V.

"I know not, I know not," said Hogni, "but an unsure bridge is the sea,And such would I oft were builded betwixt my foeman and me.I know a sorrow that sleepeth, and a wakened grief I know,And the torment of the mighty is a strong and fearful foe."(P. 281.)

(P. 281.)

Gunnar is here distinguished as a hypocrite by word and deed; Gudrun remembers Sigurd in her exile and schemes and plots to make her husband Atli work her vengeance on the Niblungs; Atli is greedy for gold and Gudrun's task is not hard; Knefrud is a liar whose words are winning, and overcome the scruples of the Niblungs. In these careful discriminations of character we see a non-epical trait, and of necessity therefore, a non-Icelandic trait. The sagaman was epic in his tone.

As a last appreciation of the art of William Morris as it is displayed in this poem, we would call attention to the tremendous battle-piece entitled "Of the Battle in Atli's Hall." It is the climax of this marvelous poem, and in no detail is it inadequate to its place in the work. The poet's constructive power is here demonstrated to be of the highest order, and in the majestic sweep of events that is here depicted, we see the poet in his original role ofmaker. The sagaman's skill had not the power to conceive this titanic drama, and the memory of his battle-piece is quite effaced by the modern invention. In blood and fire the story comes to an end with Gudrun,

The white and silent woman above the slaughter set.

As we turn from the scene and the book, that figure fades notaway. And it is fitting that the last memory of this poem should be a picture of love and hate, inextricably bound together, for that is the irony of Fate, and Fate was mistress of the Old Norseman's world.

Between the great works dealt with in the last two sections, which belong together and were therefore so considered, came the book of 1875, bearing the titleThree Northern Love Stories and Other Tales. It is as good a representation as Iceland can make in the love-story class.

These tales are charmingly told in the translation of Morris and Magnusson, the second one, "Frithiof the Bold," being a master-piece in its kind. Men will dare much for the love of a woman, and that is why the sagaman records love episodes at all. Frithiof's voyage to the Orkneys in Chap. VI is a stormpiece that vies with anything of its kind in modern literature. It is Norse to the core, and we love the peerless young hero who forgets not his manhood in his chagrin of defeat at love. Surely there is fitness in these outbursts of song in moments of extreme exultation or despair! "And he sang withal:

"Helgi it is that helpethThe white-head billows' waxing;Cold time unlike the kissingIn the close of Baldur's Meadow!So is the hate of HelgiTo that heart's love she giveth.O would that here I held her,Gift high above all giving!"

Modern literature has lost this conventionality of the older writings, found in Hebrew as well as in Icelandic, and we think it has lost something valuable. Morris thought so, too, for he restored the interpolated song-snatches in his Romances. We are tempted to dwell on these three love-stories, they are so fine; but we must leave them with the remark that they show the poet's appreciation of the worth of a foreign literature, and his great desire to have his countrymen share in his admiration for them. "The Story of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue and Raven the Skald," and "The Story of Viglund the Fair," are the other two stories that give the title to the volume, representing the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, as "Frithiof" represented the fourteenth.

WithSigurd the Volsungended the first great Icelandic period of Morris's work. More than a dozen years passed before he returned to the field, and from 1889 until his death, in 1896, everything he wrote bore proofs of his abiding interest in and affection for the ancient literature. The remarkable series of romances,The House of the Wolfings(1889),The Roots of the Mountains(1890),The Story of the Glittering Plain(1891),The Wood Beyond the World(1895),The Well at the World's End(1896) andThe Sundering Flood(posthumous), are none of them distinctively Old Norse in geography or in story, but they all have the flavor of the saga-translations, and are all the better for it. They are as original and as beautiful as the poet's tapestries and furniture, and if they did not provoke imitation as did the tapestries and furniture, it was not because they were not worth imitating: more than likely there were no imitators equal to the task. In these romances we have men and women with the characteristics of an olden time that are most worthy of conservation in the present time. The ideals of womanfolk and manfolk inThe House of the WolfingsandThe Roots of the Mountains, for instance, are such as an Englishman might well be proud to have in his remote ancestry. Hall-Sun, Wood-Sun, Sunbeam, and Bowmay are wholesome women to meet in a story, and Thiodolf, Gold-mane, Iron-face and Hallward are every inch men for book-use or to commune with every day. Weaklings, too, abide in these stories, and Penny-thumb and Rusty and Fiddle and Wood-grey lend humanity to the company.

