THE ICELANDIC SAGAS
I
ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE
The epic poetry of the Germans came to an end in different ways and at
different seasons among the several nations of that stock. In England
and the Continent it had to compete with the new romantic subjects and
new forms of verse. In Germany the rhyming measures prevailed very
early, but the themes of German tradition were not surrendered at the
same time. The rhyming verse of Germany, foreign in its origin,
continued to be applied for centuries in the rendering of German myths
and heroic stories, sometimes in a style with more or less pretence to
courtliness, as in the _Nibelungenlied_ and _Kudrun_; sometimes in
open parade of the travelling minstrel's "public manners" and simple
appetites. England had exactly the opposite fortune in regard to verse
and subject-matter. In England the alliterative verse survived the
changes of inflexion and pronunciation for more than five hundred
years after _Maldon_, and uttered its last words in a poem written
like the _Song of Byrhtnoth_ on a contemporary battle,--the poem of
_Scottish Field_.[46]
[Footnote 46: Ed. Robson, Chetham Society, 1855, from the Lyme MS.;
ed. Furnivall and Hales, _Percy Folio Manuscript_, 1867.]
There was girding forth of guns, with many great stones;
Archers uttered out their arrows and eagerly they shotten;
They proched us with spears and put many over;
That the blood outbrast at their broken harness.
There was swinging out of swords, and swapping of heads,
We blanked them with bills through all their bright armour,
That all the dale dinned of the derf strokes.
But while this poem of Flodden corresponds in its subject to the poem
of _Maldon_, there is no such likeness between any other late
alliterative poem and the older poems of the older language. The
alliterative verse is applied in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries to every kind of subject except those of Germanic tradition.
England, however, has the advantage over Germany, that while Germany
lost the old verse, England did not lose the English heroic subjects,
though, as it happens, the story of King Horn and the story of
Havelock the Dane are not told in the verse that was used for King
Arthur and Gawain, for the tale of Troy and the wars of Alexander. The
recent discovery of a fragment of the _Song of Wade_ is an admonition
to be cautious in making the extant works of Middle English literature
into a standard for all that has ceased to exist. But no new
discovery, even of a Middle English alliterative poem of Beowulf or of
Walter of Aquitaine, would alter the fact that the alliterative
measure of English poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
like the ancient themes of the German rhyming poems, is a survival in
an age when the chief honours go to other kinds of poetry. The author
of _Piers Plowman_ is a notable writer, and so are the poets of
_Gawain_, and of the _Mort Arthure_, and of the _Destruction of Troy_;
but Chaucer and not Langland is the poetical master of that age. The
poems of the _Nibelungen_ and of _Kudrun_ are rightly honoured, but it
was to the author of _Parzival_, and to the courtly lyrics of Walther
von der Vogelweide, that the higher rank was given in the age of the
Hohenstaufen, and the common fame is justified by history, so often as
history chooses to have any concern with such things.
In the lands of the old Northern speech the old heroic poetry was
displaced by the new Court poetry of the Scalds. The heroic subjects
were not, however, allowed to pass out of memory. The new poetry could
not do without them, and required, and obtained, its heroic dictionary
in the _Edda_. The old subjects hold their own, or something of their
own, with every change of fashion. They were made into prose stories,
when prose was in favour; they were the subjects of _Rímur_, rhyming
Icelandic romances, when that form came later into vogue.[47] In
Denmark they were paraphrased, many of them, by Saxo in his _History_;
many of them became the subjects of ballads, in Denmark, Norway,
Sweden, and the Faroes.
[Footnote 47: See below, p. 283.]
In this way some of the inheritance of the old German world was saved
in different countries and languages, for the most part in ballads and
chapbooks, apart from the main roads of literature. But these
heirlooms were not the whole stock of the heroic age. After the
failure and decline of the old poetry there remained an unexhausted
piece of ground; and the great imaginative triumph of the Teutonic
heroic age was won in Iceland with the creation of a new epic
tradition, a new form applied to new subjects.
Iceland did something more than merely preserve the forms of an
antiquated life whose day was over. It was something more than an
island of refuge for muddled and blundering souls that had found the
career of the great world too much for them. The ideas of an
old-fashioned society migrated to Iceland, but they did not remain
there unmodified. The paradox of the history of Iceland is that the
unsuccessful old ideas were there maintained by a community of people
who were intensely self-conscious and exceptionally clear in mind.
Their political ideas were too primitive for the common life of
medieval Christendom. The material life of Iceland in the Middle Ages
was barbarous when compared with the life of London or Paris, not to
speak of Provence or Italy, in the same centuries. At the same time,
the modes of thought in Iceland, as is proved by its historical
literature, were distinguished by their freedom from extravagances,--from
the extravagance of medieval enthusiasm as well as from the
superstitions of barbarism. The life of an heroic age--that is, of an
older stage of civilisation than the common European medieval
form--was interpreted and represented by the men of that age
themselves with a clearness of understanding that appears to be quite
unaffected by the common medieval fallacies and "idolisms." This clear
self-consciousness is the distinction of Icelandic civilisation and
literature. It is not vanity or conceit. It does not make the
Icelandic writers anxious about their own fame or merits. It is simply
clear intelligence, applied under a dry light to subjects that in
themselves are primitive, such as never before or since have been
represented in the same way. The life is their own life; the record is
that of a dispassionate observer.
While the life represented in the Sagas is more primitive, less
civilised, than the life of the great Southern nations in the Middle
Ages, the record of that life is by a still greater interval in
advance of all the common modes of narrative then known to the more
fortunate or more luxurious parts of Europe. The conventional form of
the Saga has none of the common medieval restrictions of view. It is
accepted at once by modern readers without deduction or apology on the
score of antique fashion, because it is in essentials the form with
which modern readers are acquainted in modern story-telling; and more
especially because the language is unaffected and idiomatic, not
"quaint" in any way, and because the conversations are like the talk
of living people. The Sagas are stories of characters who speak for
themselves, and who are interesting on their own merits. There are
good and bad Sagas, and the good ones are not all equally good
throughout. The mistakes and misuses of the inferior parts of the
literature do not, however, detract from the sufficiency of the common
form, as represented at its best. The invention of the common form of
the Saga is an achievement which deserves to be judged by the best in
its kind. That kind was not exempt, any more than the Elizabethan
drama or the modern novel, from the impertinences and superfluities of
trivial authors. Further, there were certain conditions and
circumstances about its origin that sometimes hindered in one way,
while they gave help in another. The Saga is a compromise between
opposite temptations, and the compromise is not always equitable.
II
MATTER AND FORM
It is no small part of the force of the Sagas, and at the same time a
difficulty and an embarrassment, that they have so much of reality
behind them. The element of history in them, and their close relation
to the lives of those for whom they were made, have given them a
substance and solidity beyond anything else in the imaginative stories
of the Middle Ages. It may be that this advantage is gained rather
unfairly. The art of the Sagas, which is so modern in many things, and
so different from the medieval conventions in its selection of matter
and its development of the plot, is largely indebted to circumstances
outside of art. In its rudiments it was always held close to the real
and material interests of the people; it was not like some other arts
which in their beginning are fanciful, or dependent on myth or legend
for their subject-matter, as in the medieval schools of painting or
sculpture generally, or in the medieval drama. Its imaginative methods
were formed through essays in the representation of actual life; its
first artists were impelled by historical motives, and by personal and
local interests. The art of the Sagas was from the first "immersed in
matter"; it had from the first all the advantage that is given by
interests stronger and more substantial than those of mere
literature; and, conversely, all the hindrance that such irrelevant
interests provide, when "mere literature" attempts to disengage itself
and govern its own course.
The local history, the pedigrees of notable families, are felt as a
hindrance, in a greater or less degree, by all readers of the Sagas;
as a preliminary obstacle to clear comprehension. The Sagas differ in
value, according to their use and arrangement of these matters, in
relation to a central or imaginative conception of the main story and
the characters engaged in it. The best Sagas are not always those that
give the least of their space to historical matters, to the
genealogies and family memoirs. From these the original life of the
Sagas is drawn, and when it is cut off from these the Saga withers
into a conventional and insipid romance. Some of the best Sagas are
among those which make most of the history and, like _Njála_ and
_Laxdæla_, act out their tragedies in a commanding way that carries
along with it the whole crowd of minor personages, yet so that their
minor and particular existences do not interfere with the story, but
help it and give it substantiality. The tragedy of _Njal_, or of the
_Lovers of Gudrun_, may be read and judged, if one chooses, in
abstraction from the common background of Icelandic history, and in
forgetfulness of its bearing upon the common fortunes of the people of
the land; but these Sagas are not rightly understood if they are taken
only and exclusively in isolation. The tragedies gain a very distinct
additional quality from the recurrence of personages familiar to the
reader from other Sagas. The relation of the Sagas to actual past
events, and to the whole range of Icelandic family tradition, was the
initial difficulty in forming an adequate method of story-telling; the
particulars were too many, and also too real. But the reality of them
was, at the same time, the initial impulse of the Sagas; and the best
of the Sagas have found a way of saving the particulars of the family
and local histories, without injury to the imaginative and poetical
order of their narratives.
