Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

“ Everybody knows that alliteration was a principle of Icelandic verse. It strikes the ear that hears Icelandic poetry for the first time—or the eye that sees it, since most of us read it silently—as unpleasantly insistent, but on fuller acquaintance, we lose this sense of obtrusiveness. Morris, in this poem, uses alliteration, but so skilfully that only the reader that seeks it discovers it. A less superb artist would have made it stick out in every line, so that the device would be a hindrance to the story-telling. ”

“ There are some features of the Old Norse version that are especially charming, and first among them is the address of the awakened Brynhild to the sun and the earth. We are told that this maiden loved the radiant hero that here awoke her from her age-long sleep, but not for him is her first greeting. A finer thrill moves her than love for a man, and in Morris's poem, this feeling finds singularly beautiful expression:
All hail O Day and thy Sons, and thy kin of the coloured things! ”

“ The Icelander must tell his story in haste; the deeds of men are his care, not their divagations nor their psychologizings. The modern writer must linger on every step in the story until the motive and the meaning are laid bare. In the present-day version Sigurd's mental sufferings are described at length, and our hearts are wrung at his unmerited woes. The saga knows no such woes, and to all appearance Sigurd's life is not unhappy to its very end. Indeed, it appears in more than one place in Morris's poem that Sigurd has become godlike through the hard experiences of his life. ”

“ These tales are charmingly told in the translation of Morris and Magnusson, the second one, "Frithiof the Bold," being a master-piece in its kind. Men will dare much for the love of a woman, and that is why the sagaman records love episodes at all. Frithiof's voyage to the Orkneys in Chap. VI is a stormpiece that vies with anything of its kind in modern literature. It is Norse to the core, and we love the peerless young hero who forgets not his manhood in his chagrin of defeat at love. Surely there is fitness in these outbursts of song in moments of extreme exultation or despair! ”

“ Grimhild's plotting and administering of the drugged drink are told in two hundred words; his acceptance of Gudrun's hand and her brother's allegiance are as tersely pictured; kingdoms are conquered, a son is born to Sigurd, and Grimhild plots to have Sigurd get Brynhild for her son Gunnar, yet the record of it all is compressed within one hundred and fifty words. Of course, the modern poet can hem himself within no such narrow bounds as this. The artistic value of these various incidents is priceless, and Morris has lingered upon them lovingly and long. ”

“ This English version falls not at all below the original in this quality. The lines already quoted show Gudrun and Kiartan as to exterior. But this is a drama of flesh and blood creations, and they are men and women that move through it, not puppets. Souls are laid bare here, in quivering, pulsating agony. The tremendous figure of this story is not Kiartan, nor Gudrun, nor Refna, but Bodli, and certainly English narrative poetry has no second creation like to him. The mind reverts to Shakespeare to find fit companionship for Bodli in poetry, and to George Eliot and Thomas Hardy in prose. ”

“ Poetry, the mead of Odin. The earth, the vessel that floats on ages. A ship, the horse of the waves. A tongue, the sword of words. Night, the veil of cares."
A study of the notes to Warton's dissertation reveals the fact that he had made use of the books already mentioned in the list on a previous page, and of no others that are significant. But such excellent use was made of them, that it would seem as if nothing was left in them that could be made valuable for spreading a knowledge of and an enthusiasm for Icelandic literature. ”

“ Icelandic poetry is more difficult to read than Icelandic prose, and so it seems strange that the former should have been attacked first by English scholars. Yet so it was, and until 1844 our English literature had no other inspiration in old Norse writings than the rude and rugged songs that first lent their lilt to Gray. The human North is in the sagas, and when they were revealed to our people, Icelandic literature began to mean something more than Valhalla and the mead-bouts there. The scene was changed to earth, and the gods gave place to nobler actors, men and women. ”

“ While it would be wrong to say that there is no one hero in a saga, it would be more correct to say that that hero's name is legion. From generation to generation a saga-history wends its way, each period dominated by a great hero. The annals of a family edited for purposes of oral recitation, or the life of the principal member of that family with an introduction dealing with the great deeds of as many of his ancestors as he would be proud to own—this seems to be what a saga was—Laxdæla, Grettla, Njala. ”

“ In such works as this of Cottle, a Scott might find wherewith to lend color to a story or a poem, but the common man would borrow Walpole's words, used in characterizing Gray's "Odes": "They are not interesting, and do not ... touch any passion; our human feelings ... are not here affected. Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories they could conceive—the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an enemy in Odin's hall?" ”

“ There as thou drawest thy sword, thou shall think of the days that were
And the foul shall still seem foul, and the fair shall still seem fair;
But thy wit shall then be awakened, and thou shalt know indeed
Why the brave man's spear is broken, and his war shield fails at need;
Why the loving is unbeloved; why the just man falls from his state;
Why the liar gains in a day what the soothfast strives for late.
Yea, and thy deeds shalt thou know, and great shall thy gladness be ”

“ Each of these is, in turn, the center of action, and only Gudrun keeps prominent for any length of time.
Character-portraiture, ever a remarkable achievement in literature, is excellently done in the sagas. There was a necessity for this; so many personages crowded the stage that, if they were not to be mere puppets, they would have to be carefully discriminated. That they were so a perusal of any saga will prove.
In a novel love is almost indispensable; in a saga other forces are the impelling motives. ”

