in
the tenth or eleventh centuries. It will tell first of his kin, going back to the
(settler) from whom he sprung, then of his youth and early promise before
he left his father's house, to set forth on that foreign career which was the
fitting education of the young Northern chief. After these Wanderjahre
passed in trading voyages and pirate cruises, or in the service of one of the
Scandinavian kings as poet or henchman, the hero returns to Iceland a proved
man, and the main part of the story thus preluded begins. It recounts in
fuller detail and in order of time his life in Iceland, his loves and feuds, his
chieftainship and lawsuits, his friendships and his enmities, his exploits and
## p. 7870 (#62) ############################################
7870
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
renown, and finally his death; usually concluding with the revenge taken for
him by his kinsmen, which fitly winds up the whole. This tale is told in an
earnest straightforward way, as by a man talking in short simple sentences,
changing when the interest grows high into the historic present, with here and
there an (aside) of explanation. There is no analysis of character: the actors
(present themselves in their action and speech. The dialogue, which is crisp
and laconic, full of pithy saws, and abounding in quiet grim humor or homely
pathos expressed in a few vivid words, is never needlessly used, and is there-
fore all the more significant and forcible. If the hero is a poet, we find most
aptly interwoven many of his extemporary verses. The whole composition,
grouped round a single man and a single place, is so well balanced and so
naturally unfolded piece by piece, that the great art shown therein often at
first escapes the reader. A considerable choice of words, a richness of alliter-
ation, and a delicate use of syntax, are always met with in the best sagas.
The story-teller is absorbed in his subject: no description of scenery, no reflec-
tions of his own, ever break the flow of the tale. He is a heathen with the
heathen, a wrathful man with the avenger, and a sorrowful man with the
mourner, as his style reflects the varied feelings of his dramatis persona.
The plot is nearly always a tragedy, and the humor dark and gloomy (the
hearty buffoonery of Bandamanna is the marked exception); but this is
relieved by the brighter and more idyllic home and farm scenes, and by the
pathos and naiveté which are ever present.
«The constant epic allusions to the Cold days, the continual reference to
Law, the powerful use and vivid reality of the supernatural element, the moral
standpoint of the story-teller himself appreciating so fully the pride of birth,
the high sense of honor, the quick sharp wit, ready hand, and dauntless heart
of his heroes, and last and most important the constant presence of women in
the story, which give it that variety and interest we admire so much in
Homer,- are all noteworthy characteristics of the saga. ”
»
-
The State which grew up from such beginnings as have already
been indicated, resulted, as also hinted, in a form of life and social
habit peculiar to the island. Here again I may fall back upon that
foremost exemplar of old Icelandic life and literature, Dr. Vigfusson,
in his Prolegomena to the 'Sturlunga Saga,' for an admirable précis
of the conditions out of which saga-telling as an art arose. The
geographical characteristics of the new land, he says,
“precluded centralization or town life; while the spirit of independence, the
circumstances of the freeholders, were far too strong to permit the growth
of a feudalism of the English or French type. The power of the chiefs
was great, but it depended on custom and law which rigidly defined its influ-
ence; and though in later times the increased wealth and family alliances of
the great men, and the influence of the ecclesiastical power, brought many
changes, these had as yet affected but little the state of things with which we
are here concerned. Each cluster of dales opening on a separate bay —
nay, each dale itself - possessed an individuality and life of its own, within
the circle of which a man's days were mainly passed; and the more so as
## p. 7871 (#63) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7871
nearly every firth had been originally the (claim) of a single settler, who
had divided it out by gift or sale among his kinsmen or dependents, late
comers being obliged to buy of the earlier settlers where and how they could.
Thus a series of almost family) groups was formed, each living its own life
amid its own interests, cares, and politics.
« But for all this isolation, there were for every Icelandic yeoman two great
outlets: the one the Althing, the other the sea. The former strengthening the
bonds which made the island one State, by bringing together men from every
quarter yearly at regular intervals, and exercising much the same sort of
influence on Iceland as the feasts, fairs, and games of Tara, Ohud, and the
Isthmus had on the scattered tribes of Ireland, Arabia, and Hellas; keeping
up the ties which made them one in civilization if not in polity. The second,
the sea, besides being the field for adventure and trade in which every young
chief proved himself, was also the road that led to the motherlands of Scandi-
navia, and the only path by which the arts, sciences, and fashions might
reach these (dwellers at the gates of the world. The importance of the for-
eign trade alone is amply illustrated by its effect on the literature and even
vocabulary of Iceland. In the old days the inhabitants of each homestead
passed their lives in a varying round of labor. In spring the fishing, in sum-
mer the hay harvest and in a few farmed localities the grain harvest also, in
autumn killing and salting meat for the winter, furnished constant occupation;
while in winter, after the wood-cutting and stump-grubbing had supplied a
store of fuel, the indoor occupations of weaving and spinning, boat-building,
and making or mending the farm implements, filled up the time.