The Sagas, with all the differences between them, have common
features, but among these is not to be reckoned an equal consideration
for the unity of action. The original matter of the oral traditions of
Iceland, out of which the written Sagas were formed, was naturally
very much made up of separate anecdotes, loosely strung together by
associations with a district or a family. Some of the stories, no
doubt, must have had by nature a greater unity and completeness than
the rest:--history in the rough has very often the outlines of tragedy
in it; it presents its authors with dramatic contrasts ready made
(Richard II. and Bolingbroke, Lewis XI. and Charles the Bold,
Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots); it provides real heroes. But there
are many interesting things which are not well proportioned, and which
have no respect for the unities; the hero is worth talking about
whether his story is symmetrical or not. The simplest form of heroic
narrative is that which puts together a number of adventures, such as
may easily be detached and repeated separately, adventures like that
of David and Goliath, Wallace with his fishing-rod, or Bruce in the
robbers' house. Many of the Sagas are mere loose strings of
adventures, of short stories, or idylls, which may easily be detached
and remembered out of connexion with the rest of the series. In the
case of many of these it is almost indifferent at what point they may
be introduced in the Saga; they merely add some particulars without
advancing the plot, if there be any plot. There are all varieties of
texture in the Sagas, from the extreme laxity of those that look like
mere collections of the anecdotes of a countryside (_Eyrbyggja_), to
the definite structure of those in which all the particulars
contribute to the main action (_Hrafnkels Saga_, _Bandamanna_, _Gísla
Saga_).
The loose assemblage of stories current in Iceland before the Sagas
were composed in writing must, of course, have been capable of all
kinds of variation. The written Sagas gave a check to oral variations
and rearrangements; but many of them in extant alternative versions
keep the traces of the original story-teller's freedom of selection,
while all the Sagas together in a body acknowledge themselves
practically as a selection from traditional report. Each one, the most
complete as well as the most disorderly, is taken out of a mass of
traditional knowledge relating to certain recognisable persons, of
whom any one may be chosen for a time as the centre of interest, and
any one may become a subordinate character in some one else's
adventures. One Saga plays into the others, and introduces people
incidentally who may be the heroes of other stories. As a result of
this selective practice of the Sagas, it sometimes happens that an
important or an interesting part of the record may be dropped by one
Saga and picked up casually by another. Thus in the written Sagas, one
of the best stories of the two Foster-brothers (or rather "Brothers by
oath," _fratres jurati_) Thorgeir and Thormod the poet, is preserved
not by their own proper history, _Fóstbræðra Saga_, but in the story
of Grettir the Strong; how they and Grettir lived a winter through in
the same house without quarrelling, and how their courage was
estimated by their host.[48]
[Footnote 48: "Is it true, Thorgils, that you have entertained those
three men this winter, that are held to be the most regardless and
overbearing, and all of them outlaws, and you have handled them so
that none has hurt another?" Yes, it was true, said Thorgils. Skapti
said: "That is something for a man to be proud of; but what do you
think of the three, and how are they each of them in courage?"
Thorgils said: "They are all three bold men to the full; yet two of
them, I think, may tell what fear is like. It is not in the same way
with both; for Thormod fears God, and Grettir is so afraid of the dark
that after dark he would never stir, if he had his own way; but I do
not know that Thorgeir, my kinsman, is afraid of anything."--"You have
read them well," says Skapti; and so their talk ended (_Grettis Saga_,
c. 51).]
This solidarity and interconnexion of the Sagas needs no explanation.
It could not be otherwise in a country like Iceland; a community of
neighbours (in spite of distances and difficulties of travelling)
where there was nothing much to think about or to know except other
people's affairs. The effect in the written Sagas is to give them
something like the system of the _Comédie Humaine_. There are new
characters in each, but the old characters reappear. Sometimes there
are discrepancies; the characters are not always treated from the same
point of view. On the whole, however, there is agreement. The
character of Gudmund the Great, for example, is well drawn, with zest,
and some irony, in his own Saga (_Ljósvetninga_); he is the prosperous
man, the "rich glutton," fond of praise and of influence, but not as
sound as he looks, and not invulnerable. His many appearances in other
Sagas all go to strengthen this impression of the full-blown great man
and his ambiguous greatness. So also Snorri the Priest, whose rise and
progress are related in _Eyrbyggja_, appears in many other Sagas, and
is recognised whenever he appears with the same certainty and the same
sort of interest as attaches to the name of Rastignac, when that
politician is introduced in stories not properly his own. Each
separate mention of Snorri the Priest finds its place along with all
the rest; he is never unequal to himself.
It is in the short story, the episodic chapter, that the art of
Icelandic narrative first defines itself. This is the original unity;
it is here, in a limited, easily comprehensible subject-matter, that
the lines are first clearly drawn. The Sagas that are least regular
and connected are made up of definite and well-shaped single blocks.
Many of the Sagas are much improved by being taken to pieces and
regarded, not as continuous histories, but as collections of separate
short stories. _Eyrbyggja_, _Vatnsdæla_, and _Ljósvetninga_ are
collections of this sort--"Tales of the Hall." There is a sort of
unity in each of them, but the place of Snorri in _Eyrbyggja_, of
Ingimund in _Vatnsdæla_, and of Gudmund the Great in the history of
the House of Ljósavatn, is not that of a tragic or epic hero who
compels the episodes to take their right subordinate rank in a larger
story. These Sagas break up into separate chapters, losing thereby
none of the minor interests of story-telling, but doing without the
greater tragic or heroic interest of the fables that have one
predominant motive.
Of more coherent forms of construction there are several different
examples among the Sagas. In each of these cases it is the tragic
conception, the tragic idea, of the kind long familiar to the Teutonic
nations, that governs the separate passages of the traditional
history.
Tragic situations are to be found all through the Icelandic
literature, only they are not always enough to make a tragedy. There
is Nemesis in the end of Gudmund the Great, when his murdered enemy
haunts him; but this is not enough to make his Saga an organic thing.
The tragic problem of Alboin recurs, as was pointed out by the editors
of _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, in the prelude to _Vatnsdæla Saga_; but
it stands by itself as one of the separate chapters in that history,
which contains the plots of other tragedies also, without adopting any
one of them as its single and overruling motive. These are instances
of the way in which tragic imagination, or at any rate the knowledge
and partial appreciation of tragic plots, may come short of
fulfilment, and may be employed in a comparatively futile and wasteful
form of literature. In the greater works, where the idea is fully
realised, there is no one formal type. The Icelandic Sagas have
different forms of success in the greater works, as well as different
degrees of approximation to success in the more desultory and
miscellaneous histories.
_Njála_, which is the greatest of all the Sagas, does not make its
effect by any reduction of the weight or number of its details. It
carries an even greater burden of particulars than _Eyrbyggja_; it has
taken up into itself the whole history of the south country of Iceland
in the heroic age.
The unity of _Njála_ is certainly not the unity of a restricted or
emaciated heroic play. Yet with all its complexity it belongs to quite
a different order of work from _Eyrbyggja_.
It falls into three divisions, each of these a story by itself, with
all three combining to form one story, apart from which they are
incomplete. The first, the story of Gunnar, which is a tragedy by
itself, is a necessary part of the whole composition; for it is also
the story of the wisdom of Njal and the dignity of Bergthora, without
which the second part would be insipid, and the great act of the
burning of Njal's house would lose its depth and significance. The
third part is the payment of a debt to Njal, Bergthora, and
Skarphedinn, for whom vengeance is required; but it is also due even
more to Flosi their adversary. The essence of the tragic situation
lies in this, that the good man is in the wrong, and his adversary in
the right. The third part is required to restore the balance, in order
that the original wrong, Skarphedinn's slaughter of the priest of
Whiteness, should not be thought to be avoided in the death of its
author. _Njála_ is a work of large scale and liberal design; the
beauty of all which, in the story, is that it allows time for the
characters to assert themselves and claim their own, as they could not
do in a shorter story, where they would be whirled along by the plot.
The vengeance and reconciliation in the third part of _Njála_ are
brought about by something more than a summary poetical justice of
fines and punishments for misdeeds. It is a more leisurely, as well as
a more poetical justice, that allows the characters to assert
themselves for what they really are; the son of Lambi "filthy still,"
and Flosi the Burner not less true in temper than Njal himself.
_Njála_ and _Laxdæla_ are examples of two different ways in which
inconvenient or distracting particulars of history or tradition might
be reduced to serve the ends of imagination and the heroic design.
