TEUTON QUALITIES: ANGLO-SAXON, GERMAN, NORSE
There were intellectual as well as emotional differences between the Celts
and Teutons. A certain hard rationality and grasp of fact mark the
mentality of the latter. On land or sea they view the situation, realize
its opportunities, their own strength, and the opposing odds: with
definite and persistent purpose they move, they fight, they labour. The
quality of purposefulness becomes clearer as they emerge from the forest
obscurity of their origins into the open light of history. To a definite
goal of conquest and settlement Theodoric led the Ostrogoths from Moesia
westward, and fought his way into Italy. With persistent purposefulness
Clovis and his Merovingian successors intrigued and fought. Among
Anglo-Saxon pirates the aim of plunder quickly grew to that of conquest.
And in times which were to follow, there was purpose in every voyage and
battle of the Vikings. The Teutons disclose more strength and persistency
of desire than the Celts. Their feelings were slower, less impulsive; also
less quickly diverted, more unswerving, even fiercer in their strength.
The general characteristic of Teutonic emotion is its close connection
with some motive grounded in rational purpose.
Caesar’s short sketch of the Germans[171] gives the impression of
barbarous peoples, numerous, brave, overweening. They had not reached the
agricultural stage, but were devoted to war and hunting. There were no
Druids among them. Their bodies were inured to hardship. They lived in
robust independence, and were subject to their chiefs only in war. Their
fiercest folk, the Suevi, from boyhood would submit neither to labour nor
discipline, that their strength and spirit might be unchecked. It was
deemed shameful for a youth to have to do with women before his twentieth
year.
The Roman world knew more about these Germans by the year A.D. 99 when
Tacitus composed his _Germania_. They had scarcely yet turned to
agriculture. Respect for women appears clearly. These barbarians are most
reluctant to give their maidens as hostages; they listen to their women’s
voices and deem that there is something holy and prophetic in their
nature. Upon marriage, oxen, a horse, and shield and lance make up the
husband’s _morgengabe_ to his bride: she is to have part in her husband’s
valour. Fornication and adultery are rare, the adulteress is ruthlessly
punished; men and maidens marry late. The men of the tribe decide
important matters, which, however, the chiefs have previously discussed
apart. The people sit down armed; the priests proclaim silence; the king
or war-leader is listened to, and the assembly is swayed by his persuasion
and repute. They dissent with murmurs, or assent brandishing their spears.
There is thus participation by the tribe, and yet deference to reputation.
This description discloses Teutonic freedom as different from Celtic
political unrestraint. Tacitus also speaks of the Germanic _Comitatus_,
consisting of a chief and a band of youths drawn together by his repute,
who fight by his side and are disgraced if they survive him dead upon the
field. In time of peace they may seek another leader from a tribe at war;
for the Germans are impatient of peace and toil, and slothful except when
fighting or hunting. They had further traits and customs which are
barbaric rather than specifically Teutonic: cruelty and faithlessness
toward enemies, feuds, _wergeld_, drinking bouts, gambling, slavery,
absence of testaments.
Between the time of Tacitus and the fifth century many changes came over
the Teuton tribes. Early tribal names vanished, while a regrouping into
larger and apparently more mobile aggregates took place. The obscure
revolutions occurring in Central Europe in the second, third, and fourth
centuries do not indicate social progress, but rather retrogression from
an almost agricultural state toward stages of migratory unrest.[172] We
have already noted the fortunes of those tribes that helped to barbarize
and disrupt the Roman Empire, and lost themselves among the Romance
populations of Italy, Gaul, and Spain. We are here concerned with those
that preserved their native speech and qualities, and as Teuton peoples
became contributories to the currents of mediaeval evolution.
I
When the excellent Apollinaris Sidonius, writing in the middle of the
fifth century to a young friend about to enter the Roman naval service off
the coasts of Gaul, characterized the Saxon pirates as the fiercest and
most treacherous of foes, whose way is to dash upon their prey amid the
tempest, and for whom shipwreck is a school, he spoke truly, and also
illustrated the difference that lies in point of view.[173] Fierce they
were, and hardy seamen, likewise treacherous in Roman eyes, and insatiate
plunderers. From the side of the sea they represented the barbarian
disorder threatening the world. The Roman was scarcely interested in the
fact that these men kept troth among themselves with energy and sacrifice
of life. The Saxons, Angles, Jutes, whose homes ashore lay between the
Weser and the Elbe and through Sleswig, Holstein, and Denmark, possessed
interesting qualities before they landed in Britain, where under novel
circumstances they were to develop their character and institutions with a
rapidity that soon raised them above the condition of their kin who had
stayed at home. Bands of them had touched Britain before the year 411,
when the Roman legions were withdrawn. But it was only with the landing of
Hengest and Horsa in 449 that they began to come in conquering force. The
Anglo-Saxon conquest of the island went on for two centuries. Information
regarding it is of the scantiest; but the Britons seem to have been
submerged or driven westward. There is at least no evidence of any
friendly mingling of the races. The invaders accepted neither Christianity
nor Roman culture from the conquered, and Britain became a heathen
England.
While these Teuton peoples were driving through their conquest and also
fighting fiercely with each other, their characters and institutions were
becoming distinctively Anglo-Saxon. Under stress of ceaseless war,
military leaders became hereditary kings, whose powers, at least in
intervals of peace, were controlled by the Witan or Council of the Wise,
and limited by the jurisdiction of the Hundred Court. Likewise the
temporary ties of the Teutonic _Comitatus_ became permanent in the body of
king’s companions (thegns, thanes), whose influence was destined to
supplant that of the eorls, the older nobility of blood. The _Comitatus_
principle pervades Anglo-Saxon history as well as literature; it runs
through the _Beowulf_ epic; Anglo-Saxon Biblical versifiers transfer it to
the followers of Abraham and the disciples of Christ; and every child
knows the story of Lilla, faithful thegn, who flung himself between his
Northumbrian king, Edwin, and the sword of the assassin--the latter sent
by a West Saxon king and doubtless one of _his_ faithful thegns. Their law
consisted mainly in the graded _wergeld_ for homicide, in an elaborate
tariff of compensation for personal injuries, and in penalties for
cattle-raiding. Beyond the matter of theft, property law was still
unwritten custom, and contract law did not exist. The rules of procedure,
for instance in the Hundred Court, were elaborate, as is usual in a
primitive society where the substantial rights are simple, and the
important thing is to induce the parties to submit to an adjudication.
