It would seem fitting for a Northern folk, deriving the greater
and better part of their speech, laws, and customs from a
Northern root, that the North should be to them, if not a holy
land, yet at least a place more to be regarded than any part of
the world beside; that howsoever their knowledge widened of other
men, the faith and deeds of their forefathers would never lack
interest for them, but would always be kept in remembrance. One
cause after another has, however, aided in turning attention to
classic men and lands at the cost of our own history. Among
battles, "every schoolboy" knows the story of Marathon or
Salamis, while it would be hard indeed to find one who did more
than recognise the name, if even that, of the great fights of
Hafrsfirth or Sticklestead. The language and history of Greece
and Rome, their laws and religions, have been always held part of
the learning needful to an educated man, but no trouble has been
taken to make him familiar with his own people or their tongue.
Even that Englishman who knew Alfred, Bede, Caedmon, as well as
he knew Plato, Caesar, Cicero, or Pericles, would be hard bestead
were he asked about the great peoples from whom we sprang; the
warring of Harold Fairhair or Saint Olaf; the Viking
1 kingdoms
in these (the British) Western Isles; the settlement of Iceland,
or even of Normandy. The knowledge of all these things would now
be even smaller than it is among us were it not that there was
one land left where the olden learning found refuge and was kept
in being. In England, Germany, and the rest of Europe, what is
left of the traditions of pagan times has been altered in a
thousand ways by foreign influence, even as the peoples and their
speech have been by the influx of foreign blood; but Iceland held
to the old tongue that was once the universal speech of northern
folk, and held also the great stores of tale and poem that are
slowly becoming once more the common heritage of their
descendants. The truth, care, and literary beauty of its
records; the varied and strong life shown alike in tale and
history; and the preservation of the old speech, character, and
tradition -- a people placed apart as the Icelanders have been --
combine to make valuable what Iceland holds for us. Not before
1770, when Bishop Percy translated Mallet's "Northern
Antiquities", was anything known here of Icelandic, or its
literature. Only within the latter part of this century has it
been studied, and in the brief book-list at the end of this
volume may be seen the little that has been done as yet. It is,
however, becoming ever clearer, and to an increasing number, how
supremely important is Icelandic as a word-hoard to the English-
speaking peoples, and that in its legend, song, and story there
is a very mine of noble and pleasant beauty and high manhood.
That which has been done, one may hope, is but the beginning of a
great new birth, that shall give back to our language and
literature all that heedlessness and ignorance bid fair for
awhile to destroy.
The Scando-Gothic peoples who poured southward and westward over
Europe, to shake empires and found kingdoms, to meet Greek and
Roman in conflict, and levy tribute everywhere, had kept up their
constantly-recruited waves of incursion, until they had raised a
barrier of their own blood. It was their own kin, the sons of
earlier invaders, who stayed the landward march of the Northmen
in the time of Charlemagne. To the Southlands their road by land
was henceforth closed. Then begins the day of the Vikings, who,
for two hundred years and more, "held the world at ransom."
Under many and brave leaders they first of all came round the
"Western Isles"
2 toward the end of the eighth century; soon
after they invaded Normandy, and harried the coasts of France;
gradually they lengthened their voyages until there was no shore
of the then known world upon which they were unseen or unfelt. A
glance at English history will show the large part of it they
fill, and how they took tribute from the Anglo-Saxons, who, by
the way, were far nearer kin to them than is usually thought. In
Ireland, where the old civilisation was falling to pieces, they
founded kingdoms at Limerick and Dublin among other places;
3
the last named, of which the first king, Olaf the White, was
traditionally descended of Sigurd the Volsung,
4 endured even
to the English invasion, when it was taken by men of the same
Viking blood a little altered. What effect they produced upon
the natives may be seen from the description given by the unknown
historian of the "Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill": "In a
word, although there were an hundred hard-steeled iron heads on
one neck, and an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-rusting brazen
tongues in each head, and an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing
voices from each tongue, they could not recount, or narrate, or
enumerate, or tell what all the Gaedhil suffered in common --
both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and
ignoble -- of hardship, and of injury, and of oppression, in
every house, from these valiant, wrathful, purely pagan people.