_Njála_ keeps up, more or less, throughout, a continuous history of a
number of people of importance, but always with a regard for the
principal plot of the story. In _Laxdæla_ there is, on the other hand,
a gradual approach to the tragedy of Kjartan, Bolli, and Gudrun; an
historical prologue of the founding of Laxdale, and the lives of
Kjartan's father and grandfather, before the chief part of the story
begins. In _Njála_ the main story opens as soon as Njal appears; of
prologue there is little more than is needed to prepare for the
mischief of Hallgerda, who is the cause of the strain between the two
houses of Lithend and Bergthorsknoll, and thereby the touchstone of
the generosity of Njal. In _Laxdæla_, although the prologue is not
irrelevant, there is a long delay before the principal personages are
brought together. There is no mistake about the story when once it
begins, and no question about the unity of the interest; Gudrun and
Fate may divide it between them, if it be divisible. It is purely the
stronger quality of this part of the book, in comparison with the
earlier, that saves _Laxdæla_ from the defects of its construction; by
the energy of the story of Kjartan, the early story of Laxdale is
thrown back and left behind as a mere prelude, in spite of its length.
The story of Egil Skallagrimsson, the longest of the biographical
Sagas, shows exactly the opposite proportions to those of _Laxdæla_.
The life of Egil is prefaced by the history of his grandfather,
father, and uncle, Kveldulf, Skallagrim (Grim the Bald), and Thorolf.
Unhappily for the general effect of the book, the life of Egil is told
with less strength and coherence than the fate of his uncle. The most
commanding and most tragic part of _Egla_ is that which represents
Skallagrim and Thorolf in their relations to the tyranny of Harald the
king; how Thorolf's loyalty was ill paid, and how Skallagrim his
brother went in defiance to speak to King Harald. This, though it is
only a prelude to the story of Egil, is one of the finest imaginative
passages in the whole literature. The Saga has here been able to
express, in a dramatic and imaginative form, that conflict of
principles between the new monarchy and the old liberty which led to
the Icelandic migration. The whole political situation, it might be
said the whole early history of Iceland and Norway, is here summed up
and personified in the conflict of will between the three characters.
Thorolf, Harald the king, and Skallagrim play the drama of the
Norwegian monarchy, and the founding of the Icelandic Commonwealth.
After this compact and splendid piece of work the adventures of Egil
Skallagrimsson appear rather ineffectual and erratic, in spite of some
brilliant episodes.
What was an author to do when his hero died in his bed, or survived
all his feuds and enmities? or when a feud could not be wound up in
one generation?
_Vápnfirðinga Saga_ gives the history of two generations of feud, with
a reconciliation at the end, thus obtaining a rounded unity, though at
some cost of the personal interest in its transference from fathers to
sons.
_Víga-Glúms Saga_ is a story which, with the best intentions in the
world, could not attain to tragedy like that of Gisli or of Grettir,
because every one knew that Glum was a threatened man who lived long,
and got through without any deadly injury. Glum is well enough fitted
for the part of a tragic hero. He has the slow growth, the unpromising
youth, the silence and the dangerous laughter, such as are recorded in
the lives of other notable personages in heroic literature:--
Glum turned homeward; and a fit of laughing came on him. It
took him in this way, that his face grew pale, and there ran
tears from his eyes like hailstones: it was often so with
him afterwards, when bloodshed was in his mind.
But although there are several feuds in the story of Glum or several
incidents in a feud, somehow there is no tragedy. Glum dies quietly,
aged and sightless. There is a thread of romantic destiny in his
story; he keeps his good luck till he parts with the gifts of his
grandfather Vigfus--the cloak, the spear, and the sword that Vigfus
had given him in Norway. The prayer for Glum's discomfiture, which one
of his early adversaries had offered to Frey, then takes effect, when
the protecting luck has been given away. The fall of Glum is,
however, nothing incurable; the change in his fortune is merely that
he has to give up the land which he had extorted from his adversary
long before, and that he ceases to be the greatest man in Eyjafirth,
though continuing to be a man of importance still. His honour and his
family are not hard hit, after all.
The history of Glum, with its biographical unity, its interest of
character, and its want of tragedy, is a form of story midway between
the closer knit texture of _Gísla Saga_ and the laxity of construction
in the stories without a hero, or with more than one, such as
_Ljósvetninga_ or _Vatnsdæla_. It is a biography with no strong crisis
in it; it might have been extended indefinitely. And, in fact, the
existing form of the story looks as if it were rather carelessly put
together, or perhaps abridged from a fuller version. The story in
_Reykdæla_ of Viga Skuta, Glum's son-in-law and enemy, contains a
better and fuller account of their dealings than _Glúma_, without any
discrepancy, though the _Reykdæla_ version alludes to divergencies of
tradition in certain points. The curious thing is that the _Reykdæla_
version supplies information about Glum's character which supplements
what is told more baldly in his own Saga. Both accounts agree about
Glum's good nature, which is practised on by Skuta. Glum is constant
and trustworthy whenever he is appealed to for help. The _Reykdæla_
version gives a pretty confirmation of this view of Glum's character
(c. 24), where Glum protects the old Gaberlunzie man, with the result
that the old man goes and praises his kindness, and so lets his
enemies know of his movements, and spoils his game for that time. This
episode is related to _Glúma_, as the foster-brother episode of
Grettir (c. 51), quoted above, is related to _Fóstbræðra Saga_.
If _Glúma_ is interesting and even fairly compact, in spite of its
want of any great dramatic moment, on the other hand the tragic ending
is not always enough to save a story from dissipation of interest. In
the story of Glum's antagonist, Viga Skuta, in the second part of
_Reykdæla Saga_, there is no proportion or composition; his adventures
follow one upon the other, without development, a series of hazards
and escapes, till he is brought down at last. In the earlier part of
the same Saga (the story of Vemund, Skuta's cousin, and Askel, Skuta's
father) there is more continuity in the chronicle of wrongs and
revenges, and, if this story be taken by itself, more form and
definite design. The two rivals are well marked out and opposed to one
another, while the mischief-making Vemund is well contrasted with his
uncle Askel, the just man and the peacemaker, who at the end is killed
in one of his nephew's feuds, in the fight by the frozen river from
which Vemund escapes, while his enemy is drowned and his best friend
gets a death wound.
There are two Sagas in which a biographical theme is treated in such a
way that the story produces one single impressive and tragical effect,
leaving the mind with a sense of definite and necessary movement
towards a tragic conclusion,--the story of Grettir the Strong, and the
story of Gisli the Outlaw. These stories have analogies to one
another, though they are not cast in quite the same manner.
In the life of Grettir there are many detached episodes, giving room
for theories of adulteration such as are only too inevitable and
certain in regard to the imbecile continuation of the story after
Grettir's death and his brother's vengeance. The episodes in the main
story are, however, not to be dismissed quite so easily as the
unnecessary romance of the Lady Spes (_Grettis Saga_, cc. 90-95).
While many of the episodes do little to advance the story, and some
of them seem to have been borrowed from other Sagas without sufficient
reason (cc. 25-27, from the _Foster-brothers_), most of them serve to
accentuate the character of Grettir, or to deepen the sense of the
mystery surrounding his life.
The tragedy of Grettir is one of those which depend on Accident,
interpreted by the author as Fate. The hero is a doomed man, like
Gisli, who sees things clearly coming on, but is unable to get out of
their way. In both _Gisli_ and _Grettir_ there is an accompaniment of
mystery and fantasy--for Gisli in the songs of the dream woman, for
Grettir in various touches unlike the common prose of the Sagas. The
hopelessness of his ill fortune is brought out in a sober way in his
dealings with the chiefs who are unable to protect him, and in the
cheerless courage of his relations with the foster-brothers, when the
three are all together in the house of Thorgils Arason. It is
illustrated in a quite different and more fantastic way in the scenes
of his wanderings among the mountains, in the mysterious quiet of
Thorisdal, in his alliance with strange deliverers, outside of the
common world and its society, in the curse of Glam under the
moonlight. This last is one of the few scenes in the Sagas, though not
the only one, when the effect depends on something more than the
persons engaged in it. The moon with the clouds driving over counts
for more than a mere indication of time or weather; it is essential to
the story, and lends itself to the malignity of the adversary in
casting the spell of fear upon Grettir's mind. The solitude of
Drangey, in the concluding chapters of _Grettis Saga_, the cliffs, the
sea and the storms are all much less exceptional; they are necessary
parts of the action, more closely and organically related to the
destiny of the hero. There, in the final scenes, although there is
witchcraft practised against Grettir, it is not that, but the common
and natural qualities of the foolishness of the thrall and the heroism
of Grettir and his young brother on which the story turns. These are
the humanities of Drangey, a strong contrast, in the art of narrative,
to the moonlight spell of Glam. The notable thing is that the romantic
and fantastic passages in Grettir are not obscurations of the tragedy,
not irrelevant, but rather an expression by the way, and in an
exceptional mood, of the author's own view of the story and his
conviction that it is all one coherent piece. This certainly is the
effect of the romantic interludes in _Gisli_, which is perhaps the
most tragic of all the Sagas, or at any rate the most self-conscious
of its tragic aim. In the story of Gisli there is an introduction and
preparation, but there is no very great expense of historical
preliminaries. The discrepancies here between the two extant
redactions of the Saga seem to show that introductory chapters of this
sort were regarded as fair openings for invention and decoration by
editors, who had wits enough to leave the essential part of the story
very much to itself. Here, when once the action has begun, it goes on
to the end without a fault. The chief characters are presented at the
beginning; Gisli and Thorkell his brother; Thorgrim the Priest and
Vestein, their two brothers-in-law. A speech foretelling their
disunion is reported to Gisli, and leads him to propose the oath of
fellowship between the four; which proposal, meant to avert the omen,
brings about its fulfilment. And so the story goes on logically and
inevitably to the death of Gisli, who slew Thorgrim, and the
passionate agony of Thordis, Thorgrim's wife and Gisli's sister.
