INTRODUCTION
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.
ENDNOTES:
(1) Viking (Ice. "Vikingr"; "vik", a bay or creek, "ingr",
beloning to, (or men of) freebooters.
(2) "West over the Sea" is the word for the British Isles.
(3) See Todd (J. H.). "War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill".
(4) He was son of Ingiald, son of Thora, daughter of Sigurd
Snake-I'-th'-eye, son of Ragnar Lodbrok by Aslaug, daughter of Sigurd
by Brynhild. The genealogy is, doubtless, quite mythical.
(5) A Collection of Sagas and other Historical Documents
relating to the Settlements and Descents of the Northmen on the British
Isles. Ed., G. W. Dasent, D.C.L, and Gudbrand Vigfusson, M.A. "In the
Press. Longmans, London. 8vo.
(6) "Orkneyinga Saga".
(7) Landtaking-book -- "landnam", landtaking, from "at
nema land", hence also the early settlers were called "landnamsmenn".
(8) To all interested in the subject of comparative mythology,
Andrew Lang's two admirable books, "Custom and Myth" (1884, 8vo) and "Myth,
Ritual, and Religion" (2 vols., crown 8vo, 1887), both published by Longmans,
London, may be warmly recommended.
(9) Iceland was granted full independence from Denmark
in 1944. -- DBK.
(10) These pirates are always appearing about the same
time in English State papers as plundering along the coasts of the British
Isles, especially Ireland.
(11) For all the old Scandinavian poetry extant in Icelandic,
see "Corpus Poeticum Borealis" of Vigfusson and Powell.
(12) Snake-tongue -- so called from his biting satire.
(13) "Sigurd the Volsung", which seems to have become
all but forgotten in this century. -- DBK.
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Introduction
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