The two romances last mentioned are so steeped in the atmosphere of the sagas, that what with folk-motes and shut-beds, and byres, and man-quellers, and handsels and speech-friends, we seem to lose ourselves in yet another version of a northern tale. Morris retains the old idiom that he invented for his translations, and keeps the tyro thumbing his dictionary, but the charm is increased by the archaisms. As one seeks the words in the dictionary, one learns that Chaucer, Spenser and the Ballads were the wells from which he drew these rare words, and that his employment of them is only another phase of his love for the old far-off things. It is true that the language of Morris is not ofany one stadium of English, but it is a poet's privilege to draw upon all history for his words as well as for his allusions, and the revivals in question are of worthy words pushed aside by the press of newer, but not necessarily better forms.

These works are the kind that show the influence of Old Norse literature as spiritual rather than substantial. The stories are not drawn from the older literature, nor are the settings patterned after it; but the impulses that swayed men and women in the sagaman's tale, and the motives that uplifted them, are found here. We cannot think that the English people will always be unmindful of the great debt that they owe to the Muse of the North.

In 1891, Morris engaged in a literary enterprise that set the fashion for similar enterprises in succeeding years. With Eirikr Magnusson he undertook the making ofThe Saga Library, "addressed to the whole reading public, and not only to students of Scandinavian history, folk-lore and language."[33]With Bernard Quaritch's imprint on the title pages, these volumes to the number of five were issued in exceptional type and form. The munificence of the publisher was equalled by the skill of the translators, and in their versions of "Howard, the Halt," "The Banded Men," and "Hen Thorir" (in Vol. I, dated 1891), "The Ere-Dwellers" (in Vol. II, dated 1892) andHeimskringla(in Vols. III, IV and V, dated 1893-4-5), the definitive translations of sterling sagas were given. As was the case with theirGrettis Saga, the works rise to the dignity of masterpieces, and had we no other legacy from Morris' wealth of Icelandic scholarship, these translations were precious enough to keep us grateful through many generations.

One more contribution to English literature hailing from the North, and we have done with William Morris's splendid gifts. The volume of 1891, entitledPoems by the Way, contains several pieces that must be reckoned with. The vividest recollections of Icelandic materials here made use of are the poems "Iceland First Seen," and "To the Muses of the North." Noreader of the poet's biography can forget the remarkable journey that Morris made through Iceland, nor how he prepared for that journey with all the care and love of a pilgrim bound for a shrine of his deepest devotion. Every foot of ground was visited that had been hallowed by the noble souls and inspiring deeds of the past, and that pilgrimage warmed him to loving literary creation through the remainder of his life. The last two stanzas of the first of the poems just mentioned show what a strong hold the forsaken island had upon his affections, and go far to explain the success of his Icelandic work:

O Queen of the grief without knowledge,of the courage that may not avail,Of the longing that may not attain,of the love that shall never forget,More joy than the gladness of laughterthy voice hath amidst of its wail:More hope than of pleasure fulfilledamidst of thy blindness is set;More glorious than gaining of allthine unfaltering hand that shall fail:For what is the mark on thy browbut the brand that thy Brynhild doth bear?Lone once, and loved and undoneby a love that no ages outwear.Ah! when thy Balder conies back,and bears from the heart of the SunPeace and the healing of pain,and the wisdom that waiteth no more;And the lilies are laid on thy brow'mid the crown of the deeds thou hast done;And the roses spring up by thy feetthat the rocks of the wilderness wore.Ah! when thy Balder comes backand we gather the gains he hath won,Shall we not linger a littleto talk of thy sweetness of old,Yea, turn back awhile to thy travailwhence the Gods stood aloof to behold?

Ah! when thy Balder conies back,and bears from the heart of the SunPeace and the healing of pain,and the wisdom that waiteth no more;And the lilies are laid on thy brow'mid the crown of the deeds thou hast done;And the roses spring up by thy feetthat the rocks of the wilderness wore.Ah! when thy Balder comes backand we gather the gains he hath won,Shall we not linger a littleto talk of thy sweetness of old,Yea, turn back awhile to thy travailwhence the Gods stood aloof to behold?