_Hrafnkels Saga_ is a tragic idyll, complete and rounded. It is
different in its design from _Njála_ or _Laxdæla_, from the stories of
Grettir and Gisli. It is a short story, well concentrated. For mere
symmetry of design it might compete with any of the greater Icelandic
works, not to speak of any modern fiction.
Hrafnkel, the proud man, did a cruel thing "for his oath's sake";
killed his shepherd Einar for riding on Freyfaxi, the horse that
belonged to Frey the god, and to Hrafnkel his priest. To the father of
Einar he made offers of compensation which were not accepted. Then the
story, with much admirable detail (especially in the scenes at the
Althing), goes on to show how Hrafnkel's pride was humbled by Einar's
cousin. All through, however, Hrafnkel is represented as guilty of
tragic terror, not of wickedness; he is punished more than is due, and
in the end the balance is redressed, and his arrogant conqueror is
made to accept Hrafnkel's terms. It is a story clearly and
symmetrically composed; it would be too neat, indeed, if it were not
that it still leaves some accounts outstanding at the end: the
original error is wasteful, and the life of an innocent man is
sacrificed in the clearing of scores between Hrafnkel and his
adversary.
The theory of a conglomerate epic may be applied to the Icelandic
Sagas with some effect. It is plain on the face of them that they
contain short stories from tradition which may correspond to the short
lays of the epic theory, which do in fact resemble in many things
certain of the lays of the "Elder Edda." Many of the Sagas, like
_Eyrbyggja_, _Vatnsdæla_, _Svarfdæla_, are ill compacted, and easily
broken up into separate short passages. On the other hand, these
broken and variegated Sagas are wanting in dignity and impressiveness
compared with some others, while those others have attained their
dignity, not by choosing their episodic chapters merely, but by
forcing their own original and commanding thought upon all their
matter. This is the case, whether the form be that of the
comprehensive, large, secure, and elaborate _Njála_; of _Laxdæla_,
with its dilatory introduction changing to the eagerness and quickness
of the story of Gudrun; of _Grettir_ and _Gisli_, giving shape in
their several ways to the traditional accumulation of a hero's
adventures; or, not less remarkable, the precision of _Hrafnkels Saga_
and _Bandamanna_,[49] which appear to have discovered and fixed for
themselves the canons of good imaginative narrative in short compass,
and to have freed themselves, in a more summary way than _Njála_, from
the encumbrances of traditional history, and the distracting interests
of the antiquarian and the genealogist. These two stories, with that
of Howard of Icefirth[50] and some others, might perhaps be taken as
corresponding in Icelandic prose to the short epic in verse, such as
the _Atlakviða_. They show, at any rate, that the difficulties of
reluctant subject-matter and of the manifold deliverances of tradition
were not able, in all cases, to get the better of that sense of form
which was revealed in the older poetic designs.
[Footnote 49: See below, pp. 229 _sqq._]
[Footnote 50: p. 216.]
In their temper also, and in the quality of their heroic ideal, the
Sagas are the inheritors of the older heroic poetry.
III
THE HEROIC IDEAL
In the material conditions of Icelandic life in the "Saga Age" there
was all the stuff that was required for heroic narrative. This was
recognised by the story-tellers, and they made the most of it. It must
be admitted that there is some monotony in the circumstances, but it
may be contended that this is of no account in comparison with the
results that are produced in the best Sagas out of trivial occasions.
"Greatly to find quarrel in a straw" is the rule of their conduct. The
tempers of the men are easily stirred; they have a general name[51]
for the trial of a man's patience, applied to anything that puts a
strain on him, or encroaches on his honour. The trial may come from
anything--horses, sheep, hay, women, merchandise. From these follow
any number of secondary or retaliatory insults, trespasses, and
manslaughters. Anything almost is enough to set the play going. What
the matter in dispute may be, is almost indifferent to the author of
the story. Its value depends on the persons; it is what they choose to
make it.
[Footnote 51: _Skapraun_, lit. _test of condition_.]
The Sagas differ from all other "heroic" literatures in the larger
proportion that they give to the meannesses of reality. Their
historical character, and their attempts to preserve an accurate
memory of the past, though often freely modified by imagination, yet
oblige them to include a number of things, gross, common, and
barbarous, because they are part of the story. The Sagas differ one
from another in this respect. The characters are not all raised to the
height of Gunnar, Njal, Skarphedinn, Flosi, Bolli, Kjartan, Gisli. In
many of the Sagas, and in many scenes, the characters are dull and
ungainly. At the same time their perversity, the naughtiness, for
example, of Vemund in _Reykdæla_, or of Thorolf the crank old man in
_Eyrbyggja_, belongs to the same world as the lives of the more heroic
personages. The Sagas take an interest in misconduct, when there is
nothing better to be had, and the heroic age is frequently represented
by them rather according to the rules of modern unheroic story-telling
than of Bossu _on the Epic Poem_. The inequitable persons
(_újafnaðarmenn_) in the Sagas are not all of them as lordly as
Agamemnon. For many readers this is an advantage; if the Sagas are
thereby made inferior to Homer, they are all the closer to modern
stories of "common life." The people of Iceland seem always to have
been "at the auld work of the marches again," like Dandie Dinmont and
Jock o' Dawstoncleugh, and many of their grievances and wrongs might
with little change have been turned into subjects for Crabbe or Mr.
Hardy. It requires no great stretch of fancy to see Crabbe at work on
the story of Thorolf Bægifot and his neighbour in _Eyrbyggja_; the old
Thorolf, "curst with age," driven frantic by his homely neighbour's
greater skill in the weather, and taking it out in a vicious trespass
on his neighbour's hay; the neighbour's recourse to Thorolf's more
considerate son Arnkell; Arnkell's payment of the damage, and summary
method of putting accounts square again by seizure of his father's
oxen; with the consequences of all this, which perhaps are somewhat
too violent to be translated literally into the modern language of
Suffolk or Wessex. Episodes of this type are common in the Sagas, and
it is to them in a great measure that the Sagas owe their distinction
from the common run of medieval narrative. But no appreciation of this
"common life" in the Sagas can be just, if it ignores the essentially
"heroic" nature of the moral laws under which the Icelandic narratives
are conducted. Whether with good results or bad, is another question;
but there can be no doubt that the Sagas were composed under the
direction of an heroic ideal, identical in most respects with that of
the older heroic poetry. This ideal view is revealed in different
ways, as the Sagas have different ways of bringing their characters
before the audience. In the best passages, of course, which are the
most dramatic, the presuppositions and private opinions of the author
are not immediately disclosed in the speeches of the characters. But
the Sagas are not without their chorus; the general judgment of people
about their leaders is often expressed; and although the action of the
Sagas is generally sufficient to make its own impression and explain
itself, the author's reading of his characters is frequently added.
From the action and the commentary together, the heroic ideal comes
out clearly, and it is plain that its effect on the Sagas was not
merely an implicit and unconscious influence. It had risen into the
consciousness of the authors of the Sagas; it was not far from
definite expression in abstract terms. In this lay the danger. An
ideal, defined or described in set terms, is an ideal without any
responsibility and without any privilege. It may be picked up and
traded on by any fool or hypocrite. Undefined and undivulged, it
belongs only to those who have some original strength of imagination
or will, and with them it cannot go wrong. But a definite ideal, and
the terms of its definition, may belong to any one and be turned to
any use. So the ideal of Petrarch was formulated and abused by the
Petrarchists. The formula of Amadis of Gaul is derived from
generations of older unformulated heroes, and implies the exhaustion
of the heroic strain, in that line of descent. The Sagas have not come
as far as that, but the latter days, that have seen Amadis, and the
mechanical repetitions of Amadis, may find in the Sagas some
resemblances and anticipations of the formal hero, though not yet
enough to be dangerous.
In all sound heroic literature there are passages that bring up the
shadow of the sceptic,--passages of noble sentiment, whose phrases are
capable of being imitated, whose ideas may make the fortune of
imitators and pretenders. In the Teutonic epic poetry, as in Homer,
there are many noble speeches of this sort, speeches of lofty
rhetoric, about which the spirit of depreciation prompts a suspicion
that perhaps they may be less weighty and more conventional than we
think. False heroics are easy, and unhappily they have borrowed so
much of the true, that the truth itself is sometimes put out of
countenance by the likeness.