Even though great were this cruelty, oppression, and tyranny,
though numerous were the oft-victorious clans of the many-
familied Erinn; though numerous their kings, and their royal
chiefs, and their princes; though numerous their heroes and
champions, and their brave soldiers, their chiefs of valour and
renown and deeds of arms; yet not one of them was able to give
relief, alleviation, or deliverance from that oppression and
tyranny, from the numbers and multitudes, and the cruelty and the
wrath of the brutal, ferocious, furious, untamed, implacable
hordes by whom that oppression was inflicted, because of the
excellence of their polished, ample, treble, heavy, trusty,
glittering corslets; and their hard, strong, valiant swords; and
their well-riveted long spears, and their ready, brilliant arms
of valour besides; and because of the greatness of their
achievements and of their deeds, their bravery, and their valour,
their strength, and their venom, and their ferocity, and because
of the excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave,
fruitful, nobly-inhabited, full of cataracts, rivers, bays, pure,
smooth-plained, sweet grassy land of Erinn" -- (pp. 52-53). Some
part of this, however, must be abated, because the chronicler is
exalting the terror-striking enemy that he may still further
exalt his own people, the Dal Cais, who did so much under Brian
Boroimhe to check the inroads of the Northmen. When a book does
5 appear, which has been announced these ten years past, we
shall have more material for the reconstruction of the life of
those times than is now anywhere accessible. Viking earldoms
also were the Orkneys, Faroes, and Shetlands. So late as 1171,
in the reign of Henry II., the year after Beckett's murder, Earl
Sweyn Asleifsson of Orkney, who had long been the terror of the
western seas, "fared a sea-roving" and scoured the western coast
of England, Man, and the east of Ireland, but was killed in an
attack on his kinsmen of Dublin. He had used to go upon a
regular plan that may be taken as typical of the homely manner of
most of his like in their cruising: "Sweyn had in the spring hard
work, and made them lay down very much seed, and looked much
after it himself. But when that toil was ended, he fared away
every spring on a viking-voyage, and harried about among the
southern isles and Ireland, and came home after midsummer. That
he called spring-viking. Then he was at home until the corn-
fields were reaped down, and the grain seen to and stored. Then
he fared away on a viking-voyage, and then he did not come home
till the winter was one month off, and that he called his autumn-
viking."
6
Toward the end of the ninth century Harold Fairhair, either
spurred by the example of Charlemagne, or really prompted, as
Snorri Sturluson tells us, resolved to bring all Norway under
him. As Snorri has it in "Heimskringla": "King Harold sent his
men to a girl hight Gyda.... The king wanted her for his leman;
for she was wondrous beautiful but of high mood withal. Now when
the messengers came there and gave their message to her, she made
answer that she would not throw herself away even to take a king
for her husband, who swayed no greater kingdom than a few
districts; `And methinks,' said she, `it is a marvel that no king
here in Norway will put all the land under him, after the fashion
that Gorm the Old did in Denmark, or Eric at Upsala.' The
messengers deemed this a dreadfully proud-spoken answer, and
asked her what she thought would come of such an one, for Harold
was so mighty a man that his asking was good enough for her. But
although she had replied to their saying otherwise than they
would, they saw no likelihood, for this while, of bearing her
along with them against her will, so they made ready to fare back
again. When they were ready and the folk followed them out, Gyda
said to the messengers -- `Now tell to King Harold these my
words: -- I will only agree to be his lawful wife upon the
condition that he shall first, for sake of me, put under him the
whole of Norway, so that he may bear sway over that kingdom as
freely and fully as King Eric over the realm of Sweden, or King
Gorm over Denmark; for only then, methinks, can he be called king
of a people.' Now his men came back to King Harold, bringing him
the words of the girl, and saying she was so bold and heedless
that she well deserved the king should send a greater troop of
people for her, and put her to some disgrace. Then answered the
king. `This maid has not spoken or done so much amiss that she
should be punished, but the rather should she be thanked for her
words. She has reminded me,' said he, `of somewhat that it seems
wonderful I did not think of before. And now,' added he, `I make
the solemn vow, and take who made me and rules over all things,
to witness that never shall I clip or comb my hair until I have
subdued all Norway with scatt, and duties, and lordships; or, if
not, have died in the seeking.' Guttorm gave great thanks to the
king for his oath, saying it was "royal work fulfilling royal
rede." The new and strange government that Harold tried to
enforce -- nothing less than the feudal system in a rough guise -
-- which made those who had hitherto been their own men save at
special times, the king's men at all times, and laid freemen
under tax, was withstood as long as might be by the sturdy
Norsemen. It was only by dint of hard fighting that he slowly
won his way, until at Hafrsfirth he finally crushed all effective
opposition. But the discontented, "and they were a great
multitude," fled oversea to the outlands, Iceland, the Faroes,
the Orkneys, and Ireland. The whole coast of Europe, even to
Greece and the shores of the Black Sea, the northern shores of
Africa, and the western part of Asia, felt the effects also.