Similar Teutonic customs obtained elsewhere. But the course of their
development in Saxon England displays an ever clearer recognition of
fundamental principles of English law: justice is public; the parties
immediately concerned must bring the case to court and there conduct it
according to rules of procedure; the court of freemen hear and determine,
but do not extend the inquiry beyond the evidence adduced before them; to
interpret and declare the law is the function of the court, not of the
king and his officers.[174]
During these first centuries in England, the Anglo-Saxon endowment of
character and faculty becomes clearly shown in events and expressed in
literature. A battle-loving people whose joy in fight flashes from their
“shield-play” and “sword-game” epithets, even as their fondness for
seafaring is seen in such phrases as “wave-floater,” “foam-necked,” “like
a swan” breasting the “swan-road” of the sea. But their sword-games and
wave-floatings had purpose, a quality that became large and steady as
generation after generation, unstopped by fortress, forest, or river,
pushed on the conquest of England. When that conquest had been completed,
and these Saxons were in turn hard pressed by their Danish kin more lately
sailing from the north, their courage still could not be overborne. It is
reflected in the overweening mood of _Maldon_, the poem which is also
called _The Death of Byrhtnoth_. The cold grey scene lies in the north of
England. The Viking invaders demand rings of gold; Byrhtnoth, the Alderman
of the East Saxons, retorts scornfully. So the fight begins with arrows
and spear throwings across the black water. The Saxons hold the ford. The
Sea-wolves cannot force it. They call for leave to cross. In his overmood
Byrhtnoth answers: “To you this is yielded: come straightway to us; God
only wots who shall hold fast the place of battle.” In the bitter end when
Byrhtnoth is killed, still speaks his thane: “Mind shall the harder be,
heart the keener, mood the greater, as our might lessens. Here lies our
Elder hewn to death. I am old; I will not go hence. I think to lay me down
by the side of my lord.”
The spiritual gifts of the Anglo-Saxons are discernible in their language,
which so adequately could render the Bible[175] and the phraseology of the
Seven Liberal Arts. Its terms were somewhat more concrete and physical
than the Latin, but readily lent themselves to figurative meanings. More
palpably the poetry with its reflection upon life shows the endowment of
the race. Marked is its elegiac mood. In an old poem is heard the voice of
one who sails with hapless care the exile’s way, and must forego his dear
lord’s gifts: in sleep he kisses him, and again lays hands and head upon
those knees, as in times past. Then wakes the friendless man, and sees the
ocean’s waves, the gulls spreading their wings, rime and snow falling.
More impersonal is the heavy tone of a meditative fragment over the ruins,
apparently, of a Roman city:
“Wondrous is this wall-stone,
fates have broken it,
have burst the stronghold,
roofs are fallen,
towers tottering,
hoar gate-towers despoiled,
shattered the battlements,
riven, fallen.
* * * *
Earth’s grasp holdeth
the mighty workmen
worn away, done for,
in the hard grip of the grave.”
But the noblest presentation of character in pagan Anglo-Saxon poetry is
afforded by the epic poem of _Beowulf_, which tells the story of a Geatic
hero who sets out for Denmark to slay a monster, accomplishes the feat, is
nobly rewarded by the Danish king, and returns to rule his own people
justly for fifty winters, when his valiant and beneficent life ends in a
last victorious conflict with a hoard-guarding dragon. Here myth and
tradition were not peculiarly Anglo-Saxon; but the finally recast and
finished work, noble in diction, sentiment, and action, expresses the
highest ethics of Anglo-Saxon heathendom. Beowulf does what he ought to
do, heroically; and finds satisfaction and reward. He does not seek his
pleasure, though that comes with gold and mead-drinking; consciousness of
deeds done bravely and the assurance of fame sweeten death at last.[176]
A century or more after the composition of this poem, there lived an
Anglo-Saxon whose aims were spiritualized through Christianity, whose
vigorous mind was broadened by such knowledge and philosophy as his epoch
had gathered from antique sources, and whose energies were trained in
generalship and the office of a king. He presents a life intrinsically
good and true, manifesting itself in warfare against heathen barbarism and
in endeavour to rule his people righteously and enlarge their knowledge.
Many of the qualities and activities of Alfred had no place in the life of
Beowulf. Yet the heathen hero and the Christian king were hewn from the
same rock of Saxon manhood. Alfred’s life was established upon principles
of right conduct generically the same as those of the poem. But
Christianity, experience, contact with learned men, and education through
books, had informed him of man’s spiritual nature, and taught him that
human welfare depended on knowledge and intent and will. Accordingly, his
beneficence does not stop with the armed safe-guarding of his realm, but
seeks to compass the instruction of those who should have knowledge in
order the better to guide the faith and conduct of the people. “He seems
to me a very foolish man and inexcusable, who will not increase his
knowledge the while that he is in this world, and always wish and will
that he may come to the everlasting life where nothing shall be dark or
unknown.”[177]
II
In spite of the general Teutonic traits and customs which the Germans east
and west of the Rhine possessed in common with the Anglo-Saxons, distinct
qualities appear in the one and the other from the moment of our nearer
acquaintance with their separate history and literature. So scanty,
however, are the literary remains of German heathendom that recourse must
be had to Christian productions to discover, for example, that with the
Germans the sentiment of home and its dear relationships[178] is as marked
as the Anglo-Saxon’s elegiac meditative mood. Language bears its witness
to the spiritual endowment of both peoples. The German dialects along the
Rhine were rich in abstract nouns ending in _ung_ and _keit_ and _schaft_
and _tum_.[179]
There remains one piece of untouched German heathenism, the
_Hildebrandslied_, which dates from the end of the eighth century, and may
possibly be the sole survivor of a collection of German poems made at
Charlemagne’s command.[180] It is a tale of single combat between a father
and son, the counterpart of which is found in the Persian, Irish, and
Norse literatures. Such an incident might be diversely rendered; armies
might watch their champions engage, or the combat might occur unwitnessed
in some mountain gorge; it might be described pathetically or in warrior
mood, and the heroes might fight in ignorance, or one of them know well,
who was the man confronting him. In German, this story is a part of that
huge mass of legend which grew up around the memory of the terrible Hun
Attila, and transformed him to the Atli of Norse literature, and to the
worthy King Etzel of the _Nibelungenlied_, at whose Court the flower of
Burgundian chivalry went down in that fierce feud in which Etzel had
little part. Among his vassal kings appears the mighty exile Dietrich of
Bern, who in the _Nibelungen_ reluctantly overcomes the last of the
Burgundian heroes. This Dietrich is none other than Theodoric the
Ostrogoth, transformed in legend and represented as driven from his
kingdom of Italy by Odoacer, and for the time forced to take refuge with
Etzel; for the legend was not troubled by the fact that Attila was dead
before Theodoric was born. Bern is the name given to Verona, and legend
saw Theodoric’s castle in that most beautiful of Roman amphitheatres,
where the traveller still may sit and meditate on many things. It is told
also that Theodoric recovered his kingdom in the legendary Rabenschlacht
fought by Ravenna’s walls. Old Hildebrand was his master-at-arms, who had
fled with him. In the _Nibelungen_ it is he that cuts down Kriemhild,
Etzel’s queen, before the monarch’s eyes; for he could not endure that a
woman’s hand had slain Gunther and Hagen, whom, exhausted at last,
Dietrich’s strength had set before her helpless and bound. And now, after
years of absence, he has recrossed the mountains with his king come to
claim his kingdom, and before the armies he challenges the champion of the
opposing host. Here the Old German poem, which is called the
_Hildebrandslied_, takes up the story:
“Hildebrand spoke, the wiser man, and asked as to the other’s
father--‘Or tell me of what race art thou; ’twill be enough; every one
in the realm is known to me.’