In the English and the Icelandic heroic poetry there is some ground
for thinking that the process of decline and the evolution of the
false heroic went to some length before it was stopped. The older
poems laid emphasis on certain qualities, and made them an example and
an edification. "So ought a man to do," is a phrase common to the
English and the Northern schools of epic. The point of honour comes
to be only too well understood--too well, that is, for the work of the
imagination. Possibly the latter part of _Beowulf_ is more abstract
than it ought to be; at any rate, there are many of the secondary
Anglo-Saxon poems which, like the old Saxon _Hêliand_, show an
excessive use of the poetic formulas of courage and loyalty. The
Icelandic poetry had also its spurious heroic phrases, by which
something is taken away from the force of their more authentic
originals.
In the Sagas, as in the _Iliad_, in the _Song of Maldon_, in the
_Death of Ermanaric_, there is a rhetorical element by which the ideas
of absolute courage are expressed. Unhappily it is not always easy to
be sure whether the phrases are of the first or the second growth; in
most cases, the better opinion perhaps will be that they belong to a
time not wholly unsophisticated, yet not in the stage of secondary and
abstract heroic romance. The rhetoric of the Sagas, like the rhetoric
of the "Poetic Edda," was taken too seriously and too greedily by the
first modern discoverers of the old Northern literature. It is not,
any more than the rhetoric of Homer, the immediate expression of the
real life of an heroic age; for the good reason that it is literature,
and literature just on the autumnal verge, and plainly capable of
decay. The best of the Sagas were just in time to escape that touch of
over-reflexion and self-consciousness which checks the dramatic life
and turns it into matter of edification or sentiment. The best of them
also give many indications to show how near they were to
over-elaboration and refinement.
Kjartan, for example, in _Laxdæla_ is represented in a way that
sometimes brings him dangerously near the ideal hero. The story (like
many of the other Sagas) plays about between the two extremes, of
strong imagination applied dramatically to the subject-matter, on the
one hand, and abstract ethical reflexion on the other. In the scene of
Kjartan's encounter with Olaf Tryggvason in Norway[52] there is a
typical example of the two kinds of operation. The scene and the
dialogue are fully adequate to the author's intention, about which
there can be no mistake. What he wishes to express is there expressed,
in the most lively way, with the least possible encumbrance of
explanation or chorus: the pride of Kjartan, his respect for his
unknown antagonist in the swimming-match, his anxiety to keep clear of
any submission to the king, with the king's reciprocal sense of the
Icelander's magnanimity; no stroke in all this is other than right.
While also it may be perceived that the author has brought into his
story an ingredient of rhetoric. In this place it has its use and its
effect; and, nevertheless, it is recognisable as the dangerous essence
of all that is most different from sound narrative or drama.
[Footnote 52: Translated in Appendix, Note B.]
Then said the king, "It is well seen that Kjartan is used to
put more trust in his own might than in the help of Thor and
Odin."
This rings as true as the noble echo of it in the modern version of
the _Lovers of Gudrun_:--
If neither Christ nor Odin help, why then
Still at the worst we are the sons of men.
No amount of hacking work can take away the eloquence of this
phrasing. Yet it is beyond question, that these phrases, like that
speech of Sarpedon which has been borrowed by many a hero since, are
of a different stuff from pure drama, or any pure imaginative work.
By taking thought, they may be more nearly imitated than is possible
in the case of any strong dramatic scene. The words of the king about
Kjartan are like the words that are used to Earl Hakon, by Sigmund of
the Faroes;[53] they are on their way to become, or they have already
become, an ethical commonplace. In the place where they are used, in
the debate between Kjartan and King Olaf, they have received the
strong life of the individual persons between whom they pass, just as
an actor may give life and character to any words that are put in his
mouth. Yet elsewhere the phrase may occur as a commonplace
formula--_hann trúði á mátt sinn ok megin_ (he trusted in his own
might and main)--applied generally to those Northern pagans who were
known to be _securi adversus Deos_ at the time of the first preaching
of Christendom in the North.
[Footnote 53: "Tell me what faith you are of," said the earl. "I
believe in my own strength," said Sigmund (_Færeyinga Saga_).]
All is well, however, so long as this heroic ideal is kept in its
right relation, as one element in a complex work, not permitted to
walk about by itself as a personage. This right subordination is
observed in the Sagas, whereby both the heroic characters are kept out
of extravagance (for neither Gunnar, Kari, nor Kjartan is an abstract
creature), and the less noble or the more complex characters are
rightly estimated. The Sagas, which in many things are ironical or
reticent, do not conceal their standard of measurement or value, in
relation to which characters and actions are to be appraised. They do
not, on the other hand, allow this ideal to usurp upon the rights of
individual characters. They are imaginative, dealing in actions and
characters; they are not ethical or sentimental treatises, or mirrors
of chivalry.
IV
TRAGIC IMAGINATION
In their definite tragical situations and problems, the Sagas are akin
to the older poetry of the Teutonic race. The tragical cases of the
earlier heroic age are found repeated, with variations, in the Sagas.
Some of the chief of these resemblances have been found and discussed
by the editors of _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_. Also in many places where
there is no need to look for any close resemblance in detail, there is
to be seen the same mode of comprehending the tragical stress and
contradiction as is manifested in the remains of the poetry. As in the
older Germanic stories, so in the Sagas, the plot is often more than
mere contest or adventure. As in _Finnesburh_ and _Waldere_, so in
_Gísla Saga_ and _Njála_ and many other Icelandic stories, the action
turns upon a debate between opposite motives of loyalty, friendship,
kindred. Gisli kills his sister's husband; it is his sister who begins
the pursuit of Gisli, his sister who, after Gisli's death, tries to
avenge him. Njal has to stand by his sons, who have killed his friend.
Gunnlaug and Hrafn, Kjartan and Bolli, are friends estranged by "Fate
and their own transgression," like Walter and Hagena.
The Sagas, being prose and having an historical tradition to take
care of, are unable to reach the same intensity of passion as some of
the heroic poems, the poems of _Helgi_ and of _Sigurd_. They are all
the more epic, perhaps, on that account; more equable in their course,
with this compensation for their quieter manner, that they have more
room and more variety than the passionate heroic poems. These
histories have also, as a rule, to do without the fantasies of such
poetry as _Hervor and Angantyr_, or _Helgi and Sigrun_. The vision of
the Queens of the Air, the return of Helgi from the dead, the
chantings of Hervor "between the worlds," are too much for the plain
texture of the Sagas. Though, as has already been seen in _Grettir_
and _Gisli_, this element of fantastic beauty is not wholly absent;
the less substantial graces of mythical romance, "fainter and
flightier" than those of epic, are sometimes to be found even in the
historical prose; the historical tragedies have their accompaniment of
mystery. More particularly, the story of the _Death of Thidrandi whom
the Goddesses slew_, is a prose counterpart to the poetry of Sigrun
and Hervor.[54]
[Footnote 54: It is summarised in Dasent's _Njal_, i. p. xx., and
translated in Sephton's _Olaf Tryggvason_ (1895), pp. 339-341.]
There are many other incidents in the Sagas which have the look of
romance about them. But of a number of these the distinction holds
good that has been already put forward in the case of _Beowulf_: they
are not such wonders as lie outside the bounds of common experience,
according to the estimate of those for whom the stories were told.
Besides some wonderful passages that still retain the visionary and
fantastic charm of myth and mythical romance, there are others in
which the wonders are more gross and nearer to common life. Such is
the story of the hauntings at Froda, in _Eyrbyggja_; the drowned man
and his companions coming home night after night and sitting in their
wet clothes till daybreak; such is the ghastly story of the funeral of
Víga-Styrr in _Heiðarvíga Saga_. Things of that sort are no exceptions
to common experience, according to the Icelandic judgment, and do not
stand out from the history as something different in kind; they do not
belong to the same order as the dream-poetry of Gisli or the vision of
Thidrandi.
The self-denial of the Icelandic authors in regard to myth and pure
romance has secured for them, in exchange, everything that is
essential to strong dramatic stories, independent of mythological or
romantic attractions.
Some of the Sagas are a reduction of heroic fable to the temper and
conditions of modern prose. _Laxdæla_ is an heroic epic, rewritten as
a prose history under the conditions of actual life, and without the
help of any supernatural "machinery." It is a modern prose version of
the Niblung tragedy, with the personages chosen from the life of
Iceland in the heroic age, and from the Icelandic family traditions.
