The Scandinavian Nation held, during the Middle Ages, the first and
strongest influence over the poetry and thought of Western Europe. The
oldest and purest remains of the poets of German Nations are contained
in the Scandinavian Edda. Its mythology is founded on Polytheism; but
through it, as through the religion of all nations of the world, there
is a faint gleam of the one Supreme God, of infinite power, knowledge
and wisdom, whose greatness and justice could not be represented in the
form of ordinary man. Such was the God of the Pagan Germans, and such
was the earliest belief of mankind.
Perhaps the poet priests of primitive times, who shaped the imaginative
mythology of the North, were conscious of the one true God; but
considered Him above the comprehension of the rude men of the times, so
they invented the deities who were more nearly akin to the material
forces that these people alone understood. The second part of the first
Edda contains the great Icelandic poems, the first of which is the song
of Voland, the famous northern smith.
Voland, or Wayland, the Vulcan of the North, is of unknown antiquity;
and his fame, which spread all over Europe, still lives in the
traditions of all the nations of the North. These poems, although
fragmentary, still far surpass the Nibelungen-lied, and in their
powerful pathos and tragic passion they surpass any ancient poetry
except that of Greece.
The Scandinavians in general, and Icelanders in particular, traveled
over every part of the West, and penetrated into hitherto unexplored
seas, collecting in every quarter the facts and fancies of the age. In
the character of wandering Normans they exerted a strong influence in
shaping poetry, and in developing the Crusades. They brought back with
them to their Northern homes the Christian and chivalrous poems of the
South. In many of these the likeness to the Icelanders own Northern
Sagas was remarkable, suggesting some still more remote age when one
heroic conception must have dominated all peoples.
After bringing home these poems of Southern Europe, the Scandinavians
proceeded to adapt them to their own use, giving them a new force and
beauty. The marvellous in Southern poetry became with them something
fraught with deeper meaning; and the Northern version of the
Nibelungen-lied acquired an ascendency in its strength and poetical
beauty, over the German heroic. Hence, during the Middle Ages, the
Scandinavians in general, and Icelanders in particular, came to possess
a peculiar chivalrous poetry of their own. It was, however, destined to
share the same fate as the great poems of the rest of Europe; first to
be reduced to prose romance, and then broken up into ballads. The chief
cause of this breaking up of the old order of poetry was due to the
Reformation. The national poetry was left to be carried on by the
common people alone, and of course in their hands was corrupted and
mutilated. Scott speaks of this in his Lay of the Last Minstrel, where
he describes the old bard, who
"'Tuned to please a peasant's ear
The harp a King had loved to hear."
These Bards, or Scalds, meaning Smoothers of Language, were welcome
guests in the early ages, at the Courts of Kings and Princes. Up to the
twelfth century, when the Monks and the art of writing, put an end to
their profession, these poets continued to come from Iceland and travel
all over the world. In return for their songs they received rings and
jewels of more or less value; but never money. We have a list of 230
Scalds who made a name for themselves from the time of Dagnar Lodbrok
to that of Vladimir II, or from the end of the eighth to the beginning
of the thirteenth century. When Christianity entered Scandinavia the
spirit of the old tradition still remained with the people, and became
their literature under the name of "Folk Sagas," or as we would call
them, fairy tales. These legends are found not only in modern
Scandinavia, but they have made their way into all the literature of
Europe. Jack the Giant Killer, Cinderella, Blue Beard, the Little Old
Woman Cut Shorter, and the Giant who smelled the blood of an Englishman
(the Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum of our nursery days), were all heroes and
heroines of Scandinavian songs, later adapted in various ways to the
use of different countries. After awhile this lost art revived in the
Romances of chivalry, and in popular ballads. They describe all the
changes in life and society, and are akin to the ballads of the British
Isles. In them we find the common expression of the life and feelings
of a common race. The same stories often influenced the bards of all
countries at different periods. These ballads are all written in the
same form and express a certain poetic feeling which is not found in
the Epic Age. In all countries they had a refrain, or chorus, which
marks the migration of poetry from the Epic to the Lyric form.
"This simple voice of song," to quote a modern author, "travelled
onward from mouth to mouth, from heart to heart, the language of the
general sorrows, hopes and memories; strange, and yet near to every
one, centuries old, yet never growing older, since the human heart,
whose history it relates in so many changing images and notes, remains
forever the same."