In several other poems in this volume he recurs to the practice of his romances, Scandinavianizes where the tendency of otherpoets would be to mediævalize. "Of the Wooing of Hallbiorn the Strong," and "The Raven and the King's Daughter" are examples. Here we have ballads like those that Coleridge and Keats conceived on occasion, full of the beauty that lends itself so kindly to painted-glass decoration; clustered spear-shafts, crested helms and curling banners, and everywhere lily hands combing yellow hair or broidering silken standards. But the names strike a strange note in these songs of Morris, and the accompaniments are very different from the mediæval kind:

Come ye carles of the south country,Now shall we go our kin to see!For the lambs are bleating in the south,And the salmon swims towards Olfus mouth.Girth and graithe and gather your gear!And ho for the other Whitewater![34]

The introduction of the homely arts of bread-winning distinguishes the romance of Scandinavia from the romance of Southern Europe, and here Morris struck into a new field for poetry. Wherever we turn to note the effects of Icelandic tradition, we find this presence of daily toil, always associated with dignity, never apologized for. The connection between Morris' art and Morris' socialism is not hard to explain.

No commentary can equal Morris' own poem, "To the Muse of the North," in setting forth the charm that drew him to the literature of Iceland:

O Muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,Thy right hand full of smiting and of wrong,Thy left hand holding pity; and thy breastHeaving with hope of that so certain rest:Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid,The soft lips trembling not, though they have saidThe doom of the World and those that dwell therein.The lips that smile not though thy children winThe fated Love that draws the fated Death.O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath,Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,That, if it may be, I may have a partIn that great sorrow of thy children deadThat vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head,Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream,And death the murmur of a restful stream,But left no stain upon those souls of thineWhose greatness through the tangled world doth shine.O Mother, and Love and Sister all in one,Come thou; for sure I am enough aloneThat thou thine arms about my heart shouldst throw,And wrap me in the grief of long ago.

After William Morris the northern strain that we have been listening for in the English poets seems feeble and not worth noting. Nevertheless, it must be remarked that in the harp of a thousand strings that wakes to music under the bard's hands, there is a sweep which thrills to the ancient traditions of the Northland. Now and then the poet reaches for these strings, and gladdens us with some reminiscence of

old, unhappy, far-off thingsAnd battles long ago.

As had already been intimated, the table of contents in a present-day volume of poetry is very apt to show an Old Norse title. Thus Robert Lord Lytton'sPoems Historical and Characteristic(London, 1877) reveals among the poems on European, Oriental, classic and mediaeval subjects, "The Death of Earl Hacon," a strong piece inspired by an incident inHeimskringla. In Robert Buchanan's multifarious versifying occurs this title: "Balder the Beautiful, A Song of Divine Death," but only the title is Old Norse; nothing in the poem suggests that origin except a notion or two of the end of all things. "Hakon" is the title of a short virile piece more nearly of the Norse spirit. Sidney Dobell's dramaBalderhas only the title to suggest the Icelandic, but Gerald Massey has the true ring in a number of lyrics, with themes drawn from the records of Norway's relations with England. In "The Norseman" there is a trumpet strain that recalls the best of the border-ballads; there is also a truthfulness of portraiture that argues a poet's, intuition in Gerald Massey, if not an acquaintance with the sagas:

The Norseman's King must stand up tall,If he would be head over all;Mainmast of Battle! when the plainIs miry-red with bloody rain!And grip his weapon for the fight,Until his knuckles grin tooth-white,The banner-staff he bears is bestIf double handful for the rest:When "follow me" cries the Norseman.

He knows the gentler side of Old Norse character, too, a side which, as we have seen, was not suspected till Carlyle came:

He hides at heart of his rough life,A world of sweetness for the Wife;From his rude breast a Babe may pressSoft milk of human tenderness,—Make his eyes water, his heart dance,And sunrise in his countenance:In merriest mood his ale he quaffsBy firelight, and with jolly heart laughsThe blithe, great-hearted Norseman.

The poem "Old King Hake," is as strikingly true in characterization as the preceding. In half a dozen strophes Massey has told a whole saga, and has found time, too, to describe "an iron hero of Norse mould." How miserable a personage is the Italian that flits through Browning's pages when contrasted with this hero:

When angry, out the blood would startWith old King Hake;Not sneak in dark caves of the heart,Where curls the snake,And secret Murder's hiss is heardEre the deed be done:He wove no web of wile and word;He bore with none.When sharp within its sheath asleepLay his good sword,He held it royal work to keepHis kingly word.A man of valour, bloody and wild,In Viking need;And yet of firelight feeling mildAs honey-mead.

