Norse people

“ 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. ”

“ The old Norse Mythology, with its Thor hammers and Thor hammerings, appeals to us,—for we are a Northern people,—as the true out-crop of human nature, more manly, more real, than the weak marrow-bones superstition of an effeminate South. ”

“ The old Norse element has penetrated, and diffused itself, and hardened into the dialect of the Cumberland and Westmorland "fell-siders," and emphatically pronounces from whom it came. And, lastly, the physical and moral characteristics, as well as the manners and customs of the people, are those of the hardy race, whose transmitted blood gave the larger nerve and more enduring vigour which characterise their frame. Tall, bony, and firmly knit; fair-haired, and of Sanguine complexion; possessing strong feelings of independance, and a large share of shrewdness and mother-wit ”

“ Metal-working and wood-carving were the most important arts of the Norse. If children study products of these arts and actually do some of the work, they will gain a quickened sympathy with the people and an appreciation of their power. They may, perhaps, make something to merely illustrate Norse work; for instance, a carved ship's-head, or a copper shield, or a wrought door-nail. ”

“ Far and wide the Vikings lay in their glittering mail, as the ripe wheat lies after the reaping. Among them lay thousands of bodies clad in the wolf hides of the tribes, but the dead of the Northern people far outnumbered the dead of Erin. I was weary and sick of the stench of raw blood. I had glutted my soul with slaughter; now I sought plunder. And I found it--on the corpse of a richly-clad Norse chief which lay close to the seashore. I tore off the silver-scaled corselet, the horned helmet. ”

“ The influence that the outward features of a country exercise upon the thoughts and feelings of men, especially during the vigorous, imaginative, poetic and prophetic childhood of a nation, can hardly be overestimated. Necessarily, therefore, do we find this influence affecting and modifying a nation’s mythology, which is a child-like people’s thoughts and feelings, contemplating nature reflected in a system of religion. Hence, it is eminently fitting, in comparing the Norse mythology with the Greek, to take a look at the home of the Norsemen. ”

“ The need which ten centuries ago drove the Vikings to harry Europe, to-day forces their descendants into all the navies of the world. Granite and frost have made the Norse immigrant rough-mannered, reserved, and undemonstrative, cautious in speech, austere in church life, and little given to recreation. German Gemüthlichkeit is not in him, nor has he the Irishman's sociability. Often he is as taciturn as an Indian, and the lonely farm-houses on the prairie, where not a needless word is uttered the livelong day, contribute many young people to the city maëlstrom. ”

“ A large-hearted people reaching out in the dark towards ideals which were better than they knew. Ragnarok was to undo their gods because they had stumbled from their higher standards.
We have to thank a curious phenomenon for the [xv] preservation of so much of the old lore as we still possess. While foreign influences were corrupting the Norse language, it remained practically unaltered in Iceland, which had been colonised from the mainland by the Norsemen who had fled thither to escape the oppression of Harold Fairhair after his crushing victory of Hafrsfirth. ”

“ In the history of Scandinavian culture, however, lie some special illustrations of sociological law. The remarkable fact that the first great development of old Norse literature occurred in the poor and remote colonial settlement of Iceland is significant of much. To the retrospective yearning of an exiled people, the desire to preserve every memory of the old life in the fatherland, is to be attributed the grounding of the saga-cult in Iceland ”

“ The Icelanders of the present day retain the Old Norse language, while on the Continent it has been modified into Swedish and Norwegian-Danish. They are a well-educated people, and, in proportion to their numbers, publish many books. [Back to Main Text]
Footnote 177: A full collection of these chronicles is given in Rafn's Antiquitates Americanæ, Copenhagen, 1837, in the original Icelandic, with Danish and Latin translations. ”

“ Since the three Norse peoples, practically without illiteracy and with active and ambitious minds, have settled in a large number of moderate-sized communities, frequently isolated from each other, and since their differences of opinion in matters religious and ecclesiastical are often positive and aggressive, the number of their publications of all kinds since the middle of the last century is curiously large, and quite as remarkable for their migratory and short-lived character. ”

“ Iceland peopled from Norway becomes the original home of the Old Norse literature. Why the Icelanders became preëminently a historical people. The Elder and Younger Edda, and their principal contents. The forms of Old Norse poetry. The Skaldic poetry and its development from the drapas to the rhymes. The most famous skalds and their drapas. Saga-writing. Icelandic Genealogies. Kings' Sagas. Snorre Sturlason's Heimskringla. Mythic-heroic Sagas. ”

“ Not only does it smack of the sea-breeze and the salt water like all the finest old Norse sagas: but it gives a glimpse at least, of the nobleness which underlay the grim and often cruel nature of the Norseman. It belongs, too, to the culminating epoch, to the beginning of that era when the Scandinavian peoples had their great times; when the old fierceness of the worshippers of Thor and Odin was tempered, without being effeminated by the Faith of the ‘White Christ,’ till the very men who had been the destroyers of Western Europe became its civilisers. ”