“Hadubrand spoke, Hildebrand’s son: ‘Our people, the old and knowing
of them, tell me Hildebrand was my father’s name; mine is Hadubrand.
Aforetime he fled to the east, from Otacher’s hate, fled with Dietrich
and his knights. He left wife to mourn, and ungrown child. Dietrich’s
need called him. He was always in the front; fighting was dear to him.
I do not believe he is alive.’
“‘God forbid, from heaven above, that thou shouldst wage fight with so
near kin.’ He took from his arm the ring given by the king, lord of
the Huns. ‘Lo! I give it thee graciously.’
“Hadubrand spoke: ‘With spear alone a man receives gift, point against
point. Too cunning art thou, old Hun. Beguiling me with words thou
wouldst thrust me with thy spear. Thou art so old--thou hast a trick
in store. Seafaring men have told me Hildebrand is dead.’
“Hildebrand spoke: ‘O mighty God, a drear fate happens. Sixty summers
and winters, ever placed by men among the spearmen, I have so borne
myself that bane got I never. Now shall my own child smite me with the
sword, or I be his death.’”
There is a break here in the poem; but the uncontrolled son evidently
taunted the father with cowardice. The old warrior cries:
“‘Be he the vilest of all the East people who now would refuse thee
the fight thou hankerest after. Happen it and show which of us must
give up his armour.’”
The end fails, but probably the son was slain.
Stubborn and grim appears the Old German character. Point to point shall
foes exchange gifts. Such also was the way when a lord made reward; on the
spear’s point presenting the arm-ring to him who had served, he accepting
it in like fashion, each on his guard perhaps. The _Hildebrandslied_
exhibits other qualities of the German spirit, as its bluntness and lack
of tact; even its clumsiness is evinced in the seventy lines of the poem,
which although broken is not a fragment, but a short poem--a ballad
graceless and shapeless because of its stiff unvarying lines.
In a later poem, which gives the story of Walter of Aquitaine, the same
set and stubborn mood appears, although lightened by rough banter. This
legend existed in Old German as well as Anglo-Saxon. In the tenth century,
Ekkehart, a monk of St. Gall, freely altering and adding to the tale, made
of it the small Latin epic which is extant.[181] Monk as he was, he tells
a spirited story in his rugged hexameters. He had studied classic authors
to good purpose; and his poem of Walter fleeing with his love Hildegund
from the Hunnish Court (for the all-pervasive Attila is here also) is
vivid, diversified, well-constructed--qualities which may not have been in
the story till he remodelled it. Its leading incidents still present
German traits. Walter and Hildegund carry off a treasure in their flight;
and it is to get this treasure that Gunther urges Hagen (for they are here
too) to attack the fugitive. This is Teutonic. It was for plunder that
Teuton tribes fought their bravest fights from the time of Alaric and
Genseric to the Viking age, and the hoard has a great part in Teutonic
story. In the _Waltarius_ Gunther’s driving avarice, Walter’s stubborn
defence of his gold are Teutonic. The humour and the banter are more
distinctly German, and nobly German is the relationship of trust and
honour between Walter and the maiden who is fleeing with him. Yet the
story does not revolve around the woman in it, but rather around the
shrewdly got and bravely guarded treasure.
German traits obvious in the _Hildebrandslied_, and strong through the
Latin of the _Waltarius_, evince themselves in the epic of the
_Nibelungenlied_ and in the _Kudrun_, often called its companion piece.
The former holds the strength of German manhood and the power of German
hate, with the edged energy of speech accompanying it. In the latter,
German womanhood is at its best. Both poems, in their extant form, belong
to the middle or latter part of the twelfth century, and are not
unaffected by influences which were not native German.
The _Nibelungenlied_ is but dimly reminiscent of any bygone love between
Siegfried and Brunhilde, and carries within its own narrative a sufficient
explanation of Brunhilde’s jealous anger and Siegfried’s death. Kriemhild
is left to nurse the wrath which shall never cease to devise vengeance for
her husband’s murderers. Years afterwards, Hagen warns Gunther, about to
accept Etzel’s invitation, that Kriemhild is _lancraeche_ (long vengeful).
The course of that vengeance is told with power; for the constructive soul
of a race contributed to this Volksepos. The actors in the tragedy are
strikingly drawn and contrasted, and are lifted in true epic fashion above
the common stature by intensity of feeling and the power of will to
realize through unswerving action the prompting of their natures. The
fatefulness of the tale is true to tragic reality, in which the far
results of an ill deed involve the innocent with the guilty.
A comparison of the poem with the _Hildebrandslied_ shows that the sense
of the pathetic had deepened in the intervening centuries. There is
scarcely any pathos in the earlier composition, although its subject is
the fatal combat between father and son. But the _Nibelungen_, with a
fiercer hate, can set forth the heroic pathos of the lot of one, who,
struggling between fealties, is driven on to dishonour and to death. This
is the pathos of the death of Rüdiger, who had received the Burgundians
in his castle on their way to Etzel’s Court, had exchanged gifts with
them, and betrothed his daughter to the youngest of the three kings. He
was as unsuspecting as Etzel of Kriemhild’s plot. But in the end Kriemhild
forces him, on his fealty as liegeman, to outrage his heart and honour,
and attack those whom he had sheltered and guided onward--to their death.