“ If the reader will persevere through the early chapters, until Grettir commands exclusive attention, he will come to a drama which has not many peers in literature. The outlaw kills a man in every other chapter, but this record is no vulgar list of brutal fights. Not inhuman nature, but human nature is here shown, human nature struggling with unrelenting fate, making a grand fight, and coming to its end because it must, but without ignominy. ”

“ I feel that these old Northmen were looking into Nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, true old race of men. ”

“ As we read these eloquent imaginings, we regret that the English reading public have left this work through fear of its great length or the ignorance of its existence, in the dust of half-forgotten shelves. Gold disused is true gold none the less, and the ages to come may be more appreciative than the present. ”

“ We have come now to a time when the field of our view broadens to include not only more and different material, but more and different men. The sagas were annexed to the old songs, and the body of literature to attract attention was thus increased a thousand fold. The antiquarians were supplanted by scholars who, although passionately devoted to the study of the past, were still vitally interested in the affairs of the time in which they lived. The second and greatest stage of the development of Old Norse influence in England has a mark of distinction that belongs to few literary epochs. ”

“ A young man of the people, with all their unexhausted force, vitality and enthusiasm; a man of simple aims and honest ways; as chivalrous and high-minded as any knight of old; as pure in life as a woman ”

“ The historian no longer limits his study to camp and court; the poet deigns to leave the drawing-room and library for humbler scenes. Folk-lore is now dignified into a science. The touch of nature has made the whole world kin, and our highly civilized century is moved by the records of the passions of the earlier society.
This change in taste was long in coming, and the emotional phase of it has preceded the intellectual. It is interesting to note that Gray and Morris both failed to carry their public with them all the way. ”

“ A glance at the other poems in Gerald Massey's volumes shows that like Morris, and like Kingsley, and like Carlyle, the poet was a workman eager to do for the workman. Is it not suggestive that these men found themselves drawn to Old Norse character and life? The Icelandic republic cherished character as the highest quality of citizenship, and put few or no social obstacles in the way of its achievement. The literature inspired by that life reveals a fellowship among the members of that republic that is the envy of social reformers of the present day. ”

“ In still another place has Morris departed far from the saga story. According to the poem, Sigurd meets each warning of Fafnir that the gold will be the curse of its possessor with the assurance that he will cast the gold abroad, and let none of it cling to his fingers. The saga, however, has this very frank confession: "Home would I ride and lose all that wealth, if I deemed that by the losing thereof I should never die; but every brave and true man will fain have his hand on wealth till that last day." ”

“ The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the mournful sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain, will be all of nature that is absolutely consonant with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. ”

“ Bodli comes to us from Icelandic literature, and in that fact we note the solidarity of poetic geniuses. Not only is the great figure of Bodli proof of this solidarity, but many other features of this poem prove it. "Lively feeling for a situation and power to express it constitute the poet," said Goethe. There are dramatic situations in "The Lovers of Gudrun" which hold the reader in a breathless state till the last word is said, and then leave him marveling at the imagination that could conceive the scene, and the power that could express it. ”

“ It should not be hard for the general reader to understand that the influence which is the theme of this dissertation is real and explicable. If he will but call the roll of his favorite heroes, he will find Sigurd there. In his gallery of wondrous women, he certainly cherishes Brynhild. These poetic creations belong to the English-speaking race, because they belong to the world. And if one will but recall the close kinship of the Icelandic and the Anglo-Saxon languages, he will not find it strange that the spirit of the old Norse sagas lives again in our English song and story. ”

“ It is not likely that the poems would have been understood without the preface and the explanatory notes, and these, in a measure, made the reader interested in the literature from which they were drawn. Gray called the pieces "dreadful songs," and so in very truth they are. Strength is the dominant note, rude, barbaric strength, and only the art of Gray saved it from condemnation. To-day, with so many imitations from Old Norse to draw upon, we cannot point to a single poem which preserves spirit and form as well as those of Gray. ”

“ Among the scholars who have labored to give England the benefit of a fuller and truer knowledge of Norse matters, none will be remembered more gratefully than Sir George Webbe Dasent. Known to the reading public most widely by his translations of the folk-tales of Asbjörnsen and Moe, he has still a claim upon the attention of the students of Icelandic. As we have seen, he gave out a translation of the Younger Edda in 1842, and during the half century and more that followed he wrote other works of history and literature connected with our subject. ”

“ The world in its turn will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.
Balder is the creation of Old Norse poetry that is most popular with contemporary English writers, and Matthew Arnold first made him so. As Bugge points out, no deed of his is "celebrated in song or story. His personality only is described; of his activity in life almost no external trait is recorded. All the stress is laid upon his death; and, like Christ, Baldr dies in his youth." ”

“ Let us look at the art of Morris as it is shown in telling "How Sigurd awoke Brynhild upon Hindfell." As in the saga, so in the English poem, this incident has a setting most favorable to the display of its remarkable beauties. It is a picture as pure and sweet as it has ever entered into the mind of man to conceive. The conception belongs to the poetic lore of many nations, and children are early introduced to the story of "Sleeping Beauty." ”

“ Arnold did a good service to Icelandic literature when he put into Regner's mouth mild sentiments and a love for home and family. The note is not lacking in the ancient literature, but it took Englishmen three centuries to find it. It was the scholar, Matthew Arnold, who first repeated the gentler strain in the rude music of the North, as it was the scholar, Thomas Gray, who first echoed the "dreadful songs" of that old psalmody. Gray has all the culture of his age, when it was still possible to compass all knowledge in one lifetime ”