Rolf Pad-th'-hoof, son of Harold's dear friend Rognvald, made an
outlaw for a cattle-raid within the bounds of the kingdom, betook
himself to France, and, with his men, founded a new people and a
dynasty.
Iceland had been known for a good many years, but its only
dwellers had been Irish Culdees, who sought that lonely land to
pray in peace. Now, however, both from Norway and the Western
Isles settlers began to come in. Aud, widow of Olaf the White,
King of Dublin, came, bringing with her many of mixed blood, for
the Gaedhil (pronounced "Gael", Irish) and the Gaill (pronounced
"Gaul", strangers) not only fought furiously, but made friends
firmly, and often intermarried. Indeed, the Westmen were among
the first arrivals, and took the best parts of the island -- on
its western shore, appropriately enough. After a time the
Vikings who had settled in the Isles so worried Harold and his
kingdom, upon which they swooped every other while, that he drew
together a mighty force, and fell upon them wheresoever he could
find them, and followed them up with fire and sword; and this he
did twice, so that in those lands none could abide but folk who
were content to be his men, however lightly they might hold their
allegiance. Hence it was to Iceland that all turned who held to
the old ways, and for over sixty years from the first comer there
was a stream of hardy men pouring in, with their families and
their belongings, simple yeomen, great and warwise chieftains,
rich landowners, who had left their land "for the overbearing of
King Harold," as the "Landnamabok"
7 has it. "There also we
shall escape the troubling of kings and scoundrels", says the
"Vatsdaelasaga". So much of the best blood left Norway that the
king tried to stay the leak by fines and punishments, but in
vain.
As his ship neared the shore, the new-coming chief would leave it
to the gods as to where he settled. The hallowed pillars of the
high seat, which were carried away from his old abode, were
thrown overboard, with certain rites, and were let drive with
wind and wave until they came ashore. The piece of land which
lay next the beach they were flung upon was then viewed from the
nearest hill-summit, and place of the homestead picked out. Then
the land was hallowed by being encircled with fire, parcelled
among the band, and marked out with boundary-signs; the houses
were built, the "town" or home-field walled in, a temple put up,
and the settlement soon assumed shape. In 1100 there were 4500
franklins, making a population of about 50,000, fully three-
fourths of whom had a strong infusion of Celtic blood in them.
The mode of life was, and is, rather pastoral than aught else.
In the 39,200 square miles of the island's area there are now
about 250 acres of cultivated land, and although there has been
much more in times past, the Icelanders have always been forced
to reckon upon flocks and herds as their chief resources, grain
of all kinds, even rye, only growing in a few favoured places,
and very rarely there; the hay, self-sown, being the only certain
harvest. On the coast fishing and fowling were of help, but
nine-tenths of the folk lived by their sheep and cattle.
Potatoes, carrots, turnips, and several kinds of cabbage have,
however, been lately grown with success. They produced their own
food and clothing, and could export enough wool, cloth, horn,
dried fish, etc., as enabled them to obtain wood for building,
iron for tools, honey, wine, grain, etc, to the extent of their
simple needs. Life and work was lotted by the seasons and their
changes; outdoor work -- fishing, herding, hay-making, and fuel-
getting -- filling the long days of summer, while the long, dark
winter was used in weaving and a hundred indoor crafts. The
climate is not so bad as might be expected, seeing that the
island touches the polar circle, the mean temperature at
Reykjavik being 39 degrees.
The religion which the settlers took with them into Iceland --
the ethnic religion of the Norsefolk, which fought its last great
fight at Sticklestead, where Olaf Haraldsson lost his life and
won the name of Saint -- was, like all religions, a compound of
myths, those which had survived from savage days, and those which
expressed the various degrees of a growing knowledge of life and
better understanding of nature. Some historians and commentators
are still fond of the unscientific method of taking a later
religion, in this case christianity, and writing down all
apparently coincident parts of belief, as having been borrowed
from the christian teachings by the Norsefolk, while all that
remain they lump under some slighting head. Every folk has from
the beginning of time sought to explain the wonders of nature,
and has, after its own fashion, set forth the mysteries of life.