Not much love in this tale, only hate insatiable. But the greatness of
hate may show the passional power of the hating soul. The centuries have
raised to high relief the elemental Teutonic qualities of hate, greed,
courage and devotion, and human personality has enlarged with the
heightened power of will. The reader is affected with admiration and
sympathy. First he is drawn to Siegfried’s bright morning courage, his
noble masterfulness--his character appears touched with the ideals of
chivalry.[182] After his death the interest turns to Kriemhild planning
for revenge. It may be that sympathy is repelled as her hate draws within
its tide so much of guiltlessness and honour; and as the doomed Nibelungen
heroes show themselves haughty, strong-handed, and stout-hearted to the
end, he cheers them on, and most heartily that grim, consistent Hagen in
whom the old German troth and treachery for troth’s sake are incarnate.
The _Kudrun_[183] is a happier story, ending in weddings instead of death.
There was no licentiousness or infidelity between man and wife in the
_Nibelungen_, and through all its hate and horror no outrage is done to
woman’s honour. That may be taken as the leading theme of the _Kudrun_. An
ardent wooer, to be sure, may seize and carry off the heroine, and his
father drag her by the hair on her refusal to wed his son; but her honour,
and the honour of all women in the poem, is respected and maintained. The
ideal of womanhood is noble throughout: an old king thus bids farewell to
his daughter on setting forth to be married: “You shall so wear your crown
that I and your mother may never hear that any one hates you. Rich as you
are, it would mar your fame to give any occasion for blame.”[184]
A mediaeval epic may tell of the fortunes of several generations, and the
_Kudrun_ devotes a number of books to the heroine’s ancestors, making a
half-savage narrative, in which one feels a conflict between ancient
barbarities and a newer and more courtly order. When the venturesome
wooing and wedded fortune of Kudrun’s mother have been told, the poem
turns to its chief heroine, who grows to stately maidenhood, and becomes
betrothed to a young king, Herwig. A rejected wooer, the “Norman” Prince
Hartmuth, by a sudden descent upon the land in the absence of its
defenders, carries off Kudrun and her women by force of arms, and the
king, her father, is killed in an abortive attempt to recapture her. In
Hartmuth’s castle by the sea Kudrun spends bitter years waiting for
deliverance. His sister, Ortrun, is kind to her, but his mother, Gerlint,
treats her shamefully. The maiden is steadfast. Between her and Hartmuth
stands a double barrier: his father had killed hers; she was betrothed to
Herwig. Hartmuth repels his wicked mother’s advice to force her to his
will. In his absence on a foray Gerlint compels Kudrun to do unfitting
tasks. Hartmuth, returning, asks her: “Kudrun, fair lady, how has it been
with you while I and my knights were away?”
“Here I have been forced to serve, to your sin and my shame,”[185]
answers Kudrun--a great answer, in its truth and self-control.
After an interval of kind treatment the old “she-wolf” Gerlint sets Kudrun
with her faithful Hildeburg to washing clothes in the sea. It is winter;
their garments are mean, their feet are naked. They see a boat
approaching, in which are Kudrun’s brother Ortwin, and Herwig her
betrothed, who had come before their host as spies. A recognition follows.
Herwig is for carrying them off; Ortwin forbids it. “With open force they
were taken; my hand shall not steal them back”; dear as Kudrun is, he can
take her only _nâch êren_ (as becomes his honour). When they have gone,
Kudrun throws the clothes to be washed into the sea. “No more will I wash
for Gerlint; two kings have kissed me and held me in their arms.”
Kudrun returns to the castle, which soon is stormed. She saves Hartmuth
and his sister from the slaughter, and all sail home, where the thought is
now of wedding festivals.
Kudrun is married to Herwig; at her advice Ortwin weds Ortrun, and then
she thinks of Hartmuth’s plight, and asks her friend Hildeburg whether she
will have him for a husband. Hildeburg consents. Kudrun commands that
Hartmuth be brought, and bids him be seated by the side of her dear friend
“who had washed clothes along with her!”
“Queen, you would reproach me with that. I grieved at the shame they put
on you. It was kept from me.”
“I cannot let it pass. I must speak with you alone, Hartmuth.”
“God grant she means well with me,” thought he. She took him aside and
spoke: “If you will do as I bid, you will part with your troubles.”
Hartmuth answered: “I know you are so noble that your behest can be only
honourable and good. I can find nothing in my heart to keep me from doing
your bidding gladly, Queen.”[186] The high quality of speech between these
two will rarely be outdone.
There is directness and troth in all these German poems. Troth is an ideal
which must carry truth within it. The more thoughtful and reflecting
German spirit will evince loyalty to truth itself as an ideal. Wolfram’s
poem of _Parzival_ has this; and by virtue of this same ideal, Walter von
der Vogelweide’s judgments upon life and emperors and popes are whole and
steady, unveiling the sham, condemning the lie and defying the liar.[187]
In them dawns the spirit of Luther and the German Reformation, with its
love of truth stronger than its love of art.
III
Chronologically these last illustrations of German traits belong to the
mediaeval time; and in fact the _Nibelungenlied_ and _Kudrun_, and much
more Wolfram’s _Parzival_ and Walter’s poems, are mediaeval, because to
some extent affected by that interplay of influences which made the
mediaeval genius.[188] On the other hand, the almost contemporaneous Norse
Sagas and the somewhat older Eddic poems exhibit Teutonic traits in their
northern integrity. For the Norse period of free and independent growth
continued long after the distinctive barbarism of other Teutons had become
mediaevalized. There resulted under the strenuous conditions of Norse life
that unique heightening of energy which is manifested in the deeds of the
Viking age and reflected in Norse literature.[189]
This time of extreme activity opens in the eighth century, toward the end
of which Viking ravagers began to harry the British Isles. St. Cuthbert’s
holy island of Lindisfarne was sacked in 793, and similar raids multiplied
with portentous rapidity. The coasts of Ireland and Great Britain, and the
islands lying about them, were well plundered while the ninth century was
young. In Ireland permanent conquests were made near Dublin, at Waterford,
and Limerick. The second half of this century witnesses the great Danish
Viking invasion of England. On the Continent the Vikings worried the
skirts of the Carolingian colossus, and the Lowlands suffered before
Charlemagne was in his grave. After his death the trouble began in
earnest. Not only the coasts were ravaged, but the river towns trembled,
on the Elbe, the Rhine, the Somme, the Seine, the Loire. Paris foiled or
succumbed to more than one fierce siege. About the middle of the ninth
century the Vikings began to winter where they had plundered in the
summer.