“ Such were the gods, and such the heroes of the Norseman; who, like his own gods, went smiling to death under the weight of an inevitable destiny. But that fate never fell on their gods. Before this subjective mythological dream of the Norsemen could be fulfilled, the religious mist in which they walked was scattered by the sunbeams of Christianity. A new state and condition of society arose, and the creed which had satisfied a race of heathen warriors, who externally were at war with all the world, became in time an object of horror and aversion to the converted Christian. ”

“ In the Norse gods, then, \ve see the Norseman himself, sublimed and elevated beyond man's nature, but bearing about with him all his bravery and endurance, all his dash and spirit of adventure, all his fortitude and resolution to struggle against a certainty of doom which, sooner or later, must overtake him on that dread day, the "twilight of the gods," when the wolf was to break loose, when the great snake that lay coiled round the world should lash himself into wrath, and the whole race of the Æsirs and their antagonists were to perish in internecine strife. ”

“ Advantage of the Study of Norse Literature—Bear and Wolf-skin Dresses—The Berserkir—Their Rage—The Story of Thorir—Passages from the Aigla—The Evening Wolf—Skallagrim and his Son—Derivation of the Words Hamr and Vargr— Laws affecting Outlaws—"To become a Boar"—Recapitulation. One of the great advantages of the study of old Norse or Icelandic literature is the insight given by it into the origin of world-wide superstitions. Norse tradition is transparent as glacier ice, and its origin is as unmistakable. ”

“ The work, both in prose and verse, is well done, and the attempt was successful to make, as the preface proposes, the "rendering close and accurate, and, if it might be so, at the same time, not over prosaic." The last two paragraphs of this preface are particularly interesting to one who is tracing the influence of Old Norse literature on English literature, because they are words with power, that have stirred men and will stir men to learn more about a wonderful land and its lore. ”

“ Some turned their prows to the northward and settled in the Faroes or Iceland, or on the more distant American shore. These were, perhaps, the more peaceably disposed; they found lands waiting for settlement that became at once their own. Their descendants are Norsemen to-day, and among the most cultured of mankind. Others fared to the British Isles or the Continent of Europe or to the more distant Mediterranean Sea. These found lands that were richer, but to be gained only at the point of the sword. These set up powerful kingdoms, but none of them are Norse to-day. ”

“ Still we must bear in mind that this national spirit was not created by this faith. The harsh climate of the North modified not only the Norse mythology, but also moulded indefinitely the national character, and then the two, the mythology and the national character, acted and reacted upon each other. Thus bred up to fight with nature in a constant battle for existence, and witnessing the same struggle in the life of his gods, the Norseman became fearless, honest and truthful, ready to smite and ready to forgive, shrinking not from pain himself and careless about inflicting it on others. ”

“ But we are bound to believe that the Norseman not only made good his footing in the district, but established his language and customs there. And that being so, the old Norse literature of which such splendid remains have come down to us is obviously the best of all guides to a right understanding of the early history of any Danish colony or district in England. That literature, with its tales of daring adventure, its poetry, its mythology, its lives of heroes, and with its striking details of domestic manners reveals to us the daily life and customs of the Northmen who settled amongst us. ”

“ Mark, at present, so much: what the essence of Scandinavian, and, indeed, of all paganism, is: a recognition of the forces of nature as godlike, stupendous, personal agencies—as gods and demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant thought of man opening itself with awe and wonder on this ever stupendous universe. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse gods brewing ale to hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jötun; sending out Thor to get the caldron for them in the Jötun country ”

“ Norsemen's thralls plowed the soil and planted crops and herded cattle, and gold flowed into their masters' treasure-chests. Norse warriors walked up and down the land, and no man dared to say them nay.
These men did not forget Norway. In the summers they sailed back there and harried the coast. They took gold and grain and beautiful cloth back to their homes. In Norway they left burning houses and weeping women.
Every summer King Harald had out his ships and men and hunted these vikings. There are many little islands about Norway. They have crags and caves and deep woods. ”

“ Before they could collect themselves or form any plan for defense, the Norsemen were upon them, and then there followed an awful scene of carnage. The clash of steel, the hoarse shouts and cries of the Saxons, the shrieks and groans of the women, mingled with the exultant yells of the Danes. High above all, rose the Norse battle song which contained a covert sneer at the English religion:
“We have sung the mass of the lances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From a variety of circumstances, but two before all the rest—the one their settlement in Iceland, which preserved their language and its literary treasures incorrupt; the other their late conversion to Christianity—their cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have not, as elsewhere, to pick up and piece together the wretched fragments of a faith, the articles of which its own priests had forgotten to commit to writing, and which those of another creed had dashed to pieces and destroyed, wherever their zealous hands could reach. ”

“ But he has in him that deep strength of character and natural power upon which the good powers always smile. He is the man whom Heaven helps, because he can help himself; and so, after his brothers try and fail, he alone can watch in the barn, and tame the steed, and ride up the glass hill, and gain the Princess and half the kingdom. The Norse “Boots” shares these qualities in common with the “Pinkel” of the Swedes, and the Dummling of the Germans, as well as with our “Jack the Giant Killer”, but he starts lower than these—he starts from the dust-bin and the coal-hole. ”