The only
breaks in the year of labor in the heathen times, when time was still counted
by pentads and neither Sunday nor saint's day gave a partial holiday, were
the three or four great feasts of the year, which were kept in greater state
and with more exact observance in consequence. The High Summer festival
was passed by the chiefs and their families at the Althing, held yearly at
midsummer, the time of the old heathen festival of the sun; the Althing lasted
about a fortnight, and all the chiefs and a certain number of the freemen of
each district were expected to attend. This meeting was at once a court, a
council, and a merry-making, and probably in the Cold days) a religious feast;
it decided all matters concerning the common-weal, and such cases as con-
cerned several districts and could not therefore be settled at the local moots.
We have above the kind of influence it exercised on the life of the people,
and the opportunities for social intercourse it afforded; we hear of games of
hurling and football, of match-making, of feasting, and above all of the recital
of stories by those who could tell best the legends and traditions of their
several districts,- a feature which is highly noteworthy with respect to the
origin and development of the Saga in Iceland. We hear also of spring and
autumn sacrifices, which no doubt coincided with and were held at the district
Things. But the greatest holiday of all was Yuletide, which sometimes lasted
a fortnight, when friends, neighbors, and kinsmen would assemble at some
farm in the dale and pass the time eating, drinking, and merry-making. The
homely life of those days, while it kept every man in his own place, yet toler-
ated no formal separation of ranks; and the meanest thrall shared with the
highest chief in the hospitality and relaxation of the season. In early days
>
## p. 7872 (#64) ############################################
7872
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
religious solemnities were celebrated at this time, and the fitting sacrifices
always concluded with a feast. Weddings and Arval feasts too were oppor-
tunities for great gatherings of guests down to much later times, and often
lasted many days.
“It was amid such scenes that the Saga came into being. There was no
music, no dancing, no drama in the old times in Iceland; so that hearing and
telling stories, and repeating verses, formed (besides athletic sports) the staple
amusement of the assembled guests. The local heroes and the local traditions
furnished the chief topics: for the Icelanders were a practical rather than a
religious people, and though they had legends of superstitious character,
they preferred truth to fiction, and so the plain unvarnished tale of some
great local chief's career abroad and adventures at home was woven into the
permanent shape of the saga. ”
The great period of Icelandic literature was before the twelfth
century. Thereafter much of the simplicity and epic beauty of the
older poets waned; and commentators began to play havoc either
with amended originals, with interpolations of personal bias or cur-
rent vogue, or even with pseudo-antique imitations. In the literary
age the chief poets were members of the famous Sturlung family:
Snorri and his two nephews, Sturla and Olaf the White Poet, in par-
ticular. It would be useless to give a mere enumeration of names,
which would leave in the ear of the reader simply a series of bar-
baric sounds, that would convey no definite meaning to his mind;
but mention at least may be made of the few great ones of the
earlier time.
Such men were Egill, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and
the friend of Athelstan; Kormak (whose name has a strangely Cel-
tic sound in our ears, being phonetically identical with Corinac), the
hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Hakon's poet, called Skaldspoiler
because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer
Eiriks-mal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Ethelred's court, and fell at the
hands of a brother bard Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet,
who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's hench-
man, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod (and here again we
have a Celtic reminder, for the familiar Gaelic forename Norman is,
in the vernacular, Tormaid or Tormod, though its pronunciation is
different), the poet who dies singing at Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar
the Black, Arnor the earl's poet; and of those whose poetry was
almost confined to Iceland, there were Gretti, Biorn, and the two model
Icelandic masters Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman,- the two
latter however both of the twelfth century.
With the end of the Literary Age, towards the close of the thir-
teenth century, the greatness of Iceland waned. Thereafter, for two
hundred and fifty years (from 1284 to 1530), the epoch of mediæval-
ism prevailed; an epoch of great vicissitudes from within and without,
## p. 7873 (#65) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7873
including the eruptions of 1362 and 1389, and devastating epidemics.