Another poem, "The Banner-Bearer of King Olaf," pictures the strong fighter in a death he rejoiced to die. It is a goodpoem of the class that nerves men to die for the flag, and it has the Old Norse spirit. These poems are all from Massey's volumeMy Lyrical Life(London. 1889).

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. Morris makes one of the personages inThe Story of the Glittering Plain(Chap. I) say these words: "And as for Lord, I knew not this word, for here dwell we the Sons of the Raven in good fellowship, with our wives that we have wedded, and our mothers who have borne us, and our sisters who serve us." Almost may this description serve for Iceland in its golden age, and so it is no wonder that the socialist, the priest, and the philosopher of our own disjointed times go back to the sagas for ideals to serve their countrymen.

We have no other poets to mention by name in connection with this Old Norse influence, although doubtless a search through the countless volumes that the presses drop into a cold and uncaring world would reveal other poems with Scandinavian themes. We close this section of our investigation with the remark already made, that, in the tables of titles in volumes of contemporary verse, acknowledgment to Old Norse poetry and prose are not the rarity they once were, and in poems of any kind allusions to the same sources are very common.

We have already noted the beginning of serial publications of saga translations, namely, Morris and Magnusson'sSaga Librarywhich was stopped by the death of Morris when the fifth volume had been completed. By the last decade of the nineteenth century Icelandic had become one of the languages that an ordinary scholar might boast, and in consequence the list of translations began to lengthen very fast. Several English publishers withscholarly instincts were attracted to this field, and so the reading public may get at the sagas that were so long the exclusive possession of learned professors.The Northern Library, published by David Nutt, of London, already contains four volumes and more are promised:The Saga of King Olaf Tryggwason,by J. Sephton, appeared in 1895;The Tale of Thrond of Gate(Færeyinga Saga), by F. York Powell, in 1896;Hamlet in Iceland(Ambales Saga), by Israel Gollancz, in 1898;The Saga of King Sverri of Norway(Sverris Saga), by J. Sephton, in 1899. If we cannot give to these the praise of being great literature though translations, we can at least foresee that this process of turning all the readable sagas into English will quicken adaptations and increase the stock of allusions in modern writings.

An example of the publishers' feeling that the reading public will find an interest in the saga itself, is the translation ofLaxdæla Sagaby Muriel A.C. Press (London, 1899, J.M. Dent & Co.). William Morris made this saga known to readers of English poetry by his magnificent "Lovers of Gudrun." Mrs. Press lets us see the story in its original form. Perhaps this translation will appeal as widely as any to those who read, and we may note the differences between this form of writing and that to which the modern times are accustomed.

This saga is a story, but it is not like the work of fiction, nor like the sketch of history which appeals to our interest to-day. It has not the unity of purpose which marks the novel, nor the broad outlook over events which characterizes the history. Plotting is abundant, but plot in the technical sense there is none. Events are recorded in chronological order, but there is no march of those events to adenouement. While it would be wrong to say that there is no one hero in a saga, it would be more correct to say that that hero's name is legion. From generation to generation a saga-history wends its way, each period dominated by a great hero. The annals of a family edited for purposes of oral recitation, or the life of the principal member of that family with an introduction dealing with the great deeds of as many of his ancestors as he would be proud to own—this seems to be what a saga was—Laxdæla,Grettla,Njala.

This form permits many sterling literary qualities. Movementis the most marked characteristic. This was essential to a spoken story, and the sharpest impression left in the mind of an English reader is that of relentless activity. Thus he finds it necessary to keep the bearings of the story by consulting the list ofdramatis personæand the map, both indispensable accompaniments of a saga-translation. The chapter headings make this list, and a glance at them forLaxdælareveals a procession of notable personages—Ketill, Unn, Hoskuld, Olaf the Peacock, Kiartan, Gudrun, Bolli, Thorgills, Thorkell, Thorleik, Bolli Bollison and Snorri. Each of these is, in turn, the center of action, and only Gudrun keeps prominent for any length of time.

