Scandinavian literature

“ And yet in the midst of all the severe trials to which the Scandinavian North has been exposed in this respect in the course of time, its peculiar national life has preserved its germinating power, which has frequently given startling signs of life, and which finally in the fulness of time developed a surprising wealth of flowers that from the beginning of this century to the present day give the people in all the Scandinavian lands a literary individuality in the strictest sense their own. ”

“ It is curious that, despite the rapid growth of interest in Scandinavian literature through the English-speaking world, there has been up to now no book to represent one of the most brilliant fields of achievement, the Swedish short story. ”

“ At our Centennial Exhibition, in 1876, I spent many delightful days in the Swedish department, and I remember with still vivid interest its unequalled specimens of wood-carving, and the paintings in which the effect of moonlight on the water was reproduced with such marvelous fidelity and skill. The fair-haired people of the Scandinavian Peninsula have indeed stamped their impress upon the history, the literature, the arts, the industries, and the laws and government of the whole civilized world, and always the influence exerted by their teaching and example has been wholesome and beneficent. ”

“ If the question be asked, of what interest it can be to foreign readers to make a special study of the literary history of the Scandinavian peoples, the first answer must be that this literature occupies a respectable and important position by the side of the literatures of the other civilized peoples. It deserves recognition not only as the intellectual product of a race to which has been assigned a prominent part in the world's history, but also on account of its own peculiar merits. ”

“ Finally there are some, which have been preserved only in the form of ancient traditions, as for instance in Saxo's Chronicle of Denmark.
Like their kinsmen, the Germans, the inhabitants of the North have doubtless at an early age practised the art of poetry, and given expression to their memories of the past, and to that which moved the hearts of the people, in songs, which we presume were particularly heard in the courts of the kings and in the halls of the nobles. At the dawn of historical times we find the skalds practising their art everywhere in the North. ”

“ Educated Danes and Swedes, for instance, mutually understand each other more easily than they do one of their own countrymen in the narrower sense of the word, who speaks a popular dialect of the same language, and the difficulties that a Dane has to overcome in order to be able to appropriate the treasures of Swedish literature, or the obstacles that stand in the way of the Swede in reference to Danish books, are very slight indeed. With the language spoken in Iceland the case is a very different one. ”

“ But the question becomes a widely different one, when we, as we of necessity must, look upon them as a link of a great chain. Then the form in which they were written down, becomes a merely accidental circumstance, while the main fact remains, that the songs, of which the Edda-poems give us a few fragments, are the true expression of the popular spirit of the North, which revealed itself around the lakes of Sweden and on the flat fields of Denmark, in the same manner as among the mountains of Norway. ”

“ She is authority on the music, history and literature of the Scandinavians, and a collection of her writings in that field would form the most valuable compendium of Scandinavian lore to be found in the English language. She has done valuable work in making Americans familiar with Norwegian literature and music in her "Evenings with the Music and Poetry of Norway," which she initiated in Concord, Mass., while visiting relatives in that historic town. ”

“ The history of the Scandinavian countries does not really begin before the time when Christianity, with steadily increasing power, found its way beyond the borders of the North, that is to say, about the beginning of the ninth century. ”

“ The literature of the modern peoples of the North—including the Icelanders—might easily have been described collectively, and certainly an author might be tempted to follow this plan, since by that method the important idea of the essential unity of the intellectual products of the northern peoples could be far more clearly expressed and vindicated than when each literary field is considered by itself. ”

“ The literary contact with Norway was begun in 1861, when Lorenz Dietriechson was appointed a docent at the University of Upsala, and for the first time made the contemporary Norwegian and Danish poets acquainted in Sweden. What Sweden received from Norway was a quaint, late-born Romanticism of a strong national flavor. When this Romanticism was changed into stern Realism its influence upon Swedish culture, especially her literature, was only increased, Swedish literature receiving strong realistic impulses from the neighboring Scandinavian countries. ”

“ It is not the intention, in the present essay, to illustrate the literature of the Germanic nations, but to take up that portion embraced in the general term of Scandinavian, which embraces the literature of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. It is also known by the term Old-Northern or Norse, and as Icelandic literature. It is embodied in the Eddas and Historical Sagas as they are called, in the countries of the north. The former consists of collections of Icelandic poems, written upon parchment, or skins, in the language of that country ”

“ The inscriptions of the following centuries are of far less philological interest, because after the 13th century there exists another and more fruitful source for Old Swedish, viz. a literature in the proper sense of the word. Of runic literature nothing has been preserved to our days. The literature in the Latin letters is both in quality and extent incomparably inferior to Old Icelandic, though it, at least in quantity, considerably surpasses Old Norwegian. In age, however, it is inferior to both of them, beginning only in the 13th century. ”

“ Thus we have, for instance, distinct evidence that Volsung traditions were known in Sweden, in the deeply interesting pictorial representations of it on two characteristic Swedish runic monuments, which date from the close of the tenth or from the first half of the eleventh century. [6] Many traditions of this kind are also preserved by Saxo in his Chronicle of Denmark, some of which are purely Danish, connected with Danish localities, and found only in that country; while others differ in the manner in which they are related from the form in which they have been recorded in Iceland. ”

“ In several of these points, and indeed generally speaking, the Western Scandinavian languages have preserved the more primitive forms, as may be seen in the oldest Eastern Scandinavian runic inscriptions, dating from a period before the beginning of the literature, as well as in many modern Eastern Scandinavian dialects. For, having regard to the Scandinavian dialects generally, we must adopt quite a different classification from that indicated by the dialects which are represented in the literature. ”