The lowest savage, no less than his more advanced brother, has a
philosophy of the universe by which he solves the world-problem
to his own satisfaction, and seeks to reconcile his conduct with
his conception of the nature of things. Now, it is not to be
thought, save by "a priori" reasoners, that such a folk as the
Northmen -- a mighty folk, far advanced in the arts of life,
imaginative, literary -- should have had no further creed than
the totemistic myths of their primitive state; a state they have
wholly left ere they enter history. Judging from universal
analogy, the religion of which record remains to us was just what
might be looked for at the particular stage of advancement the
Northmen had reached. Of course something may have been gained
from contact with other peoples -- from the Greeks during the
long years in which the northern races pressed upon their
frontier; from the Irish during the existence of the western
viking-kingdoms; but what I particularly warn young students
against is the constant effort of a certain order of minds to
wrest facts into agreement with their pet theories of religion or
what not. The whole tendency of the more modern investigation
shows that the period of myth-transmission is long over ere
history begins. The same confusion of different stages of myth-
making is to be found in the Greek religion, and indeed in those
of all peoples; similar conditions of mind produce similar
practices, apart from all borrowing of ideas and manners; in
Greece we find snake-dances, bear-dances, swimming with sacred
pigs, leaping about in imitation of wolves, dog-feasts, and
offering of dogs' flesh to the gods -- all of them practices
dating from crude savagery, mingled with ideas of exalted and
noble beauty, but none now, save a bigot, would think of accusing
the Greeks of having stolen all their higher beliefs. Even were
some part of the matter of their myths taken from others, yet the
Norsemen have given their gods a noble, upright, great spirit,
and placed them upon a high level that is all their own.
8
From the prose Edda the following all too brief statement of the
salient points of Norse belief is made up: -- "The first and
eldest of gods is hight Allfather; he lives from all ages, and
rules over all his realm, and sways all things great and small;
he smithied heaven and earth, and the lift, and all that belongs
to them; what is most, he made man, and gave him a soul that
shall live and never perish; and all men that are right-minded
shall live and be with himself in Vingolf; but wicked men fare to
Hell, and thence into Niithell, that is beneath in the ninth
world. Before the earth `'twas the morning of time, when yet
naught was, nor sand nor sea was there, nor cooling streams.
Earth was not found, nor Heaven above; a Yawning-gap there was,
but grass nowhere.' Many ages ere the earth was shapen was
Niflheim made, but first was that land in the southern sphere
hight Muspell, that burns and blazes, and may not be trodden by
those who are outlandish and have no heritage there. Surtr sits
on the border to guard the land; at the end of the world he will
fare forth, and harry and overcome all the gods and burn the
world with fire. Ere the races were yet mingled, or the folk of
men grew, Yawning-gap, which looked towards the north parts, was
filled with thick and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within
were fog and gusts; but the south side of Yawning-gap lightened
by the sparks and gledes that flew out of Muspell-heim; as cold
arose out of Niflheim and all things grim, so was that part that
looked towards Muspell hot and bright; but Yawning-gap was as
light as windless air, and when the blast of heat met the rime,
so that it melted and dropped and quickened; from those life-
drops there was shaped the likeness of a man, and he was named
Ymir; he was bad, and all his kind; and so it is said, when he
slept he fell into a sweat; then waxed under his left hand a man
and a woman, and one of his feet got a son with the other, and
thence cometh the Hrimthursar. The next thing when the rime
dropped was that the cow hight Audhumla was made of it; but four
milk-rivers ran out of her teats, and she fed Ymir; she licked
rime-stones that were salt, and the first day there came at even,
out of the stones, a man's hair, the second day a man's head, the
third day all the man was there. He is named Turi; he was fair
of face, great and mighty; he gat a son named Bor, who took to
him Besla, daughter of Bolthorn, the giant, and they had three
sons, Odin, Vili, and Ve. Bor's sons slew Ymir the giant, but
when he fell there ran so much blood out of his wounds that all
the kin of the Hrimthursar were drowned, save Hvergelmir and his
household, who got away in a boat. Then Bor's sons took Ymir and
bore him into the midst of Yawning-gap, and made of him the
earth; of his blood seas and waters, of his flesh earth was made;
they set the earth fast, and laid the sea round about it in a
ring without; of his bones were made rocks; stones and pebbles of
his teeth and jaws and the bones that were broken; they took his
skull and made the lift thereof, and set it up over the earth
with four sides, and under each corner they set dwarfs, and they
took his brain and cast it aloft, and made clouds. They took the
sparks and gledes that went loose, and had been cast out of
Muspellheim, and set them in the lift to give light; they gave
resting-places to all fires, and set some in the lift; some fared
free under it, and they gave them a place and shaped their
goings. A wondrous great smithying, and deftly done. The earth
is fashioned round without, and there beyond, round about it lies
the deep sea; and on that sea-strand the gods gave land for an
abode to the giant kind, but within on the earth made they a burg
round the world against restless giants, and for this burg reared
they the brows of Ymir, and called the burg Midgard. The gods
went along the sea-strand and found two stocks, and shaped out of
them men; the first gave soul and life, the second wit and will
to move, the third face, hearing, speech, and eyesight. They
gave them clothing and names; the man Ask and the woman Embla;
thence was mankind begotten, to whom an abode was given under
Midgard. Then next Bor's sons made them a burg in the midst of
the world, that is called Asgard; there abode the gods and their
kind, and wrought thence many tidings and feats, both on earth
and in the Sky. Odin, who is hight Allfather, for that he is the
father of all men and sat there in his high seat, seeing over the
whole world and each man's doings, and knew all things that he
saw. His wife was called Frigg, and their offspring is the Asa-
stock, who dwell in Asgard and the realms about it, and all that
stock are known to be gods. The daughter and wife of Odin was
Earth, and of her he got Thor, him followed strength and
sturdiness, thereby quells he all things quick; the strongest of
all gods and men, he has also three things of great price, the
hammer Miolnir, the best of strength belts, and when he girds
that about him waxes his god strength one-half, and his iron
gloves that he may not miss for holding his hammer's haft.