It is not the only work that has reduced the Niblung story to terms of
matter of fact. The story of Sigurd and Brynhild has been presented as
a drama by Ibsen in his _Warriors in Helgeland_, with the names
changed, with new circumstances, and with nothing remaining of the
mythical and legendary lights that play about the fortunes of Sigurd
in the Northern poems. The play relies on the characters, without the
mysteries of Odin and the Valkyria. An experiment of the same sort had
been made long before. In _Laxdæla_, Kjartan stands for Sigurd: Gudrun
daughter of Osvifr, wife of Bolli, is in the place of Brynhild wife of
Gunnar, driving her husband to avenge her on her old lover. That the
authors of the Sagas were conscious at least in some cases of their
relation to the poems is proved by affinities in the details of their
language. In _Gísla Saga_, Thordis, sister of Gisli, has to endure the
same sorrow as the wife of Sigurd in the poems; her husband, like
Sigurd, is killed by her brother. One of the verses put in the mouth
of Gisli in the story contrasts her with Gudrun, daughter of Giuki,
who killed her husband (Attila) to avenge her brothers; whereas
Thordis was waking up the pursuers of her brother Gisli to avenge her
husband. With this verse in his head, it is impossible that the writer
of the Saga can have overlooked the resemblance which is no less
striking than the contrast between the two cases.
The relation of the Sagas to the older poetry may be expressed in this
way, perhaps, that they are the last stage in a progress from the
earliest mythical imagination, and the earliest dirges and encomiums
of the great men of a tribe, to a consistent and orderly form of
narrative literature, attained by the direction of a critical faculty
which kept out absurdities, without impairing the dramatic energy of
the story. The Sagas are the great victory of the Humanities in the
North, at the end of a long process of education. The Northern
nations, like others, had to come to an understanding with themselves
about their inherited myths, their traditional literary forms. One age
after another helped in different ways to modify their beliefs, to
change their literary taste. Practically, they had to find out what
they were to think of the gods; poetically, what they were to put into
their songs and stories. With problems of this sort, when a beginning
has once been made, anything is possible, and there is no one kind of
success. Every nation that has ever come to anything has had to go to
school in this way. None has ever been successful right through;
while, on the other hand, success does not mean the attainment of any
definite end. There is a success for every stage in the progress, and
one nation or literature differs from another, not by reason of an
ultimate victory or defeat, but in the number of prizes taken by the
way.
As far as can be made out, the people of the Northern tongue got the
better of the Western Teutons, in making far more than they out of the
store of primeval fancies about the gods and the worlds, and in giving
to their heroic poems both an intenser passion of expression and a
more mysterious grace and charm. The Western Teutons in their heroic
poetry seem, on the other hand, to have been steadier and less
flighty. They took earlier to the line of reasonable and dignified
narrative, reducing the lyrical element, perhaps increasing the gnomic
or reflective proportions of their work. So they succeeded in their
own way, with whatever success belongs to _Beowulf_, _Waldere_,
_Byrhtnoth_, not to speak of the new essays they made with themes
taken from the Church, in the poems of _Andreas_, _Judith_, and all
the rest. Meanwhile the Northerners were having their own difficulties
and getting over them, or out of them. They knew far more about the
gods, and made poems about them. They had no patience, so that they
could not dilute and expand their stories in the Western way. They saw
no good in the leisurely methods; they must have everything emphatic,
everything full of poetical meaning; hence no large poetry, but a
number of short poems with no slackness in them. With these they had
good reason to be content, as a good day's work in their day. But
whatever advantage the fiery Northern poems may have over the slower
verse of the Anglo-Saxons, they do not correspond to the same
intellectual wants, and they leave out something which seems to have
been attained in the Western poetry. The North had still to find out
what could be done with simpler materials, and without the magical
light of the companions of Sigrun. The Icelandic prose histories are
the solution of this new problem, a problem which the English had
already tried and solved in their own manner in the quieter passages
of their epic poetry, and, above all, in the severity of the poem of
_Maldon_.
The Sagas are partly indebted to a spirit of negative criticism and
restraint; a tendency not purely literary, corresponding, at any rate,
to a similar tendency in practical life. The energy, the passion, the
lamentation of the Northern poetry, the love of all the wonders of
mythology, went along with practical and intellectual clearness of
vision in matters that required cool judgment. The ironical correction
of sentiment, the tone of the _advocatus diaboli_, is habitual with
many of the Icelandic writers, and many of their heroes. "To see
things as they really are," so that no incantation could transform
them, was one of the gifts of an Icelandic hero,[55] and appears to
have been shared by his countrymen when they set themselves to compose
the Sagas.
[Footnote 55: _Harðar Saga_, c. xi.]
The tone of the Sagas is generally kept as near as may be to that of
the recital of true history. Nothing is allowed any preponderance over
the story and the speeches in it. It is the kind of story furthest
removed from the common pathetic fallacies of the Middle Ages. The
rationalist mind has cleared away all the sentimental and most of the
superstitious encumbrances and hindrances of strong narrative.
The history of the early Northern rationalism and its practical
results is part of the general history of religion and politics. In
some respects it may have been premature; in many cases it seems (as
might be expected) to have gone along with hardness and sterility of
mind, and to have left an inheritance of vacuity behind it. The
curious and elaborate hardness of the Icelandic Court poetry may
possibly be a sign of this same temper; in another way, the prevalent
coolness of Northern piety, even before the Reformation, is scarcely
to be dissociated from the coolness of the last days of heathendom.
The spirited acuteness of Snorri the Priest and his contemporaries was
succeeded by a moderate and unenthusiastic fashion of religion, for
the most part equally remote from the extravagances and the glories of
the medieval Church. But with these things the Sagas have little to
do; where they are in relation to this common rationalist habit of
mind, it is all to their good. The Sagas are not injured by any
scepticism or coolness in the minds of their authors. The positive
habit of mind in the Icelanders is enough to secure them against a
good deal of the conventional dulness of the Middle Ages. It made them
dissatisfied with anything that seemed wanting in vividness or
immediate force; it led them to select, in their histories, such
things as were interesting in themselves, and to present them
definitely, without any drawling commonplaces, or any makeshift
rhetorical substitutes for accurate vision and clear record. It did
not hinder, but it directed and concentrated the imagination. The
self-repression in the Sagas is bracing. It gives greater clearness,
greater resonance; it does not cut out or renounce anything that is
really worth keeping.
If not the greatest charm of the Sagas, at any rate that which is
perhaps most generally appreciated by modern readers is their economy
of phrasing in the critical passages, the brevity with which the
incidents and speeches are conveyed, the restriction of all
commentary to the least available compass. Single phrases in the great
scenes of the Sagas are full-charged with meaning to a degree hardly
surpassed in any literature, certainly not in the literatures of
medieval Europe. Half a dozen words will carry all the force of the
tragedy of the Sagas, or render all the suspense and terror of their
adventurous moments, with an effect that is like nothing so much as
the effect of some of the short repressed phrases of Shakespeare in
_Hamlet_ or _King Lear_. The effect is attained not by study of the
central phrase so much as by the right arrangement and selection of
the antecedents; that is, by right proportion in the narrative. It is
in this way that the killing of Gunnar's dog, in the attack on
Lithend, is made the occasion for one of the great strokes of
narrative. The words of Gunnar, when he is roused by the dog's
howl--"Sore art thou handled, Sam, my fosterling, and maybe it is
meant that there is not to be long between thy death and mine!"--are a
perfect dramatic indication of everything the author wishes to
express--the coolness of Gunnar, and his contempt for his enemies, as
well as his pity for his dog. They set everything in tune for the
story of Gunnar's death which follows. It is in this way that the
adventures of the Sagas are raised above the common form of mere
reported "fightings and flockings," the common tedious story of raids
and reprisals. This is one of the kinds of drama to be found in the
Sagas, and not exclusively in the best of them. One of the conditions
of this manner of composition and this device of phrasing is that the
author shall be able to keep himself out of the story, and let things
make their own impression. This is the result of the Icelandic habit
of restraint. The intellectual coolness of the Sagas is a pride that
keeps them from pathetic effusions; it does not impede the dramatic
passion, it merely gives a lesson to the sensibilities and sympathies,
to keep them out of the way when they are not wanted.
This is one notable difference of temper and rhetoric between the
Sagas and the old English poems. One of the great beauties of the old
English poetry is its understanding of the moods of lamentation--the
mood of Ossian it might be called, without much error in the name. The
transience and uncertainty of the world, the memory of past good
fortune, and of things lost,--with themes like these the Anglo-Saxon
poets make some of their finest verse; and while this fashion of
meditation may seem perhaps to have come too readily, it is not the
worst poets who fall in with it. In the Icelandic poetry the notes of
lamentation are not wanting, and it cannot be said that the Northern
elegies are less sweet or less thrilling in their grief than those of
England in the kindred forms of verse. It is enough to think of
_Gudrun's Lament_ in the "Elder Edda," or of _Sonatorrek_, Egil
Skallagrimsson's elegy on the death of his two sons. It was not any
congenital dulness or want of sense that made the Sagas generally
averse to elegy. No mere writer of Sagas was made of stronger temper
than Egil, and none of them need have been ashamed of lamentation
after Egil had lamented. But they saw that it would not do, that the
fabric of the Saga was not made for excessive decoration of any kind,
and least of all for parenthesis of elegy. The English heroic poetry
is more relenting. _Beowulf_ is invaded by pathos in a way that often
brings the old English verse very nearly to the tone of the great
lament for Lancelot at the end of the _Morte d'Arthur_; which, no
doubt, is justification enough for any lapse from the pure heroic. In
the Sagas the sense of all the vanity of human wishes is expressed in
a different way: the lament is turned into dramatic action; the
author's sympathy is not shown in direct effusions, but in his
rendering of the drama.[56] The best instance of this is the story of
Howard of Icefirth.
