William Paton Ker

“ When the Cardinal William came to Norway in the reign of King Hacon and got to know about the Icelanders, he was scandalized at their freedom, and sent a message to them to ask why they could not come in and be governed by a king, like the rest of the world. It is true enough that their ideas and ways were not those of the thirteenth century, and that they have the example of all Christendom against them. ”

“ And further, while he thus exhibits the practical genius of the king, Sturla does not neglect the more showy part of his government—as in the coronation that so impressed the Scottish knight. The correspondence with the Emperor Frederick and King Lewis of France, with King James of Aragon, the Conqueror, and King Alfonso of Castile, the Wise, not to speak of the Sultan of Tunis—all this takes one far from the dales of Iceland. The King of Norway belonged to the great world, and to the new fashions. ”

“ But he, the grandson of the founder of the house, wrote at any rate a large part of the history; there is no doubt of that, so that for this time there exists not only a contemporary chronicle, but the memoirs of one who was most intimately concerned, himself one of the persons in the drama.
And his work is the completion of Icelandic prose. It is hardly a metaphor to say that it is the mind of Iceland, expressing itself in the best way at the end of the old Icelandic life. ”

“ The intellectual fortunes of Iceland are as strange as its social history. There is the same mixture of very old Teutonic ideas with others that seem to have escaped the Middle Ages altogether, or at any rate to be more at home in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. ”

“ The interests are those of private life. Hence Sturla had to change his manner somewhat in dealing with the larger political affairs of Norway. There is a different scale and other motives. Sturla does something to bring out his conception of the kingly office; as in the chapter which he gives to a well-filled day of King Hacon's life, in the Christmas time of his most anxious year, when the king had to attend the funeral of one of his lords, and also to look after the launch of a warship, besides hearing cases and holding a court. ”

“ Icelandic prose is very near to the spoken language; it is rich in idiom and in conversation, and the artistic form given to it by writing men seems to follow easily from the natural growth of the spoken traditional tale.
By the early part of the thirteenth century most of the old stories had been written; and not only the Icelandic Sagas of the heroic age, but also the lives of the kings of Norway, which are best known in the work of Snorri, commonly called Heimskringla. ”

“ The father is a king's man, as he calls himself, and among many other things he tells his views about the nature of a king and the manners of a Court: how one should demean himself in the presence of the king. For instance, if the king is sitting at table when you are admitted, you must stand at the proper distance and leave room for the waiters. You should hold your left wrist in your right hand, and be careful to listen to what the king says. ”

“ There is no place in the world, I believe, that sends him more sincere good wishes, or takes a deeper interest in his success and in his fame.
I have no need to defend my choice of a subject; it is already authorized; the University has published the Sturlunga Saga, edited by Gudbrand Vigfússon, with the help, as he tells us in his preface, of his friend York Powell of Christ Church. This book contains among other things the Icelandic memoirs of Sturla the historian; Sturla's Norwegian history, the life of King Hacon, with the same editor, has been printed by the Master of the Rolls. ”

“ When he had finished the queen thanked him, and many others besides, and made him out in their minds to be a learned man and sensible. But the king said nothing; only he smiled a little. Sturla thought he saw that the king's whole frame of mind was brighter than the day before. So he said to the king that he had made a poem about him, and another about his father: 'I would gladly get a hearing for them'. The queen said: 'Let him recite his poem; I am told that he is the best of poets, and his poem will be excellent'. ”

“ Nevertheless, the Icelandic State in its pride, its seclusion, its opposition to the common way of the world, is a creation as miraculous as the contemporary achievements of the Northern race at the other end of the scale—I mean the political work of the Normans in the new-fashioned kingdom of England. ”

“ His brother, Thord, had two sons, who were distinguished literary men: our Sturla the historian, who was also a poet, and Olaf the poet, who was also a philologist. Even the fighting men of the family might be fond of books: Sturla notes a fact of this sort about his cousin and namesake, Sturla Sighvatsson, [2] who was in practical life the perfection of that unscrupulous, light-hearted vanity which made all the sorrows of Iceland in those years. ”

“ It is true that this Godwinian republic began rather early to fall away from simplicity; perfect pure anarchy is too good for this world, and is soon corrupted. The Icelanders, before long, began to play the social contract, first of all by the voluntary agreement of neighbours under the presidency of the chief man of their country-side, then by an assembly of the whole island and the introduction of law. ”

“ Then his language was strong: 'Devil take their fleering and jeering! They will find soon that people have other things to do besides currying their favour!'
It is in this sort of domestic comedy that the Icelandic stories are most different from other medieval books.
In the year 1262 came the submission of Iceland to Norway, 'the end of an auld sang'. In 1263 Sturla was ruined, to all appearances. He had been dragged into trouble by an ill-conditioned son of his, and was beaten by his adversary, Hrafn Oddsson, and had to leave Iceland. ”

“ You see a boat putting out from an island, or a party of men riding along the shore; you do not know whether they are friends or enemies until you go to find out. Two people of importance are talking business ”

“ In each case he makes suggestions of the proper people to take office; the mischief being that he names people rather too good for the situation, beginning fairly low down and gradually rising to more and more dignified names, till it dawns upon his son that he is being chaffed. At last Sighvat proposes for his son's servants two of the greatest personages in the island; and the glorious young man flings out of the room in a passion. ”

“ He drilled his own army, and with them he drilled the country, 'making the peace' there effectively, so that a time came when the Birkibeinar were received as benefactors, and the power of King Sverre was established and made legitimate.
The difficulty about Carlyle's heroes is to know what is going to happen when the hero dies. After Sverre's death in 1202 the old games began again—faction fights as ruinous as those of Iceland. The difference between the two countries was that in Norway there was always a semblance of a principle to fight about ”