Balidr is Odin's second son, and of him it is good to say, he is
fair and: bright in face, and hair, and body, and him all praise;
he is wise and fair-spoken and mild, and that nature is in him
none may withstand his doom. Tyr is daring and best of mood;
there is a saw that he is tyrstrong who is before other men and
never yields; he is also so wise that it is said he is tyrlearned
who is wise. Bragi is famous for wisdom, and best in tongue-wit,
and cunning speech, and song-craft. `And many other are there,
good and great; and one, Loki, fair of face, ill in temper and
fickle of mood, is called the backbiter of the Asa, and speaker
of evil redes and shame of all gods and men; he has above all
that craft called sleight, and cheats all in all things. Among
the children of Loki are Fenris-wolf and Midgards-worm; the
second lies about all the world in the deep sea, holding his tail
in his teeth, though some say Thor has slain him; but Fenris-wolf
is bound until the doom of the gods, when gods and men shall come
to an end, and earth and heaven be burnt, when he shall slay
Odin. After this the earth shoots up from the sea, and it is
green and fair, and the fields bear unsown, and gods and men
shall be alive again, and sit in fair halls, and talk of old
tales and the tidings that happened aforetime. The head-seat, or
holiest-stead, of the gods is at Yggdrasil's ash, which is of all
trees best and biggest; its boughs are spread over the whole
world and stand above heaven; one root of the ash is in heaven,
and under the root is the right holy spring; there hold the gods
doom every day; the second root is with the Hrimthursar, where
before was Yawning-gap; under that root is Mimir's spring, where
knowledge and wit lie hidden; thither came Allfather and begged a
drink, but got it not before he left his eye in pledge; the third
root is over Niflheim, and the worm Nidhogg gnaws the root
beneath. A fair hall stands under the ash by the spring, and out
of it come three maidens, Norns, named Has-been, Being, Will-be,
who shape the lives of men; there are beside other Norns, who
come to every man that is born to shape his life, and some of
these are good and some evil. In the boughs of the ash sits an
eagle, wise in much, and between his eyes sits the hawk
Vedrfalnir; the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down along the
ash, bearing words of hate betwixt the eagle and the worm. Those
Norns who abide by the holy spring draw from it every day water,
and take the clay that lies around the well, and sprinkle them up
over the ash for that its boughs should not wither or rot. All
those men that have fallen in the fight, and borne wounds and
toil unto death, from the beginning of the world, are come to
Odin in Valhall; a very great throng is there, and many more
shall yet come; the flesh of the boar Soerfmnir is sodden for
them every day, and he is whole again at even; and the mead they
drink that flows from the teats of the she-goat Heidhrun. The
meat Odin has on his board he gives to his two wolves, Geri and
Freki, and he needs no meat, wine is to him both meat and drink;
ravens twain sit on his shoulders, and say into his ear all
tidings that they see and hear; they are called Huginn and Muninn
(mind and memory); them sends he at dawn to fly over the whole
world, and they come back at breakfast-tide, thereby becomes he
wise in many tidings, and for this men call him Raven's-god.