The north was ruled by chiefs and petty kings until Harold Fairhair
overcame the chiefs of Norway and made himself supreme about the year 870.
But he established his power only after great sea-fights, and many of the
conquered choosing exile rather than submission, took refuge in the
Orkneys, the Faroes, and other islands. Harold pursued with his fleets,
and forced them to further flight. It was this exodus from the islands and
from Norway in the last years of the ninth century that gave Iceland the
greater part of its population. Thither also came other bold spirits from
the Norse holdings in Ireland.
While these events were happening in the west, the Scandinavians had not
failed to push easterly. Some settled in Russia, by the Gulf of Finland,
others along the south shore of the Baltic between the Vistula and Oder.
So their holdings in the tenth century encircled the north of Europe; for
besides Sleswig, Denmark, and Scandinavia, they held the coast of Holland,
also Normandy, where Rollo came in 912. Of insular domain, they held
Iceland, parts of Scotland, and the islands north and west of it, some
bits of Ireland, and much of England. Moreover, Scandinavians filled the
Varangian corps of the Byzantine emperors, and old Runic inscriptions are
found on marbles at Athens. Their narrow barks traversed the eastern
Mediterranean[190] long before Norman Roger and Norman Robert conquered
Sicily and southern Italy. Such reach of conquest shows them to have been
moved by no passion for adventure. Their fierce valour was part of their
great capacity for the strategy of war. As pirates, as invaders, as
settlers, they dared and fought and fended for a purpose--to get what they
wanted, and to hold it fast. When they had mastered the foe and conquered
his land, they settled down, in England and Normandy and Sicily.
Such genius for fighting was in accord with shrewdness and industry in
peace. The Vikings laboured, whether in Norway or in Iceland. In the
_Edda_ the freeman learns to break oxen, till the ground, timber houses,
build barns, make carts and ploughs.[191] So a tenth-century Viking king
may be found in the field directing the cutting and stacking of his corn
and the gathering of it into barns. They were also traders and even
money-lenders. The Icelanders, whom we know so intimately from the Sagas,
went regularly upon voyages of trade or piracy before settling down to
farm and wife. Sharp of speech, efficient in affairs, and often adepts in
the law, they eagerly took part in the meetings of the Althing and its
settlement of suits. If such settlement was rejected, private war or the
_holmgang_ (an appointed single combat on a small island) was the regular
recourse. But it was murder to kill in the night or without previous
notice. Nothing should be said behind an enemy’s back that the speaker
would not make good; and every man must keep his plighted word.
Much of the Norse wisdom consists in a shrewd wariness. Contempt for the
chattering fool runs through the _Edda_.[192] Let a man be chary of
speech and in action unflinching. Eddic poetry is full of action; even its
didactic pieces are dramatic. The _Edda_ is as hard as steel. In the
mythological pieces the action has the ruthlessness of the elements, while
the stories of conduct show elemental passions working in elemental
strength. The men and women are not rounded and complete; but certain
disengaged motives are raised to the Titanic and thrown out with power.
Neither present anguish, nor death surely foreseen, checks the course of
vengeance for broken faith in those famous Eddic lays of Atli, of Sigurd
and Sigrifa, Helgi and Sigrun, Brynhild and Gudrun, out of which the
Volsunga Saga was subsequently put together, and to which the
_Nibelungenlied_ is kin. They seem to carry the same story, with change of
names and incidents. Always the hero’s fate is netted by woman’s vengeance
and the curse of the Hoard. But still the women feel most; the men strike,
or are struck. Hard and cold grey, with hidden fire, was the temper of
these people. Their love was not over-tender, and yet stronger than death:
cries Brynhild’s ghost riding hellward, “Men and women will always be born
to live in woe. We two, Sigurd and I, shall never part again.” And the
power of such love speaks in the deed and word of Sigrun, who answers the
ghostly call of slain Helgi from his barrow, and enters it to cast her
arms about him there: “I am as glad to meet thee as are the greedy hawks
of Odin when they scent the slain. I will kiss thee, my dead king, ere
thou cast off thy bloody coat. Thy hair, my Helgi, is thick with rime, thy
body is drenched with gory dew, dead-cold are thy hands.”
The characters which appear in large grey traits in the _Edda_, come
nearer to us in the Icelandic Sagas. The _Edda_ has something of a far,
unearthly gloom; the Saga the light of day. Saga-folk are extraordinarily
individual; men and women are portrayed, body and soul, with homely,
telling realism. Nevertheless, within a fuller round of human trait,
Eddic qualities endure. There is the same clear purpose and the strong
resolve, and still the deed keeps pace with the intent.[193]
The period which the Sagas would delineate commences when the Norse chiefs
sail to Iceland with kith and kin and following to be rid of Harold
Fairhair, and lasts for a century or more on through the time of King Olaf
Tryggvason who, shield over head, sprang into the sea in the year 1000,
and the life of that other Olaf, none too rightly called the Saint, who in
1030 perished in battle fighting against overwhelming odds. Following hard
upon this heroic time comes the age of telling of it, telling of it at the
mid-summer Althing, telling of it at Yuletide feasts, and otherwise
through the long winter nights in Iceland. These tellings are the Sagas in
process of creation; for a Saga is essentially a tale told by word of
mouth to listeners. Thus pass another hundred years of careful telling,
memorizing, and retelling of these tales, kept close to the old incidents
and deeds, yet ever with a higher truth intruding. They are becoming true
to reality itself, in concrete types, and not simply narratives of facts
actually occurring--if indeed facts ever occur in any such unequivocal
singleness of actuality and with such compelling singleness of meaning,
that one man shall not read them in one way and another otherwise. And the
more imaginative reading may be the truer.
This century of Saga-growth in memory and word of mouth came to an end,
and men began to write them down. For still another hundred years
(beginning about 1140) this process lasted. In its nature it was something
of a remodelling. As oral tales to be listened to, the Sagas had come to
these scribe-authors, and as such the latter wrote them down, yet with
such modification as would be involved in writing out for mind and eye and
ear that which the ear had heard and the memory retained. In some
instances the scribe-author set himself the more ambitious task of casting
certain tales together in a single, yet composite story. Such is the
Njála, greatest of all Sagas; it may have been written about the year
1220.[194]
As representative of the Norse personality, the Sagas, like all national
literature, bear a twofold testimony: that of their own literary
qualities, and that of the characters which they portray. In the first
place, a Saga is absolute narrative: it relates deeds, incidents, and
sayings, in the manner and order in which they would strike the eye and
ear of the listener, did the matter pass before him. The narrator offers
no analysis of motives; he inserts no reflections upon characters and
situations. He does not even relate the incidents from the vantage-ground
of a full knowledge of them, but from the point of view of each instant’s
impression upon the participants or onlookers. The result is an objective
and vivid presentation of the story. Next, the Sagas are economical of
incident as well as language. That incident is told which the story needs
for the presentation of the hero’s career; those circumstances are given
which the incident needs in order that its significance may be perceived;
such sayings of the actors are related as reveal most in fewest words.
