Norse

“ In the Norse mythology we find deep devotion, but seldom tears. In the Greek, there are violent emotions and the fears flow copiously. In Norseland, there is plenty of imagination; but it is not of that light, variegated, butterfly, soap-bubble nature as in Greece. In the Norse mythology there is plenty of cordiality and sincerity, and the gods treat you hospitably to flesh of the boar, Sæhrimner; and the valkyries will give you deep draughts from bowls flowing with ale. In Greece there is gracefulness, a perfect etiquette, and you dine on ambrosia and nectar ”

“ Thus the Greek mythology is frivolous, the Norse is profound. The frivolous mind lives but to enjoy the passing moment; the profound mind reflects, considers the past and the future. The Greek abandoned himself wholly to the pleasures of this life, regardless of the past or future. The Norseman accepted life as a good gift, but he knew that he was merely its transient possessor. Over every moment of life hangs a threatening sword, which may in the next moment prove fatal. Life possesses no hour of the future. ”

“ The Old Norse literature found its real home in Iceland. In Norway, too, some beautiful buds were produced, but, however important these may be in other respects, they have but little value in a literary point of view as compared with the splendid blossoms that unfolded themselves in that distant island, whose inhabitants even to this day have preserved with loving tenderness the memory of their forefathers. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Our Norse forefathers thought of themselves always as looking on at a terrible fight between the gods, who were light and heat and fruitfulness, revealed in the beauty of day and the splendour of summer, and the giants, who were darkness, cold and barrenness, revealed in the gloom of night and the desolation of winter. To the Norseman, as to the Greek, the Roman, the Hindu and other primitive peoples, the world was the scene of a great struggle, the stage on which gods, demons, and heroes were contending for supremacy ”

“ Grow,—how strangely! I called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was alive; consider that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed Mind of the whole Norse People, longing only to become articulate, to go on articulating ever farther! The living doctrine grows, grows;—like a Banyan-tree; the first seed is the essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the earth, becomes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the parent of it all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In fact, these old Norse songs have a truth in them, an inward perennial truth and greatness,—as, indeed, all must have that can very long preserve itself by tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That this world is after all but a show,—a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Norse will know the best place for you folks."
We had come at once to the factory and the end of the boardwalk. It was but a few minutes before Mr. Norse had revealed himself as the pivot, the human hub, the magnet around which the mechanism of the mill revolved and clung, sure of finding its proper balance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The people who emigrated to Iceland were for the most part the flower of the nation. They went especially from the west coast of Norway, where the peculiar Norse spirit had been most perfectly developed. Men of the noblest birth in Norway set out with their families and followers to find a home where they might be as free and independent as their fathers had been before them. No wonder then that they took with them the cream of the ancient culture of the fatherland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You will find that simple and martial religion which gave the Norsemen that restless unconquerable spirit, apt to take fire at the very mention of subjection and constraint; that religion which forged the instruments that broke the fetters manufactured by the Roman emperors, destroyed tyrants and slaves, and taught men that nature having made all free and equal, no other reason but their mutual happiness could be assigned for making them dependent. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The older forms are Norse. There are poetical fragments of the story to be found in the ancient Scandinavian literature (you can find them in the library in the Corpus Poeticum Boreale) , and there is a splendid prose version of the story in the old Icelandic—this is the Volsunga Saga, from which Morris took his poetical materials. Between the versions of the German and the North, there are great differences of narrative, but perhaps not great differences of merit. If we could have the whole of the old Norse epic, we should perhaps find it even grander than the German. ”

“ But we should ill understand the spirit of the Norsemen, if we supposed that these transformations into beasts were all that the national heart has to tell of beasts and their doings, or that, when they appear, they do so merely as men-beasts, without any power or virtue of their own. From the earliest times, side by side with those productions of the human mind which speak of the dealings of men with men, there has grown up a stock of traditions about animals and their relations with one another, which forms a true Beast Epic, and is full of the liveliest traits of nature. ”

“ From Norse we get such common words as anger, both, call, egg, hit, husband, ill, law, loose, low, meek, take, till (prep.) , want, weak, wing, wrong, and even the plural forms of the 3rd personal pronoun (§ 12) .
It is not always easy to distinguish Norse from native words, because the two languages were so similar during the period of borrowing, and Norse words were adopted early enough to be affected by all ME. sound changes. But there were some dialectal differences between ON. and OE. in the ninth and tenth centuries, and these afford the best criteria of borrowing. ”

“ Then there are some not mentioned in the general record but who belong by every right of circumstance to this Norse immigrant group and whose separate chronicles are of special interest and importance in view of our general purpose. This purpose, as already stated, is to hand down to the sons and daughters of the Norse pioneer immigrants a picture of the men and women who faced primitive nature in this part of the new continent and tamed it, causing the wilderness to bloom into the present prosperous, beautiful land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then the blue-eyed Norseman told: A Saga of the days of old.
"There is," said he, "a wondrous book
Of Legends in the old Norse tongue,
Of the dead kings of Norroway,--
Legends that once were told or sung
In many a smoky fireside nook
Of Iceland, in the ancient day,
By wandering Saga-man or Scald ”

“ The Norse mythology is related to the Greek mythology to the same extent that the Norse language is related to the Greek language, and no more; and comparative mythology, when the scholar wields the pen, is as interesting as comparative philology.
The Greeks have their chaos, the all-embracing space, the Norsemen have Ginungagap, the yawning abyss between Niflheim (the nebulous world) and Muspelheim (the world of fire) . The Greeks have their titans, corresponding in many respects to the Norse giants. The Greeks tell of the Melian nymphs; the Norsemen of the elves, etc. ”

“ While the Greek mythology foreshadowed all the petty states of Greece, as well as those of South Europe and South America, the Norse mythology foreshadowed the political and social destinies of united Scandinavia, united Great Britain, united Germany, and the United States of North America. When the Greeks unite, they fall. We Northerners live only to be united.
As we would be led to suppose, from a study of the physical and climatical peculiarities of Greece and Norseland, we find that the Greek mythology forms an epic poem, and that the Norse is a tragedy. ”