During this long period, when the Continental influence — chiefly
Norse, however — prevailed, mediæval poetry and romances were all
the vogue.
With the Reformation in 1530 the period of decay for
the Northern Island realm set in; and for three hundred and twenty
years its historians had to chronicle a record which would have sad-
dened the hearts of the old vikings who made Iceland a power in
the Northern world. In the seventeenth century there was a brief
renaissance,- of great results, however, for the ultimate preservation
of much of the ancient Icelandic literature. With the eighteenth cen-
tury came the lowest ebb in Icelandic destinies. In the seventh
year of that century, small-pox destroyed one third of the population;
in 1759 a terrible famine occurred, in which 10,000 perished; in
1762 the sheep plague devastated the island; in 1765 an alarming
volcanic eruption happened, followed eighteen years later by the
great eruption of 1783. But though from 1850, or from the earlier
free constitution in Denmark, the fourth or modern period of Ice-
land opened more auspiciously, the country has not yet produced a
new literature. With increasing wealth and population, with home
rule, and with increased advantages of all kinds, Iceland, while cer-
tainly sending out into the world many eminent scholars and men
of action, has not yet succeeded in recovering any of her ancient lit-
erary glory.
It is then to the long early period of the Commonwealth that we
must look for that Icelandic literature which is the glory of the North-
ern races. This period of the Commonwealth extends over about four
hundred years; that is, from the first settlement by colonists from
the Western Isles and Norway in 870, to the submission to the Nor-
wegian kings and the subsequent national changes towards the close
of the thirteenth century. This period again is divisible into three
sections: the Heroic Age, the Saga-building Period, and the Literary
Age. Up to close upon the middle of the tenth century, it is the
poetry of the West Islands, rather than that of the Norse immigrants,
which has to be accepted as the basis of Icelandic literature. For a
hundred years thereafter — that is, from 930 to 1030 — the Icelandic
poets were mostly singers abroad; vikings whom the old restless
spirit of adventure carried far west, far south, or back up to that tur-
bulent East whence their forbears had come. The early period of
saga-telling is a brief one, and is coincident with the entry of Christ-
ianity into the island, and while the events of the later sagas were
in actual occurrence. Broadly, this is from 1030 to 1100.
For one
hundred and eighty years thereafter there comes the period known as
the Literary Age, in which flourished Ari and his school, Thorodd, the
historic saga-writers, Snorri and his school, and the famous Sturla.
XIV-493
## p. 7874 (#66) ############################################
7874
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
It was in the first half of the twelfth century that vernacular writing
began. If the civil wars which prevailed from near the beginning of
the thirteenth century until the fall of the great houses after the
second civil wars, which culminated years later in the submission to
the Norwegian kings,- if all these interfered in some respects with
the development of literature, it is significant to note that here in
remote Iceland, as in Rome in the past and the mediæval Italy and
Elizabethan England, a period of stress and strife seems in many
ways to have enhanced the literary sense, and to have proved advan-
tageous for the cultivation of letters. “In the opinion of those most
competent to judge,” writes one of the few American critics who
have interested themselves in this Old World saga literature, this
early Icelandic literature has never been surpassed, if equaled, in all
that gives value to that portion of history which consists in spirited
delineations of character, in faithful and lively pictures of events,
among nations in a rude state of society. ”
Although the sagas were first written about the middle of the
twelfth century, the greater sagas were not composed into their
present shape till about 1220. To that year or thereabouts is dated
the 'Egla Saga'; the Laxdaela' about 1230, the Niala' about 1240,
and the Eyrbyggia' about 1260. Snorri who died in 1241, and Sturla
who died in 1284, are the two great names which are the ornament
of that heroic period of Icelandic literature which makes a large part
of the thirteenth century so memorable to its students. The oldest
existing manuscript, however, does not go so far back.
posed to be the Flatöe Manuscript, so called from its discovery in
the monastery which bore that name. This Flatöe Manuscript is of
incalculable value apart from its literary interest; for it contains the
sagas devoted to the history of the pre-Columbian discoveries of the
Northmen. This manuscript was known to be in existence as early
as the year 1395; that is, about one hundred years before the re-
discovery of the American continent by Cabot and Columbus. One
of the sagas included within its scope, that known as the Saga of
Thorfinn, was actually written in Greenland, where during the years
1006 and 1007 the colonists as the saga-man says, who had resorted
thither from Iceland, "sought amusement in reciting history. ”
Jardar the Dane is supposed to have been the first person who
made a voyage northward to Iceland, though its early name of Snow-
land was given to it by the pirate Nododd about the year 864.