Every day, when they have clothed them, the heroes put on their
arms and go out into the yard and fight and fell each other; that
is their play, and when it looks toward mealtime, then ride they
home to Valhall and sit down to drink. For murderers and men
forsworn is a great hall, and a bad, and the doors look
northward; it is altogether wrought of adder-backs like a wattled
house, but the worms' heads turn into the house, and blow venom,
so that rivers of venom run along the hall, and in those rivers
must such men wade forever." There was no priest-class; every
chief was priest for his own folk, offered sacrifice, performed
ceremonies, and so on.
In politics the homestead, with its franklin-owner, was the unit;
the "thing", or hundred-moot, the primal organisation, and the
"godord", or chieftainship, its tie. The chief who had led a
band of kinsmen and followers to the new country, taken
possession of land, and shared it among them, became their head-
ruler and priest at home, speaker and president of their Thing,
and their representative in any dealings with neighbouring chiefs
and their clients. He was not a feudal lord, for any franklin
could change his "godord" as he liked, and the right of "judgment
by peers" was in full use. At first there was no higher
organisation than the local thing. A central thing, and a
speaker to speak a single "law" for the whole island, was
instituted in 929, and afterwards the island was divided in four
quarters, each with a court, under the Al-thing. Society was
divided only into two classes of men, the free and unfree, though
political power was in the hands of the franklins alone; "godi"
and thrall ate the same food, spoke the same tongue, wore much
the same clothes, and were nearly alike in life and habits.
Among the free men there was equality in all but wealth and the
social standing that cannot be separated therefrom. The thrall
was a serf rather than a slave, and could own a house, etc., of
his own. In a generation or so the freeman or landless retainer,
if he got a homestead of his own, was the peer of the highest in
the land. During the tenth century Greenland was colonised from
Iceland, and by end of the same century christianity was
introduced into Iceland, but made at first little difference in
arrangements of society. In the thirteenth century disputes over
the power and jurisdiction of the clergy led, with other matters,
to civil war, ending in submission to Norway, and the breaking
down of all native great houses. Although life under the
commonwealth had been rough and irregular, it had been free and
varied, breeding heroes and men of mark; but the "law and order"
now brought in left all on a dead level of peasant
proprietorship, without room for hope or opening for ambition.
An alien governor ruled the island, which was divided under him
into local counties, administered by sheriffs appointed by the
king of Norway. The Al-thing was replaced by a royal court, the
local work of the local things was taken by a subordinate of the
sheriff, and things, quarter-courts, trial by jury, and all the
rest, were swept away to make room for these "improvements",
which have lasted with few changes into this century. In 1380
the island passed under the rule of Denmark, and so continues.
9 During the fifteenth century the English trade was the only
link between Iceland and the outer world; the Danish government
weakened that link as much as it could, and sought to shut in and
monopolise everything Icelandic; under the deadening effect of
such rule it is no marvel that everything found a lower level,
and many things went out of existence for lack of use. In the
sixteenth century there is little to record but the Reformation,
which did little good, if any, and the ravages of English,
Gascon, and Algerine pirates who made havoc on the coast;
10
they appear toward the close of the century and disappear early
in the seventeenth. In the eighteenth century small-pox, sheep
disease, famine, and the terrible eruptions of 1765 and 1783,
follow one another swiftly and with terrible effect. At the
beginning of the present century Iceland, however, began to shake
off the stupor her ill-hap had brought upon her, and as European
attention had been drawn to her, she was listened to.
Newspapers, periodicals, and a Useful Knowledge Society were
started; then came free trade, and the "home-rule" struggle,
which met with partial success in 1874, and is still being
carried on. A colony, Gimli, in far-off Canada, has been formed
of Icelandic emigrants, and large numbers have left their mother-
land; but there are many co-operative societies organised now,
which it is hoped will be able to so revive the old resources of
the island as to make provision for the old population and ways
of life. There is now again a representative central council,
but very many of the old rights and powers have not been yet
restored. The condition of society is peculiar absence of
towns, social equality, no abject poverty or great wealth, rarity
of crime, making it easy for the whole country to be administered
as a co-operative commonwealth without the great and striking
changes rendered necessary by more complicated systems.
Iceland. has always borne a high name for learning and
literature; on both sides of their descent people inherited
special poetic power. Some of older Eddaic fragments attest the
great reach and deep overpowering strength of imagination
possessed by their Norse ancestors; and they themselves had been
quickened by a new leaven. During the first generations of the
"land-taking" a great school of poetry which had arisen among the
Norsemen of the Western Isles was brought by them to Iceland.