There is nothing more extraordinary in these stories than the significance
of the small incident, and the extent of revelation carried by a terse
remark.
For example, in the Gisli Saga, Gisli has gone out in the winter night to
the house of his brother Thorkel, with whom he is on good terms, and there
has slain Thorkel’s wife’s brother in his bed. In the darkness and
confusion he escapes unrecognized, gets back to his own house and into
bed, where he lies as if asleep. At daybreak the dead man’s friends come
packing to Gisli’s farm:
“Now they come to the farm, Thorkel and Eyjolf, and go up to the
shut-bed where Gisli and his wife slept; but Thorkel, Gisli’s brother,
stepped up first on to the floor, and stands at the side of the bed,
and sees Gisli’s shoes lying all frozen and snowy. He kicked them
under the foot-board, so that no other man should see them.”[195]
This little incident of the shoes not only shows how near was Gisli to
detection and death, but also discloses the way in which Thorkel meant to
act and did act toward his brother: to wit, shield him so long as it might
be done without exposing himself.
Another illustration. The Njáls Saga opens with a sketch of the girl
Hallgerda, so drawn that it presages most of the trouble in the story.
There were two well-to-do brothers, Hauskuld and Hrut:
“It happened once that Hauskuld bade his friends to a feast, and his
brother Hrut was there, and sat next to him. Hauskuld had a daughter
named Hallgerda, who was playing on the floor with some other girls.
She was fair of face and tall of growth, and her hair was as soft as
silk; it was so long, too, that it came down to her waist. Hauskuld
called out to her, ‘Come hither to me, daughter.’ So she went up to
him, and he took her by the chin and kissed her; after that she went
away. Then Hauskuld said to Hrut, ‘What dost thou think of this
maiden? Is she not fair?’ Hrut held his peace. Hauskuld said the same
thing to him a second time, and then Hrut answered, ‘Fair enough is
this maid, and many will smart for it; but this I know not, whence
thief’s eyes have come into our race.’ Then Hauskuld was wroth, and
for a time the brothers saw little of each other.”[196]
The picture of Hallgerda will never leave the reader’s mind throughout the
story, of which she is the evil genius. It is after she has caused the
death of her first husband and is sought by a second, that she is sent for
by her father to ask what her mind may be:
“Then they sent for Hallgerda, and she came thither, and two women
with her. She had on a cloak of rich blue woof, and under it a scarlet
kirtle, and a silver girdle round her waist; but her hair came down on
both sides of her bosom, and she had turned the locks up under her
girdle. She sat down between Hrut and her father, and she greeted them
all with kind words, and spoke well and boldly, and asked what was the
news. After that she ceased speaking.”
This is the woman that the girl has grown to be; and she is still at the
beginning of her mischief. Such narrative art discloses both in the
tale-teller and the audience an intelligence which sees the essential fact
and is impatient of encumbrance. It is the same intelligence that made
these Vikings so efficient in war, and in peace quick to seize cogent
means.
Truthfulness is another quality of the Sagas. Indeed their respect for
historical or biographical fact sometimes hindered the evolution of a
perfect story. They hesitated to omit or alter well-remembered incidents.
Nevertheless a certain remodelling came, as generation after generation of
narrators made the incidents more striking and the characters more marked,
and, under the exigencies of storytelling, omitted details which, although
actual, were irrelevant to the current of the story. The disadvantages
from truthfulness were slight, compared with the admirable artistic
qualities preserved by it. It kept the stories true to reality, excluding
unreality, exaggeration, absurdity. Hence these Sagas are convincing: no
reader can withhold belief. They contain no incredible incidents. On
occasions they tell of portents, prescience, and second sight, but not so
as to raise a smile. They relate a very few encounters with trolls--the
hideous, unlaid, still embodied dead. But those accounts conform to the
hard-wrung superstitions of a people not given to credulity. So they are
real. The reality of Grettir’s night-wrestling with Glam, the troll, is
hardly to be matched.[197] Truthfulness likewise characterizes their
heroes: no man lies about his deeds, and no man’s word is doubted.
While the Saga-folk include no cowards or men of petty manners, there is
still great diversity of character among them. Some are lazy and some
industrious, some quarrelsome and some good-natured, some dangerous, some
forbearing, gloomy or cheerful, open-minded or biassed, shrewd or stupid,
generous or avaricious. Such contrasts of character abound both in the
Sagas of Icelandic life and those which handle the broader matter of
history. One may note in the _Heimskringla_[198] of the Kings of Norway
the contrasted characters of the kings Olaf Tryggvason and St. Olaf. The
latter appears as a hard-working, canny ruler, a lover of order, a
legislator and enforcer of the laws; in person, short, thick-set, carrying
his head a little bent. A Viking had he been, and was a fighter, till he
fell in his last great battle undaunted by odds.
But the other Olaf, Norway’s darling hero, is epic: tall, golden-haired,
peerless from his boyhood, beloved and hated. His marvellous physical
masteries are told, his cliff-climbing, his walking on the sweeping oars
keeping three war-axes tossing in the air. He smote well with either hand
and cast two spears at once. He was the gladdest and gamesomest of men,
kind and lowly-hearted, eager in all matters, bountiful of gifts, glorious
of attire, before all men for high heart in battle, and grimmest of all
men in his wrath; marvellous great pains he laid upon his foes. “No man
durst gainsay him, and all the land was christened wheresoever he came.”
Five short years made up his reign. At the end, neither he was broken nor
his power. But a plot, moved by the hatred of a spurned heathen queen,
delivered him to unequal combat with his enemies, the Kings of Denmark and
Sweden, and Eric the great Viking Earl.
