Old Norse literature

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is refreshing to come upon new views of Old Norse character, that recognize "amidst anarchy and bloodshed, redeeming features of kindliness and better feeling which tell of the ( 28 ) mingled principles that war within our nature for the mastery." Laing's translation accomplished this for English readers, and with the years came a deeper knowledge that showed those touches of tenderness and traits of beauty which, even in 1844, were not perceptible to those readers. ”

“ It would lead us too far away from our purpose if we should undertake to prove that all the myths and traditions of the North are based on ancient poems, but the correctness of the statement is admitted by all scholars, and this being granted, it follows that Old Norse poetry must have been extraordinarily extensive in quantity. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ What he had to say was in support of a theory which is not accepted to-day, and of course his statements concerning the origin of the Scandinavian ( 15 ) people were as wrong as those that we found in Mallet and Temple. But with all his misinformation, Warton managed to get at many truths about Icelandic poetry, and his presentation of them was fresh and stimulating. Already the Old Norse mythology was well known, even down to Valhalla and the mistletoe. ”

“ Many of the old Norse poets were natives of Iceland, and in the early part of the Christian era, a supreme service was rendered to Norse literature by Christian priest, Sæmund, who industriously brought together a large amount of pagan poetry in a collection know as the Elder Edda, which is the chief foundation of our present knowledge of the religion of our Norse ancestors. ”

“ 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 are not concerned with these critical considerations here; and so it will be enough to record the fact that with the publication of Percy's Northern Antiquities—the English name of Mallet's work—in 1770, knowledge of Icelandic literature passed from the exclusive control of learned antiquarians. More and more, as time went on, men went to the Icelandic originals, and translations of poems and sagas came from the press in increasing numbers. In the course of time came original works that were inspired by Old Norse stories and Old Norse conceptions. ”

“ One can well understand, who handles the ponderous Thesaurus, why the first English lovers of Old Norse were antiquarians. "The Awakening of Angantyr" is literally buried in this work, and only the student of Anglo-Saxon prosody would come upon it unassisted, since it is an illustration in a chapter of the Grammaticæ Anglo-Saxonicæ et Moeso-Gothicæ. Students will remember in this connection that it was a work on poetics that saved for us the original Icelandic Edda. The Icelandic skald had to know his nation's mythology. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mass of a stock must supply our data for judging the stock. But see, moreover, what I have said at p. 100.
[120] Lord Strangford’s note on this is:—‘The Irish monks whose bells and books were found in Iceland could not have contributed anything to the old Norse spirit, for they had perished before the first Norseman had set foot on the island. The form of the old Norse poetry known to us as Icelandic, from the accident of its preservation in that island alone, is surely Pan-Teutonic from old times ”

“ To the unenlightened reader this poem reveals no traits that are un-English. What there is of Old Norse flavor here is purely spiritual. The original story being in prose, no attempt could be made to keep original characteristics in verse-form. So "The Lovers of Gudrun" can stand on its own merits as an English poem; no excuses need be made for it on the plea that it is a translation. ”

“ The old mythological stories of the Norsemen abound in poetry of the truest and most touching character. These stories tell us in sublime and wonderful speech of the workings of external nature, and may make us cheerful or sad, happy or mournful, gay or grave, just as we night feel, if from the pinnacle of Gausta Fjeld we were to watch the passing glories of morning and evening tide. There is nothing in these stories that can tend to make us less upright and simple, while they contain many thoughts and suggestions that we may be the better and happier for knowing. ”

“ So, too, in “The Lad who went to the North Wind”, No. xxxiv, though he can’t restore the meal he carried off, he gives the lad three things which make his fortune, and amply repay him. He, too, like the Grecian Boreas, is divine, and lineally descended from Hraesvelgr, that great giant in the Edda, who sits “at the end of the world in eagle’s shape, and when he flaps his wings, all the winds come that blow upon men.”
Enough surely has now been said to shew that the old religion and mythology of the Norseman still lives disguised in these popular tales. ”

“ Bound that earth, which was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and inveterate foes by a natural fortification of hills, flowed the great sea in a ring, and beyond that sea was Utgard, the outlying world, the abode of Frost Giants, and Monsters, those old-natural powers who had been dispossessed by Odin and the Æsir when the new order of the universe arose, and between whom and the new gods a feud as inveterate as that cherished by the Titans against Jupiter was necessarily kept alive. ”

“ In Heroes and Hero Worship, Thomas Carlyle makes the following striking comparison between Norse and Greek mythology: To me, he says, there is in the 55Norse system something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek paganism, distinguishes this Norse system. It is thought, the genuine thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them, a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of things—the first characteristic of all good thought in all times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Enough has been said, at least, to prove that even nursery tales may have a science of their own, and to shew how the old Nornir and divine spinners can revenge themselves if their old wives' tales are insulted and attacked. The inquiry itself might be almost indefinitely prolonged, for this is a journey where each turn of the road brings out a new point of view, and the longer we linger on our path, the longer we find something fresh to see. Popular mythology is a virgin mine, and its ore, so far from being exhausted or worked out, has here, in England at least, been scarcely touched. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The imperishableness of nature appears more strikingly in the stupendous mountains and gigantic forests than in the fertile, cultivated and protected parts of the earth. Now let us again ask: Is there nothing here for the poet or artist? Has the Norse mythology nothing that can be elaborated and clothed with beautiful forms and colors? Does this mythology not contain germs that art can develop into fragrant leaves, swelling buds and radiant blossoms? Does not this our Gothic inheritance deserve a place with the handmaids of literature? ”

“ 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 ”

“ This old belief, then, might be expected to be found in these Norse Tales, and accordingly we find men transformed in them into various beasts. Of old these transformations, as we have already stated, were active, if we may use the expression, as well as passive. A man who possessed the gift frequently assumed the shape of a beast at his own will and pleasure, like the soldier in Petronius. Even now in Norway, it is matter of popular belief that Finns and Lapps, who from time immemorial have passed for the most skilful witches and wizards in the world, can at will assume the shape of bears ”

“ Fauns, dryads, nymphs, satyrs, naiads, bacchantes poured out from the right entrance, eddying in snowy whirlpools around the chariots of the Grecian gods; and the influence of the Russian ballet was visible in every lithely leaping figure.
Contemporaneously, from the left entrance, emerged the old Norse gods: Odin, shaggy and fully armed; Loki, all a-glitter with dancing flames; Baldin the Beautiful, smirking; Fenris the Wolf; Frija, blond and fiercely beautiful—the entire Norse galaxy surrounded by skin-clad warriors and their blond, half-naked mates. ”

“ 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. ”