11 The poems then produced are quite beyond parallel with
those of any Teutonic language for centuries after their date,
which lay between the beginning of the ninth and the end of the
tenth centuries. Through the Greenland colony also came two, or
perhaps more, great poems of this western school. This school
grew out of the stress and storm of the viking life, with its
wild adventure and varied commerce, and the close contact with an
artistic and inventive folk, possessed of high culture and great
learning. The infusion of Celtic blood, however slight it may
have been, had also something to do with the swift intense
feeling and rapidity of passion of the earlier Icelandic poets.
They are hot-headed and hot-hearted, warm, impulsive, quick to
quarrel or to love, faithful, brave; ready with sword or song to
battle with all comers, or to seek adventure wheresoever it might
be found. They leave Iceland young, and wander at their will to
different courts of northern Europe, where they are always held
in high honour. Gunnlaug Worm-tongue
12 in 1004 carne to
England, after being in Norway, as the saga says: -- "Now sail
Gunnlaug and his fellows into the English main, and come at
autumntide south to London Bridge, where they hauled ashore their
ship. Now, at that time King Ethelred, the son of Edgar, ruled
over England, and was a good lord; the winter he sat in London.
But in those days there was the same tongue in England as in
Norway and Denmark; but the tongues changed when William the
Bastard won England, for thenceforward French went current there,
for he was of French kin. Gunnlaug went presently to the king,
and greeted him well and worthily. The king asked him from what
land he came, and Gunnlaug told him all as it was. `But,' said
he, `I have come to meet thee, lord, for that I have made a song
on thee, and I would that it might please thee to hearken to that
song.' The king said it should be so, and Gunnlaug gave forth
the song well and proudly, and this is the burden thereof --
“
"'As God are all folk fearing
The fire lord King of England,
Kin of all kings and all folk,
To Ethelred the head bow.'
”
The king thanked him for the song, and gave him as song-reward a
scarlet cloak lined with the costliest of furs, and golden-
broidered down to the hem; and made him his man; and Gunnlaug was
with him all the winter, and was well accounted of."
The poems in this volume are part of the wonderful fragments
which are all that remain of ancient Scandinavian poetry. Every
piece which survives has been garnered by Vigfusson and Powell in
the volumes of their "Corpus", where those who seek may find. A
long and illustrious line of poets kept the old traditions, down
even to within a couple centuries, but the earlier great harvest
of song was never again equalled. After christianity had entered
Iceland, and that, with other causes, had quieted men's lives,
although the poetry which stood to the folk in lieu of music did
not die away, it lost the exclusive hold it had upon men's minds.
In a time not so stirring, when emotion was not so fervent or so
swift, when there was less to quicken the blood, the story that
had before found no fit expression but in verse, could stretch
its limbs, as it were, and be told in prose. Something of Irish
influence is again felt in this new departure and that marvellous
new growth, the saga, that came from it, but is little more than
an influence. Every people find some one means of expression
which more than all else suits their mood or their powers, and
this the Icelanders found in the saga. This was the life of a
hero told in prose, but in set form, after a regular fashion that
unconsciously complied with all epical requirements but that of
verse -- simple plot, events in order of time, set phrases for
even the shifting emotion or changeful fortune of a fight or
storm, and careful avoidance of digression, comment, or putting
forward by the narrator of ought but the theme he has in hand; he
himself is never seen. Something in the perfection of the saga
is to be traced to the long winter's evenings, when the whole
household, gathered together at their spinning, weaving, and so
on, would listen to one of their number who told anew some old
story of adventure or achievement. In very truth the saga is a
prose epic, and marked by every quality an epic should possess.
Growing up while the deeds of dead heroes were fresh in memory,
most often recited before the sharers in such deeds, the saga, in
its pure form, never goes from what is truth to its teller.
Where the saga, as this one of the Volsungs is founded upon the
debris of songs and poems, even then very old, tales of
mythological heroes, of men quite removed from the personal
knowledge of the narrator, yet the story is so inwound with the
tradition of his race, is so much a part of his thought-life,
that every actor in it has for him a real existence. At the
feast or gathering, or by the fireside, as men made nets and
women spun, these tales were told over; in their frequent
repetition by men who believed them, though incident or sequence
underwent no change, they would become closer knit, more
coherent, and each an organic whole. Gradually they would take a
regular and accepted form, which would ease the strain upon the
reciter's memory and leave his mind free to adorn the story with
fair devices, that again gave help in the making it easier to
remember, and thus aided in its preservation. After a couple of
generations had rounded and polished the sagas by their telling
and retelling, they were written down for the most part between
1141 and 1220, and so much was their form impressed upon the mind
of the folk, that when learned and literary works appeared, they
were written in the same style; hence we have histories alike of
kingdoms, or families, or miracles, lives of saints, kings, or
bishops in saga-form, as well as subjects that seem at first
sight even less hopeful. All sagas that have yet appeared in
English may be found in the book-list at end of this volume, but
they are not a tithe of those that remain.