[Footnote 56: The pathos of Asdis, Grettir's mother, comes nearest to
the tone of the old English laments, or of the Northern elegiac
poetry, and may be taken as a contrast to the demeanour of Bjargey in
_Hávarðar Saga_, and an exception to the general rule of the Sagas in
this respect.]
Howard's son Olaf, a high-spirited and generous young man, comes under
the spite of a domineering gentleman, all the more because he does
some good offices of his own free will for this tyrannical person.
Olaf is attacked and killed by the bully and his friends; then the
story goes on to tell of the vengeance of his father and mother. The
grief of the old man is described as a matter of fact; he was lame and
feeble, and took to his bed for a long time after his son's death.
Then he roused himself, and he and his wife went to look for help, and
finally were able to bring down their enemy. In all this there is no
reflexion or commentary by the author. The pathos is turned into
narrative; it is conveyed by means of the form of the story, the
relation of the incidents to one another. The passion of the old
people turns into resolute action, and is revealed in the perseverance
of Bjargey, Olaf's mother, tracking out her enemy and coming to her
kinsmen to ask for help. She rows her boat round her enemy's ship and
finds out his plans; then she goes to her brothers' houses, one after
another, and "borrows" avengers for her son. The repression and irony
of the Icelandic character are shown in the style of her address to
her brothers. "I have come to borrow your nets," she says to one, and
"I have come to borrow your turf-spade," to another; all which is
interpreted aright by the brothers, who see what her meaning is. Then
she goes home to her husband; and here comes in, not merely irony, but
an intentional rebuke to sentiment. Her husband is lying helpless and
moaning, and she asks him whether he has slept. To which he answers in
a stave of the usual form in the Sagas, the purport of which is that
he has never known sleep since the death of Olaf his son. "'Verily
that is a great lie,' says she, 'that thou hast never slept once these
three years. But now it is high time to be up and play the man, if
thou wilt have revenge for Olaf thy son; because never in thy days
will he be avenged, if it be not this day.' And when he heard his
wife's reproof he sprang out of bed on to the floor, and sang this
other stave,"--of which the substance is still lamentation, but
greatly modified in its effect by the action with which it is
accompanied. Howard seems to throw off his age and feebleness as time
goes on, and the height of his passion is marked by a note of his
cheerfulness and gladness after he has killed his enemy. This is
different from the method of _Beowulf_, where the grief of a father
for his son is rendered in an elegy, with some beauty and some
irrelevance, as if the charm of melancholy were too much for the
story-teller.
The hardness of the Sagas is sometimes carried too far for the taste
of some readers, and there is room for some misgiving that in places
the Sagas have been affected by the contrary vice from that of
effusive pathos, namely, by a pretence of courage and endurance. In
some of the Northern poetry, as in _Ragnar's Death-Song_,[57] there
may be detected the same kind of insincere and exaggerated heroism as
in the modern romantic imitations of old Northern sentiment, now
fortunately less common than in the great days of the Northern
romantic movement at the beginning of this century. The old Northern
poetry seems to have become at one stage too self-conscious of the
literary effect of magnanimity, too quick to seize all the literary
profit that was to be made out of the conventional Viking. The Viking
of the modern romantic poets has been the affliction of many in the
last hundred years; none of his patrons seem to have guessed that he
had been discovered, and possibly had begun to be a bore, at a time
when the historical "Viking Age" had scarcely come to its close. There
is little in the Icelandic Sagas to show any affinity with his forced
and ostentatious bravery; but it may be suspected that here and there
the Sagas have made some use of the theatrical Viking, and have thrown
their lights too strongly on their death scenes. Some of the most
impressive passages of the Sagas are those in which a man receives a
death-wound with a quaint remark, and dies forthwith, like Atli in the
story of Grettir, who was thrust through as he stood at his door, and
said, "Those broad spears are in fashion now," as he went down. This
scene is one of the best of its kind; there is no fault to be found
with it. But there are possibly too many scenes and speeches of the
same sort; enough to raise the suspicion that the situation and the
form of phrase were becoming a conventional device, like some of the
"machines" in the secondary Sagas, and in the too-much-edited parts of
the better ones. This suspicion is not one that need be scouted or
choked off. The worser parts and baser parts of the literature are to
be detected by any means and all means. It is well in criticism,
however, to supplement this amputating practice by some regard for
the valid substances that have no need of it, and in this present case
to look away from the scenes where there is suspicion of journey work
and mechanical processes to the masterpieces that set the standard;
more especially to the story of the burning of Njal, which more than
any other is full of the peculiar strength and quality of the Sagas.
[Footnote 57: _Vide supra_, p. 140, and _infra_, p. 295.]
The beauty of _Njála_, and especially of the chapters about Njal's
death, is the result of a harmony between two extremes of sentiment,
each of which by itself was dangerous, and both of which have here
been brought to terms with each other and with the whole design of the
work. The ugliness of Skarphedinn's demeanour might have turned out to
be as excessive as the brutalities of _Svarfdæla_ or _Ljósvetninga
Saga_; the gentleness of Njal has some affinities with the gentleness
of the martyrs. Some few passages have distinctly the homiletic or
legendary tone about them:--
Then Flosi and his men made a great pile before each of the
doors, and then the women-folk who were inside began to weep
and to wail.
Njal spoke to them, and said: "Keep up your hearts, nor
utter shrieks, for this is but a passing storm, and it will
be long before you have another such; and put your faith in
God, and believe that He is so merciful that He will not let
us burn both in this world and the next."
Such words of comfort had he for them all, and others still
more strong (c. 128, Dasent's translation).
It is easy to see in what school the style of this was learned, and of
this other passage, about Njal after his death:--
Then Hjallti said, "I shall speak what I say with all
freedom of speech. The body of Bergthora looks as it was
likely she would look, and still fair; but Njal's body and
visage seem to me so bright that I have never seen any dead
man's body so bright as this" (c. 131).
At the other extreme are the heathenish manners of Skarphedinn, who,
in the scene at the Althing, uses all the bad language of the old
"flytings" in the heroic poetry,[58] who "grins" at the attempts to
make peace, who might easily, by a little exaggeration and change of
emphasis, have been turned into one of the types of the false heroic.
[Footnote 58: Pp. 96, 113, above.]
Something like this has happened to Egil, in another Saga, through
want of balance, want of comprehensive imagination in the author. In
_Njála_, where no element is left to itself, the picture is complete
and full of variety. The prevailing tone is neither that of the homily
nor that of the robustious Viking; it is the tone of a narrative that
has command of itself and its subject, and can play securely with
everything that comes within its scope.
In the death of Njal the author's imagination has found room for
everything,--for the severity and the nobility of the old Northern
life, for the gentleness of the new religion, for the irony in which
the temper of Skarphedinn is made to complement and illustrate the
temper of Njal.
Then Flosi went to the door and called out to Njal, and said
he would speak with him and Bergthora.
Now Njal does so, and Flosi said: "I will offer thee, master
Njal, leave to go out, for it is unworthy that thou shouldst
burn indoors."
"I will not go out," said Njal, "for I am an old man, and
little fitted to avenge my sons, but I will not live in
shame."
Then Flosi said to Bergthora: "Come thou out, housewife, for
I will for no sake burn thee indoors."
"I was given away to Njal young," said Bergthora, "and I
have promised him this, that we should both share the same
fate."
After that they both went back into the house.
"What counsel shall we now take?" said Bergthora.
"We will go to our bed," says Njal, "and lay us down; I have
long been eager for rest."
Then she said to the boy Thord, Kari's son: "Thee will I
take out, and thou shalt not burn in here."
"Thou hast promised me this, grandmother," says the boy,
"that we should never part so long as I wished to be with
thee; but methinks it is much better to die with thee and
Njal than to live after you."
Then she bore the boy to her bed, and Njal spoke to his
steward and said:--
"Now shalt thou see where we lay us down, and how I lay us
out, for I mean not to stir an inch hence, whether reek or
burning smart me, and so thou wilt be able to guess where to
look for our bones."
He said he would do so.
There had been an ox slaughtered, and the hide lay there.
Njal told the steward to spread the hide over them, and he
did so.
So there they lay down both of them in their bed, and put
the boy between them. Then they signed themselves and the
boy with the cross, and gave over their souls into God's
hand, and that was the last word that men heard them utter.