Character-portraiture, ever a remarkable achievement in literature, is excellently done in the sagas. There was a necessity for this; so many personages crowded the stage that, if they were not to be mere puppets, they would have to be carefully discriminated. That they were so a perusal of any saga will prove.

In a novel love is almost indispensable; in a saga other forces are the impelling motives. Love-making gets the novelist's tenderest interest and solicitude, but it receives little attention from the sagaman. Wooing under the Arctic Circle was a methodical bargaining, and there was little room for sentiment. When Thorvald asked for Osvif's daughter Gudrun, the father "said that against the match it would tell that he and Gudrun were not of equal standing. Thorvald spoke gently and said he was wooing a wife, not money. After that Gudrun was betrothed to Thorvald.... He should also bring her jewels, so that no woman of equal wealth should have better to show.... Gudrun was not asked about it and took it much to heart, yet things went on quietly." (Chap. XXXIV ofLaxdæla.) In Iceland, as elsewhere, love was a source of discord, and for that reason love is always present in the saga. It is not the tender passion there, silvered with moonlight and attended by song. The saga is a man's tale.

The translation just referred to is inThe Temple Classics, published by J.M. Dent & Co., London, 1899, and edited by Israel Gollancz. The editor promises (p. 273) other sagas in this form, if Mrs. Press's work prove successful. He speaks ofNjalaandVolsungaas imminent. It is to be hoped that the intention is to give the Dasent and the Morris versions, for they cannot be excelled.

[1]

Quoted in Gray, by E.W. Gosse, English Men of Letters, p. 163.

[2]

B. Hoff. Hovedpunkter af den Oldislandske litteratur-historie. København. 1873.

[3]

Pp. xli-l in Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Gray, edited by W.L. Phelps. Ginn & Co., Boston. 1894.

[4]

Life of Gray, pp. 160 ff.

[5]

Wm. Sharp in Lyra Celtica, p. xx. Patrick Geddes and Colleagues. Edinburgh. 1896.

[6]

Of Heroic Virtue, p. 355, Vol. III of Sir William Temple's Works. London. 1770.

[7]

Of Heroic Virtue, p. 356.

[8]

Of Poetry, p. 416.

[9]

Spelling and punctuation are as in the original.

[10]

Stopford Brooke, English Literature. D. Appleton & Co., New York. 1884. p. 150.

[11]

Vol. 3, pp. 146-311.

[12]

Quoted in Introduction, p. vii.

[13]

Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Vol. I, p. 231. Boston, Houghton, Osgood & Co. 1879.

[14]

Edinburgh Review, Oct., 1806.

[15]

Quoted in Lockhart's Life, Vol. III, p. 241.

[16]

In G.W. Dasent's Life of Cleasby, prefixed to the Icelandic-English Dictionary. Based on the MS. collection of the late Richard Cleasby, enlarged and completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson. Oxford. 1874.

[17]

In another work by Carlyle,The Early Kings of Norway(1875) he takes special delight in revealing to Englishmen name etymologies that hark back to Norse times. Of this sort are Osborn from Osbjorn; Tooley St. (London) from St. Olave, St. Oley, Stooley, Tooley, (Chap. X).

[18]

The Early Kings of Norwaybears a later date—1875—than the works we are considering just now, and it is dealt with here only because Carlyle'sHeroes and Hero-Worshipbelongs in the decade we are considering.

[19]

Chap. V of Preliminary Dissertation.

[20]

Letters, Vol. I, p. 55, dated Dec. 12, 1855.

[21]

Home of the Eddic Poems, p. xxxix. London, 1899. David Nutt.

[22]

Introduction to the Cleasby Dictionary.

[23]

Oxford Essays, 1858, p. 214.

[24]

Lectures delivered in America in 1874, by Charles Kingsley. London. 1875. p. 71.

[25]

P. 78.

[26]

P. 89.

[27]

P. 90.

[28]

P. 91.

[29]

P. 96.

[30]

The Life of William Morris, by J.W. Mackail. London, New York, Bombay. Vol. I, p. 200.

[31]

Edmond Scherer. Essays on English Literature, p. 309.

[32]

Citations are from the 3d edition. Boston. 1881.

[33]

Preface to Vol. I, p. v.

[34]

The Wooing of Hallbiorn.

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