Olaf is sailing home from Wendland. The hostile fleet crouches behind an
island. Sundry of Olaf’s ships pass by. Then the kings spy a great ship
sailing--that will be Olaf’s _Long Worm_ they say; Eric says no. Anon come
four ships, and a great dragon amid them--the _Long Worm_? not yet. At
last she comes, greatest and bravest of all, and Olaf in her, standing on
the poop, with gilded shield and golden helm and a red kirtle over his
mail coat. His men bade to sail on, and not fight so great a host; but
Olaf said, “Never have I fled from battle.” So Olaf’s ships are lashed in
line, at the centre the _Long Worm_, its prow forward of the others
because of her greater length. Olaf would have it thus in spite of the
“windy weather in the bows” predicted by her captain. The enemies’ ships
close around them. Olaf’s grapplings are too much for the Danes; they draw
back. Their places are taken by the ships of Sweden. They fare no better.
At last Earl Eric lays fast his iron-beaks to Olaf’s ships; Danes and
Swedes take courage and return. It is hand to hand now, the ships laid
aboard of each other.
At last all of Olaf’s ships are cleared of men and cut adrift, save the
_Long Worm_. There fight Olaf’s chosen, mad with battle. Einar, Olaf’s
strong bowman, from the _Worm_ aft in the main hold, shot at Earl Eric;
one arrow pierced the tiller by his head, the second flew beneath his arm.
Says the Earl to Finn, his bowman, “Shoot me yonder big man.” Finn shot,
and the arrow struck full upon Einar’s bow as he was drawing it the third
time, and it broke in the middle.
“What broke there so loud?” said Olaf.
“Norway, king, from thine hands,” answered Einar.
“No such crash as that,” said the king; “take my bow and shoot.”
But the foeman’s strength was overpowering. Olaf’s men were cut down
amidships. They hardly held the poop and bow. Earl Eric leads the
boarders. The ship is full of foes. Olaf will not be taken. He leaps
overboard. About the ship swarm boats to seize him; but he threw his
shield over his head and sank quickly in the sea.
The private Sagas construct in powerful lines the characters of the heroes
from the stories of their lives. A great example is the Saga of Egil,[199]
whose father was a Norse chief who had sailed to Iceland, where Egil was
born. As a child he was moody, intractible, and dangerous, and once killed
an older lad who had got the better of him at ball playing. There was no
great love between him and his father. When he was twelve years old his
father used him roughly. He entered the great hall and walked up to his
father’s steward and slew him. Then he went to his seat. After that,
father and son said little to each other. The boy was bent on going
cruising with his older brother, Thorolf. The father yields, and Egil goes
a-harrying. Fierce is his course in Norway, where they come. On the sea
his vessel bears him from deed to deed of blood and daring. His strength
won him booty and reward; he won a friend too, Arinbjorn, and there was
always troth between them.
Thorolf and Egil took service with King Athelstane, who was threatened
with attack from the King of the Scots. The brothers led the Vikings in
Athelstane’s force. In the battle Thorolf loses his life; but Egil hears
the shout when Thorolf falls. His furious valour wins the day for
Athelstane. After the fight he buries his brother and sings staves over
his grave.
“Then went Egil and those about him to seek King Athelstan, and at
once went before the king, where he sat at the drinking. There was
much noise of merriment. And when the king saw that Egil was come in,
he bade the lower bench be cleared for them, and that Egil should sit
in the high-seat facing the king. Egil sat down there, and cast his
shield before his feet. He had his helm on his head, and laid his
sword across his knees; and now and again he half drew it, and then
clashed it back into the sheath. He sat upright, but with head bent
forward. Egil was large-featured, broad of forehead, with large
eye-brows, a nose not long but very thick, lips wide and long, chin
exceeding broad, as was all about the jaws; thick-necked was he, and
big-shouldered beyond other men, hard-featured, and grim when angry.
He would not drink now, though the horn was borne to him, but
alternately twitched his brows up and down. King Athelstan sat in the
upper high-seat. He too laid his sword across his knees. When they had
sat there for a time, then the king drew his sword from the sheath,
and took from his arm a gold ring large and good, and placing it upon
the sword-point he stood up, and went across the floor, and reached it
over the fire to Egil. Egil stood up and drew his sword, and went
across the floor. He stuck the sword-point within the round of the
ring, and drew it to him; then he went back to his place. The king
sate him again in his high-seat. But when Egil was set down, he drew
the ring on his arm, and then his brows went back to their place. He
now laid down sword and helm, took the horn that they bare to him, and
drank it off. Then sang he:
‘Mailed monarch, god of battle,
Maketh the tinkling circlet
Hang, his own arm forsaking,
On hawk-trod wrist of mine.
I bear on arm brand-wielding
Bracelet of red gold gladly.
War-falcon’s feeder meetly
Findeth such meed of praise.’
“Thereafter Egil drank his share, and talked with others. Presently
the king caused to be borne in two chests; two men bare each. Both
were full of silver. The king said: ‘These chests, Egil, thou shalt
have, and, if thou comest to Iceland, shalt carry this money to thy
father; as payment for a son I send it to him: but some of the money
thou shalt divide among such kinsmen of thyself and Thorolf as thou
thinkest most honourable. But thou shalt take here payment for a
brother with me, land or chattels, which thou wilt. And if thou wilt
abide with me long, then will I give thee honour and dignity such as
thyself mayst name.’
“Egil took the money, and thanked the king for his gifts and friendly
words. Thenceforward Egil began to be cheerful; and then he sang:
‘In sorrow sadly drooping
Sank my brows close-knitted;
Then found I one who furrows
Of forehead could smooth.
Fierce-frowning cliffs that shaded
My face a king hath lifted
With gleam of golden armlet:
Gloom leaveth my eyes.’”
Like many of his kind in Iceland and Norway, this fierce man was a poet.
Once he saved his life by a poem, and poems he had made as gifts. It was
when the old Viking’s life was drawing to its close at his home in Iceland
that he composed his most moving lay. His beautiful beloved son was
drowned. After the burial Egil rode home, went to his bed-closet, lay down
and shut himself in, none daring to speak to him. There he lay, silent,
for a day and night. At last his daughter knocks and speaks; he opens. She
enters and beguiles him with her devotion. After a while the old man takes
food. And at last she prevails on him to make a poem on his son’s death,
and assuage his grief. So the song begins, and at length rises clear and
strong--perhaps the most heart-breaking of all old Norse poems.[200]
In the portrayal of contrasted characters no other Saga can equal the
great Njála, a Saga large and complex, and doubtless composite; for it
seems put together out of three stories, in all of which figured the just
Njal, although he is the chief personage in only one of them. The story,
with its multitude of personages and threefold subject-matter, lacks unity
perhaps. Yet the different parts of the Saga successively hold the
attention. In the first part, the incomparable Gunnar is the hero; in the
second, Njal and his sons engage our interest in their varied characters
and common fate. These are great narratives. The third part is perhaps
epigonic, excellent and yet an aftermath. Only a reading of this Saga can
bring any realization of its power of narrative and character delineation.