There is little question however but that Iceland was known to the
Irish Gaels, and possibly also to the Britons, before this. We have
the authority of Ari Frode, in the 'Landnama Book,' in testimony of
the fact that when the first Norsemen entered Iceland they found
Irish monks already residing there.
This is sup-
## p. 7875 (#67) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7875
It is seldom that the characteristics of a race are more clearly
shown in the physiognomy of its literature than in the instance of
the Icelanders and the Icelandic sagas. Their mental and physical
intrepidity are proverbial; and this quality is exemplified again and
again throughout the early and late sagas and Eddas. Directness,
simplicity, and intrepidity, whether of mind or body,- these qualities
distinguish the Northmen of old, and the many characteristics of the
national expression of their life. For the rest, we find in the sagas,
along with the development of individual and national epic themes, a
great many superstitions; some of them folk-lore survivals, and others
integral portions of the sombrely imaginative Scandinavian. While
the combative spirit displayed throughout this early literature has its
counterpart in the Celtic sagas, it is not combined as there with the
same fantasy, color, and vivacity we find in the best early Gaelic
chronicles. But throughout we hear in them the clash of swords, the
surge of the sea, the blowing of the north wind, the full simple
heroic words of the heroic man, the full simple words of passion and
devotion of heroic women, and above all and through all the influ-
ence of mighty forces of destiny and fate. In the later sagas this
element of the workings of fate degenerates into so-called religious
teaching, but even here the old pagan spirit is observable; as in
the almost passionate emphasis laid upon the doctrine of retribution
for sin, and in the sombre pictures of the life which awaits the
sinner in the next world. As an anonymous writer has said:–«We
recognize in the old saga literature the same bold indomitable spirit
that led the Northmen victoriously up the Areopagus at Athens;
gave the swing to sword and battle-axe in the streets of Constanti-
nople; enabled them to seize Novgorod and found the line of pre-
Slavonic czars who ruled until 1598; and that caused the cheek of
Charlemagne to turn pale, while priest and monk on trembling knees
put up the suffrage, (From the fear of the Normans, good Lord
deliver us. ) )
Here is an instance illustrative of the physical courage of the old
Northern mind. It is from the death-song of Ragnar Lodbrok, a
poem belonging to the close of the eighth century, and with the
peculiar alliterative effects characteristic of the metrical literature
of that period :-
WE HEWED with our swords
quick goes all to my heirs.
Grim stings the adder;
snake house in my heart;
but soon Vithris's lance
shall stand fast in Ella.
Rage will swell my sons
## p. 7876 (#68) ############################################
7876
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
to hear their father's doom;
ne'er will those gallant youths
rest till avenged.
We hewed with our swords;
full fifty times my lance,
the messenger of death,
raged through the battle.
It was my boyhood's play
to stain my lance with blood.
Methinks than I, no king
can boast of brighter deeds.
We must to Asar call,
and without grief I go.
We hewed with our swords;
home invite we the Diser,
the maidens of Odin.
With them and the Asar
high seated shall we
there the mead quaff;
fled are my life's hours,
yet I die smiling.
So likewise Harold, the valiant rover, tells us of his own courage,
lamenting that after all a Russian maid, Elizabeth daughter of Jani-
slaus, should refuse him. We give only a part of the poem :-
My ship hath sailed round the isle of Sicily;
Then were we all splendid and gay.
My mirror-laden ship then swiftly along the waves,
Eager for the fight,
I thought my sails would never slacken:
And yet a Russian maid disdains me.
With the men of Drontheim I fought in my youth.
They had troops much greater in numbers,
Dreadful was the conflict;
Young as I was, I left their young king dead in
the fight:
And yet a Russian maid disdains me.
Well do I know the eight exercises:
I fight with courage,
I keep a firm seat on horseback,
And skilled am I in swimming.
## p. 7877 (#69) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7877
Along the ice glide I on skates,
I excel in darting the lance,
I am dexterous at the par:
And yet a Russian maid disdains me.