Of all the stories kept in being by the saga-tellers and left for
our delight, there is none that so epitomises human experience;
has within the same space so much of nature and of life; so fully
the temper and genius of the Northern folk, as that of the
Volsungs and Niblungs, which has in varied shapes entered into
the literature of many lands. In the beginning there is no doubt
that the story belonged to the common ancestral folk of all the
Teutonic of Scando-Gothic peoples in the earliest days of their
wanderings. Whether they came from the Hindu Kush, or originated
in Northern Europe, brought it with them from Asia, or evolved it
among the mountains and rivers it has taken for scenery, none
know nor can; but each branch of their descendants has it in one
form or another, and as the Icelanders were the very crown and
flower of the northern folk, so also the story which is the
peculiar heritage of that folk received in their hands its
highest expression and most noble form. The oldest shape in
which we have it is in the Eddaic poems, some of which date from
unnumbered generations before the time to which most of them are
usually ascribed, the time of the viking-kingdoms in the Western
Isles. In these poems the only historical name is that of
Attila, the great Hun leader, who filled so large a part of the
imagination of the people whose power he had broken. There is no
doubt that, in the days when the kingdoms of the Scando-Goths
reached from the North Cape to the Caspian, that some earlier
great king performed his part; but, after the striking career of
Attila, he became the recognised type of a powerful foreign
potentate. All the other actors are mythic-heroic. Of the
Eddaic songs only fragments now remain, but ere they perished
there arose from them a saga, that now given to the readers of
this. The so-called Anglo-Saxons brought part of the story to
England in "Beowulf"; in which also appear some incidents that
are again given in the Icelandic saga of "Grettir the Strong".
Most widely known is the form taken by the story in the hands of
an unknown medieval German poet, who, from the broken ballads
then surviving wrote the "Nibelungenlied" or more properly
"Nibelungen Not" ("The Need of the Niblungs"). In this the
characters are all renamed, some being more or less historical
actors in mid-European history, as Theodoric of the East-Goths,
for instance. The whole of the earlier part of the story has
disappeared, and though Siegfried (Sigurd) has slain a dragon,
there is nothing to connect it with the fate that follows the
treasure; Andvari, the Volsungs, Fafnir, and Regin are all
forgotten; the mythological features have become faint, and the
general air of the whole is that of medieval romance. The swoard
Gram is replaced by Balmung, and the Helm of Awing by the
Tarn-cap -- the former with no gain, the latter with great loss.
The curse of Andvari, which in the saga is grimly real, working
itself out with slow, sure steps that no power of god or man can
turn aside, in the medieval poem is but a mere scenic effect, a
strain of mystery and magic, that runs through the changes of the
story with much added picturesqueness, but that has no obvious
relation to the working-out of the plot, or fulfilment of their
destiny by the different characters. Brynhild loses a great
deal, and is a poor creature when compared with herself in the
saga; Grimhild and her fateful drink have gone; Gudrun
(Chriemhild)is much more complex, but not more tragic; one new
character, Rudiger, appears as the type of chivalry; but Sigurd
(Siegfred) the central figure, though he has lost by the omission
of so much of his life, is, as before, the embodiment of all the
virtues that were dear to northern hearts. Brave, strong,
generous, dignified, and utterly truthful, he moves amid a tangle
of tragic events, overmastered by a mighty fate, and in life or
death is still a hero without stain or flaw. It is no wonder
that he survives to this day in the national songs of the Faroe
Islands and in the folk-ballads of Denmark; that his legend
should have been mingled with northern history through Ragnar
Lodbrog, or southern through Attila and Theodoric; that it should
have inspired William Morris in producing the one great English
epic of the century;
13 and Richard Wagner in the mightiest
among his music-dramas. Of the story as told in the saga there
is no need here to speak, for to read it, as may be done a few
pages farther on, is that not better than to read about it? But
it may be urged upon those that are pleased and moved by the
passion and power, the strength and deep truth of it, to find out
more than they now know of the folk among whom it grew, and the
land in which they dwelt. In so doing they will come to see how
needful are a few lessons from the healthy life and speech of
those days, to be applied in the bettering of our own.
H. HALLIDAY SPARLING.