“ Ages rolled away; the religion of Odin had perished from the mainland, and the very hymns and poems in which its doctrines were recorded had perished with it, when, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Rhythmical Edda of Samund was discovered, followed by the Prose Edda of Snorre Sturleson. These discoveries roused the zeal of the Scandinavian literati, and led to further investigations, which resulted in the discovery of a vast number of chronicles and sagas, and much has since been done by the learned men of Iceland and Denmark to bring to light the remote annals of northern Europe. ”

“ The history of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden is as captivating as a romance, and it presents an astonishing variety of the most singular events, which would afford admirable subjects for epic and dramatic poetry, as well as for the historical novel. The English reader will perceive, likewise, that the Scandinavian mythology is the fountain head of many of the most popular tales, legends, and ballads of his own country. ”

“ She gathered to herself the arts and the sciences, the fashion and the elegance, of the North; and to-day, although warlike pride and power have fallen from her, although trade and commerce have lessened in her midst, yet the arts and the sciences, the culture and the elegance are still her own, and the fine old city claims to be as markedly as of yore the intellectual center of the Scandinavian race. ”

“ Thenceforward, with such fluctuations as mark all culture-history, the Scandinavian world has progressed mentally nearly [Pg 282] step for step with the rest of Europe, producing scholars, historians, men of science, artists, and imaginative writers in more than due proportion. Many names which stand for solid achievement in the little-read Scandinavian tongues are unknown save to specialists elsewhere ”

“ In the historic exhibits are many relics of interesting Swedish sovereigns: the spinet and the medicine chest of Gustav Adolf; a beautifully jeweled prayer book which belonged to his daughter, the eccentric Queen Christina; and the crown and sceptre of Charles X.
But I cared most of all for the picture gallery. It was such a surprise. Sweden has an astonishing number of great living artists now—men and women who are attracting the attention of the world by contributing something new and truly Scandinavian to the art of the world. ”

“ The tree of freedom grows more vigorous amid its granite hills. And as it grows in the Northern States of America, grows it also in our Scandinavian North. But what this North possesses, and which America possesses not, is an antiquity full of song and saga, of glorious prophecy and symbolism, of gods and heroes who gave to Scandinavia so large, so peculiar, so romantic a life. It is this antiquity, its significance for the present time, its life in our scenery, and our every-day life which attracts me once more to my native land, as powerfully as my mother's voice. ”

“ Though the great majority of the popular ballads of Scandinavia are attributed to the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the composition of them by no means ceased then. This voice of the people continued more or less to find expression down to the close of the last century, when it became the means of leading back its admirers to truth and genuine feeling, and, more than anything else, contributed to the revival of a new era in literature. ”

“ While I had learned in America to esteem the vigor, the intelligence and the worth of our Scandinavian immigration, no finer race contributing to the citizenship of the Republic, yet it has been only when I have met the Dane and Norsk and Swede upon their native soil, and beheld their noble cities, so alert and clean and modern, and traversed their hills and valleys, and climbed their mountain heights and floated upon their fjords, that I have learned fitly to admire and appreciate the grandeur and greatness of Scandinavia. ”

“ Kristiania is also the literary and art center of the Norse people. Here Ibsen lives, here Bjoernstjoerne Bjoernsen would live, if Swedish intolerance did not drive him into France. The types of men and women we see upon the streets are the finest we have met since coming over sea. Tall and well-built, light-haired and blue-eyed, the men carry themselves with great dignity. The women are, many of them, tall, their backs straight, not the curved English spine and stooping shoulders. All have good chins, alert and initiative. The Norwegians are the pick of the Scandinavian peoples. ”

“ Thanks to this magic fruit, the Scandinavian gods, who, because they sprang from a mixed race, were not all immortal, warded off the approach of old age and disease, and remained vigorous, beautiful, and young through countless ages. ”

“ The place where above all others the ballad took root and flourished was Scandinavia, The French lyrical dancing game came north just when what Professor Ker calls the "Viking industry" was passing away and the Scandinavian kingdoms were aspiring to enter into the comity of European nations. It carried all before it. The old native alliterative unrhymed verse, [23] the old native literary culture, came to an end. The foreign culture planted in its place grew and flourished, and took on new and finer forms in its adopted home. ”

“ However, as I did not come to Sweden to inculcate my peculiar principles, I refrained from calling attention to the fact—which is very patent to all who have any sort of knowledge of Swedish history—that a large proportion of the men and women who have made Scandinavia the truly great land that it is, and whose memory all Scandinavians delight to honor, were of the so-called “common people.” ”

“ Such was the conclusion of our Scandinavian ancestors—a belief forced upon them by their intense realisation of the futility of human hopes and schemings, of the terror and the tragedy of life, the vanity of its desires, and the untravelled gloom or sleep, dreamless or dreamfull, which lies beyond its end. ”

“ The whole evidence of history manifestly leads to the conclusion that Britain long preceded the Scandinavian races in civilisation, nor was it till she had been enervated alike by Roman luxury and by the succeeding intestine jealousies and rivalries of native tribes, that Scandinavia, fresh in her young barbarian vigour, made of her a spoil and a prey. ”

“ Beside this, I consider that, even in the matter of Language, the direct Scandinavian element of the English is much underrated; [3] and still more underrated is the indirect Scandinavian element of the Norman-French. And here, again, when we come to the Conquest, we must grapple with new dialects, irregular imaginations, and mystical and mysterious Mythologies; for the things that have a value in Language, have a value in History also. ”