As an example of prose narrative, here is a brief excerpt descript-
ive of the death of the Jarl Ronald, A. D. 1046, as told in the famous
Orkney Saga':-
EARL RONALD lay at Kirkwall and collected thither all sorts
of supplies for the winter, having with him a large following
whom he entertained regardless of cost. A little before Jule, the
earl started with a numerous retinue for the Lesser Papa to fetch
malt. In the evening, as they sat a long time baking their
limbs at the fire, the man who kept it up said the fuel was get-
ting short. On which the jarl made a slip of the tongue. He
said, “We shall be old enough when this fire is burnt out. ” But
he meant to have said, “We shall be warm enough. ” And when
he perceived it he said, “I made a slip of the tongue [misspoke];
I never did so before, that I can mind. This reminds me of
what King Olaf, my foster-father, said at Sticklestad when I
observed his slip of the tongue.
He said that if ever I made a
slip of the tongue, I must make up my mind to have a short
time left to live. Maybe my kinsman Thorfinn is alive. ” At
this moment they heard people all round the house. Earl Thor-
finn was come, and they set fire to the buildings and heaped
up a great pile before the doors. Thorfinn permitted all but the
earl's men to go out. And when most of the people had come
out, a man came into the doorway, dressed in linen clothes only,
and begged Thorfinn to give the deacon a helping hand. At the
same moment he placed his hand on the balk of wood (across
the door), sprang right over it and beyond the ring of men, and
fled away in the darkness of the night. Earl Thorfinn bade
them follow after him, and said, “There fared the earl: it was
one of his feats of strength and nobody's else. ” The men set off
in search, separating into knots. Thorkell Foster searched along
the shore, when they heard a dog bark among the rocks. Earl
Ronald had his lapdog with him. The earl was captured, and
Thorkell bade his men kill him, offering them money. But all
the same they refused. So Thorkell himself slew him, for he
knew that one or the other of them would have to do it. Earl
Thorfinn now came up, and blamed not the deed. They spent
(
## p. 7878 (#70) ############################################
7878
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
the night on the island slaughtering the whole of Ronald's fol-
lowers. Next morning they laded the merchant ship with malt,
then went aboard, placing in the prow and stern the shields
which Ronald and his men had, and no more men upon her
than had come with the earl, and then rowed to Kirkwall. As
Ronald's men supposed that it must be the earl and his followers
coming back, they went to meet them unarmed. Earl Thorfinn
seized and killed thirty, most of them being King Magnus's men
and friends of his. One retainer of the King's he let go, bidding
him fare to Norway and tell King Magnus the news.
It is however in the rough metres of Scandinavian poetry that
one most easily apprehends the genius of this Northern people. To
take an extract (not much earlier in date than the foregoing, namely
in 1014) from the famous Nial's Saga. The extract in question is
known as the “Spaedom of the Norns,' and is supposed to have been
based on the vision of some man of Caithness gifted with second-
sight to foretell the result of the great battle of Clontarf. The
expression in it “web of spears, however, points to a much earlier
legend. Here is the literal translation of the Spaedom as given by
Sir G. Dasent:-
S"
EE! warp is stretched
For warrior's fall;
Lo, weft in loom,
'Tis wet with blood;
Now, fight foreboding,
'Neath friends' swift fingers
Our gray woof waxeth
With war's alarms,
Our warp blood-red,
Our weft corse-blue.
This woof is y-woven
With entrails of men;
This warp is hard weighted
With heads of the slain;
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom iron-bound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for our shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our war-winning woof.
## p. 7879 (#71) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7879
Now war-winner walketh
To weave in her turn,
Now Sword-swinger steppeth,
Now Swift-stroke, now Storm;
When they speed the shuttle
How spear-heads shall flash!
Shields crash, and helm-gnawer
On harness bite hard !
Wind we, wind swiftly
Our war-winning woof,
Woof erst for king youthful,
Foredoomed as his own.
Forth now we will ride,
Then, through the ranks rushing,
Be busy where friends
Blows blithe give and take.
Wind we, wind swiftly
Our war-winning woof;
After that let us steadfastly
Stand by the brave king;
Then men shall mark mournful
Their shields red with gore,
How Sword-stroke and Spear-thrust
Stood stout by the prince.
Wind we, wind swiftly
Our war-winning woof,
When sword-bearing rovers
To banners rush on.
Mind, maidens, we spare not
One life in the fray;
We corse-choosing sisters
Have charge of the slain.
Now new-coming nations
That island shall rule,
Who on outlying headlands
Abode ere the fight;
I say that king mighty
To death now is done,
Now low before spear-point
That Earl bows his head.