Its chief personages are as clear as the day. One can almost see the
sunlight of Gunnar’s open brow, and certainly can feel his manly heart.
The foil against which he is set off is his friend Njal, equally good,
utterly different: unwarlike, wise in counsel, a great lawyer, truthful,
just, shrewd and foreseeing. Hallgerda, of the long silken hair, is
Gunnar’s wife; she has caused the deaths of two husbands already, and will
yet prove Gunnar’s bane. Little time passes before she is the enemy of
Njal’s high-minded spouse, Bergthora. Then Hallgerda beginning, Bergthora
following quick, the two push on their quarrel, instigating in
counter-vengeance alternate manslayings, each one a little nearer to the
heart and honour of Gunnar and Njal. Yet their friendship is unshaken. For
every killing the one atones with the other; and the same blood-money
passes to and fro between them.
Gunnar’s friendship with the pacific Njal and his warlike sons endured
till Gunnar’s death. That came from enmities first stirred by the thieving
of Hallgerda’s thieving thrall. She had ordered it, and in shame Gunnar
gave her a slap in the face, the sole act of irritation recorded of this
generous, forbearing, peerless Viking, who once remarked: “I would like to
know whether I am by so much the less brisk and bold than other men,
because I think more of killing men than they?” At a meeting of the
Althing he was badgered by his ill-wishers into entering his stallion for
a horse-fight, a kind of contest usually ending in a man-fight.
Skarphedinn, the most masterful of Njal’s sons, offered to handle Gunnar’s
horse for him:
“Wilt thou that I drive thy horse, kinsman Gunnar?”
“I will not have that,” says Gunnar.
“It wouldn’t be amiss, though,” says Skarphedinn; “we are hot-headed on
both sides.”
“Ye would say or do little,” says Gunnar, “before a quarrel would spring
up; but with me it will take longer, though it will be all the same in the
end.”
Naturally the contest ends in trouble. Gunnar’s beaten and enraged
opponent seizes his weapons, but is stopped by bystanders. “This crowd
wearies me,” said Skarphedinn; “it is far more manly that men should fight
it out with weapons.” Gunnar remained quiet, the best swordsman and bowman
of them all. But his enemies fatuously pushed on the quarrel; once they
rode over him working in the field. So at last he fought, and killed many
of them. Then came the suits for slaying, at the Althing. Njal is Gunnar’s
counsellor, and atonements are made: Gunnar is to go abroad for three
winters, and unless he go, he may be slain by the kinsmen of those he has
killed. Gunnar said nothing. Njal adjured him solemnly to go on that
journey: “Thou wilt come back with great glory, and live to be an old man,
and no man here will then tread on thy heel; but if thou dost not fare
away, and so breakest thy atonement, then thou wilt be slain here in the
land, and that is ill knowing for those who are thy friends.”
Gunnar said he had no mind to break the atonement, and rode home. A ship
is made ready, and Gunnar’s gear is brought down. He rides around and bids
farewell to his friends, thanking them for the help they had given him,
and returns to his house. The next day he embraces the members of his
household, leaps into the saddle, and rides away. But as he is riding down
to the sea, his horse trips and throws him. He springs from the ground,
and says with his face to the Lithe, his home: “Fair is the Lithe; so fair
that it has never seemed to me so fair; the cornfields are white to
harvest, and the home mead is mown; and now I will ride back home, and not
fare abroad at all.”
So he turns back--to his fate. The following summer at the Althing, his
enemies give notice of his outlawry. Njal rides to Gunnar’s home, tells
him of it, and offers his sons’ aid, to come and dwell with him: “they
will lay down their lives for thy life.”
“I will not,” says Gunnar, “that thy sons should be slain for my sake, and
thou hast a right to look for other things from me.”
Njal rode to his home, while Gunnar’s enemies gathered and moved secretly
to his house. His hound, struck down with an axe, gives a great howl and
expires. Gunnar awoke in his hall, and said: “Thou hast been sorely
treated, Sam, my fosterling, and this warning is so meant that our two
deaths will not be far apart.” Single-handed, the beset chieftain
maintains himself within, killing two of his enemies and wounding eight.
At last, wounded, and with his bowstring cut, he turns to his wife
Hallgerda: “Give me two locks of thy hair, and do thou and my mother twist
them into a bowstring for me.”
“Does aught lie on it?” she says.
“My life lies on it,” he said; “for they will never come to close quarters
with me if I can keep them off with my bow.”
“Well,” she says, “now I will call to thy mind that slap on the face which
thou gavest me; and I care never a whit whether thou holdest out a long
while or a short.”
Then Gunnar sang a stave, and said, “Every one has something to boast of,
and I will ask thee no more for this.” He fought on till spent with
wounds, and at last they killed him.
Here the Njála may be left with its good men and true and its evil
plotters, all so differently shown. It has still to tell the story and
fate of Njal’s unbending sons, of Njal himself and his high-tempered dame,
who will abide with her spouse in their burning house, which enemies have
surrounded and set on fire to destroy those sons. Njal himself was offered
safety if he would come out, but he would not.
Perhaps we have been beguiled by their unique literary qualities into
dwelling overlong upon the Sagas. These Norse compositions belong to the
Middle Ages only in time; for they were uninfluenced either by
Christianity or the antique culture, the formative elements of mediaeval
development. They are interesting in their aloofness, and also important
for our mediaeval theme, because they were the ultimate as well as the
most admirable expression of the native Teutonic genius as yet integral,
but destined to have mighty part in the composite course of mediaeval
growth. More specifically they are the voice of that falcon race which
came from the Norseland to stock England with fresh strains of Danish
blood, to conquer Normandy, and give new courage to the
Celtic-German-Frenchmen, and thence went on to bring its hardihood, war
cunning, and keen statecraft to southern Italy and Sicily. In all these
countries the Norse nature, supple and pliant, accepted the gifts of new
experience, and in return imparted strength of purpose to peoples with
whom the Norsemen mingled in marriage as well as war.
This chapter has shown Teutonic faculties still integral and unmodified by
Latin Christian influence. Their participation in the processes of
mediaeval development will be seen as Anglo-Saxons and Germans become
converted to Latin Christianity, and apply themselves to the study of the
profane Latinity, to which it opened the way.