## p. 7880 (#72) ############################################
7880
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
Soon over all Ersemen
Sharp sorrow shall fall,
That woe to those warriors
Shall wane nevermore.
Our woof now is woven,
Now battle-field waste,
O'er land and o'er water
War tidings shall leap.
Now surely 'tis gruesome
To gaze all around,
When blood-red through heaven
Drives cloud-rack o'erhead:
Air soon shall be deep-hued
With dying men's blood,
When this our spaedom
Comes speedy to pass.
So cheerily chant we
Charms for the young king;
Come, maidens, lift loudly
His war-winning lay:
Let him who now listens
Learn well with his ears,
And gladden brave swordsmen
With bursts of war's song.
Now mount we our horses,
Now bare we our brands,
Now haste we hard, maidens,
Hence, far, far away.
Among the old historic songs which preceded the great saga epoch
there is one attributed to Thiodolf (others say to Hornklofi), which
Dr. Metcalfe affirms in those days would be equivalent in popularity
and significance to the once famous Lillibullero' or the later Ye
Mariners of England. '
H
AVE you heard of the fight
At Hafrsfjord
'Tween a high-born king
And Kiotni the Rich ?
Came ships from the est,
All keen for the fray,
With silver inlaid,
And agape were their beaks.
## p. 7881 (#73) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7881
They were manned with Udallers,
And piled with white shields,
And West Country spears,
And Gallic swords.
Bellowed the Bare-sarks
In Hilda's train;
The Wolf-skins howled
'Mid the din of iron.
They put to the proof
One who taught them to fly,
The dauntless King Harold,
The Lord of Utstein.
He launched from the shore
In view of the stir;
What a thumping of shields
Ere Haklang fell!
He tired right soon
Of facing King Harfagr;
To an island fled he,
The thick-throated ruler.
Under the row-seat
The wounded they huddled,
With backs stuck up
And faces bent down.
In the storm of stones,
As they fled, they cast
On their backs their shields,
Bright roof of Valhalla.
Wild with fear, they fled home
Around Jadar's shores,
On their mead-bowls intent,
From Hafrsfjord.
The Hornklofi mentioned above, whose name signifies “horn-
cleaver,” was really a poet named Thorbjorn. In the Fagrskinna
there are some lines of great interest by him, describing the court of
the King, the famous Harold Fairhair, a contemporary of Alfred the
Great.
The skald relates an imaginary conversation between a Valkyr
and some ravens, who, being the constant companions of Harold in
his expeditions, were able to gratify the lady's curiosity about him.
In literal prose it runs:
## p. 7882 (#74) ############################################
7832
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
L
ISTEN, ye ring-bearers [i. e. , nobles),
While I recount the accomplishments
Of King Harold,
The immensely rich;
I must tell of the colloquy
Which I heard between
A white fair-haired maid
And a raven.
Wise was the Valkyr;
She knew the voice of birds.
The white-throated one,
The sharp-sighted one,
Spoke to the air-cleaver,
Who sat on a point of the rocks:
«Why here, ye ravens ?
Whence are ye come,
With gory beak,
At the approach of day?
Flesh sticks to your claws,
The reek of carrion comes from your mouth:
Surely you set off by night,
For ye knew that corpses lay on the plain. ”
He of the plumed skull shook his feathers;
The eagle's sworn brother
Dried his beak,
And bethought him of an answer :-
« We've followed Harold,
Halfdan's son,
The young noble,
Ever since the egg we left.
"I thought you'd know the King,
He who abides at Hvin,
The lord of the Northmen,
Who owns the deep galleys,
The ruddy-rimmed shields,
The tarred oars,
The weather-stained awnings.
«He'll drink his Yule feast at sea,
If he alone shall decide,
This courageous chief,
## p. 7883 (#75) ############################################
ICELANDIC LITERATURE
7883
And play Frey's game.
The youth loathes the fireside
And sitting at home;
The warm ladies' bower,
And cushions stuffed with down. ”
The Valkyr then asks whether Harold is munificent to his men :-
“Many a present
His warriors get,
Who in Harold's court
Throw with the dice;
They're with money endowed,
And handsome swords,
With German armor,
And Eastern slaves.
« Then are they glad,
The skillful men-at-arms,
Agile to jump
And swing the oars,
Till they break the loops
And snap the thole-pins;
Splash goes the water
At the word of the King.