Then the steward took the hide and spread it over them, and
went out afterwards. Kettle of the Mark caught hold of him
and dragged him out; he asked carefully after his
father-in-law Njal, but the steward told him the whole
truth. Then Kettle said:--
"Great grief hath been sent on us, when we have had to share
such ill-luck together."
Skarphedinn saw how his father laid him down and how he laid
himself out, and then he said:--
"Our father goes early to bed, and that is what was to be
looked for, for he is an old man."
The harmonies of _Laxdæla_ are somewhat different from those of the
history of Njal, but here again the elements of grace and strength, of
gentleness and terror, are combined in a variety of ways, and in such
a way as to leave no preponderance to any one exclusively. Sometimes
the story may seem to fall into the exemplary vein of the "antique
poet historicall"; sometimes the portrait of Kjartan may look as if it
were designed, like the portrait of Amadis or Tirant the White, "to
fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle
discipline." Sometimes the story is involved in the ordinary business
of Icelandic life, and Kjartan and Bolli, the Sigurd and Gunnar of the
tragedy, are seen engaged in common affairs, such as make the alloy of
heroic narrative in the _Odyssey_. The hero is put to the proof in
this way, and made to adapt himself to various circumstances.
Sometimes the story touches on the barbarism and cruelty, which were
part of the reality familiar to the whole of Iceland in the age of the
Sturlungs, of which there is more in the authentic history of the
Sturlungs than in the freer and more imaginative story of Kjartan. At
one time the story uses the broad and fluent form of narrative,
leaving scene after scene to speak for itself; at other times it
allows itself to be condensed into a significant phrase. Of these
emphatic phrases there are two especially, both of them speeches of
Gudrun, and the one is the complement of the other: the one in the
tone of irony, Gudrun's comment on the death of Kjartan, a repetition
of Brynhild's phrase on the death of Sigurd;[59] the other Gudrun's
confession to her son at the end of the whole matter.
[Footnote 59: Then Brynhild laughed till the walls rang again: "Good
luck to your hands and swords that have felled the goodly prince"
(_Brot Sgkv._ 10; cf. p. 103 above).]
Gudrun meets her husband coming back, and says: "A good
day's work and a notable; I have spun twelve ells of yarn,
and you have slain Kjartan Olaf's son."
Bolli answers: "That mischance would abide with me, without
thy speaking of it."
Said Gudrun: "I reckon not that among mischances; it seemed
to me thou hadst greater renown that winter Kjartan was in
Norway, than when he came back to Iceland and trampled thee
under foot. But the last is best, that Hrefna will not go
laughing to bed this night."
Then said Bolli in great wrath: "I know not whether she will
look paler at this news than thou, and I doubt thou mightest
have taken it no worse if we had been left lying where we
fought, and Kjartan had come to tell of it."
Gudrun saw that Bolli was angry, and said: "Nay, no need of
words like these; for this work I thank thee; there is an
earnest in it that thou wilt not thwart me after."
This is one of the crises of the story, in which the meaning of Gudrun
is brought out in a short passage of dialogue, at the close of a
section of narrative full of adventure and incident. In all that
precedes, in the relations of Gudrun to Kjartan before and after her
marriage with Bolli, as after the marriage of Kjartan and Hrefna, the
motives are generally left to be inferred from the events and actions.
Here it was time that Gudrun should speak her mind, or at least the
half of her mind.
Her speech at the end of her life is equally required, and the two
speeches are the complement of one another. Bolli her son comes to see
her and sits with her.
The story tells that one day Bolli came to Helgafell; for
Gudrun was always glad when he came to see her. Bolli sat
long with his mother, and there was much talk between them.
At last Bolli said: "Mother, will you tell me one thing? It
has been in my mind to ask you, who was the man you loved
best?"
Gudrun answers: "Thorkell was a great man and a lordly; and
no man was goodlier than Bolli, nor of gentler breeding;
Thord Ingwin's son was the most discreet of them all, a wise
man in the law. Of Thorvald I make no reckoning."
Then says Bolli: "All this is clear, all the condition of
your husbands as you have told; but it has not yet been told
whom you loved best. You must not keep it secret from me
longer."
Gudrun answers: "You put me hard to it, my son; but if I am
to tell any one, I will rather tell you than another."
Bolli besought her again to tell him. Then said Gudrun: "I
did the worst to him, the man that I loved the most."
"Now may we believe," says Bolli, "that there is no more to
say."
He said that she had done right in telling him what he
asked.
Gudrun became an old woman, and it is said that she lost her
sight. She died at Helgafell, and there she rests.
This is one of the passages which it is easy to quote, and also
dangerous. The confession of Gudrun loses incalculably when detached
from the whole story, as also her earlier answer fails, by itself, to
represent the meaning and the art of the Saga. They are the two keys
that the author has given; neither is of any use by itself, and both
together are of service only in relation to the whole story and all
its fabric of incident and situation and changing views of life.
V
COMEDY
The Poetical Justice of Tragedy is observed, and rightly observed, in
many of the Sagas and in the greater plots. Fate and Retribution
preside over the stories of Njal and his sons, and the _Lovers of
Gudrun_. The story of Gisli works itself out in accordance with the
original forebodings, yet without any illicit process in the logic of
acts and motives, or any intervention of the mysterious powers who
accompany the life of Gisli in his dreams. Even in less consistent
stories the same ideas have a part; the story of Gudmund the Mighty,
which is a series of separate chapters, is brought to an end in the
Nemesis for Gudmund's injustice to Thorkell Hake. But the Sagas claim
exemption from the laws of Tragedy, when poetical Justice threatens to
become tyrannical. Partly by the nature of their origin, no doubt, and
their initial dependence on historical recollections of actual
events,[60] they are driven to include a number of things that might
disappoint a well-educated gallery of spectators; the drama is not
always worked out, or it may be that the meaning of a chapter or
episode lies precisely in the disappointment of conventional
expectations.
[Footnote 60: _Vide supra_, p. 193 (the want of tragedy in _Víga-Glúms
Saga_).]
There is only one comedy, or at most two, among the Sagas--the story
of the Confederates (_Bandamanna Saga_) with an afterpiece, the short
story of Alecap (_Olkofra Þáttr_). The composition of the Sagas,
however, admits all sorts of comic passages and undignified
characters, and it also quietly unravels many complications that seem
to be working up for a tragic ending. The dissipation of the storm
before it breaks is, indeed, so common an event that it almost becomes
itself a convention of narrative in the Sagas, by opposition to the
common devices of the feud and vengeance. There is a good instance of
this paradoxical conclusion in _Arons Saga_ (c. 12), an authentic
biography, apparently narrating an actual event. The third chapter of
_Glúma_ gives another instance of threatened trouble passing away.
Ivar, a Norwegian with a strong hatred of Icelanders, seems likely to
quarrel with Eyolf, Glum's father, but being a gentleman is won over
by Eyolf's bearing. This is a part of the Saga where one need not
expect to meet with any authentic historical tradition. The story of
Eyolf in Norway is probably mere literature, and shows the working of
the common principles of the Saga, as applied by an author of fiction.
The sojourn of Grettir with the two foster-brothers is another
instance of a dangerous situation going off without result. The whole
action of _Vápnfirðinga Saga_ is wound up in a reconciliation, which
is a sufficient close; but, on the other hand, the story of Glum ends
in a mere exhaustion of the rivalries, a drawn game. One of the later
more authentic histories, the story of Thorgils and Haflidi, dealing
with the matters of the twelfth century and not with the days of
Gunnar, Njal, and Snorri the Priest, is a story of rivalry passing
away, and may help to show how the composers of the Sagas were
influenced by their knowledge and observation of things near their
own time in their treatment of matters of tradition.
Even more striking than this evasion of the conventional plot of the
blood-feud, is the freedom and variety in respect of the minor
characters, particularly shown in the way they are made to perplex the
simple-minded spectator. To say that all the characters in the Sagas
escape from the limitations of mere typical humours might be to say
too much; but it is obvious that simple types are little in favour,
and that the Icelandic authors had all of them some conception of the
ticklish and dangerous variability of human dispositions, and knew
that hardly any one was to be trusted to come up to his looks, for
good or evil. Popular imagination has everywhere got at something of
this sort in its views of the lubberly younger brother, the ash-raker
and idler who carries off the princess. Many of the heroes of the
Sagas are noted to have been slow in their growth and unpromising,
like Glum, but there are many more cases of change of disposition in
the Sagas than can be summed up under this old formula. There are
stories of the quiet man roused to action, like Thorarin in
_Eyrbyggja_, where it is plain that the quietness was strength from
the first. A different kind of courage is shown by Atli, the
poor-spirited prosperous man in _Hávarðar Saga_, who went into hiding
to escape being dragged into the family troubles, but took heart and
played the man later on. One of the most effective pieces of comedy in
the Sagas is the description of his ill-temper when he is found out,
and his gradual improvement. He comes from his den half-frozen, with
his teeth chattering, and nothing but bad words for his wife and her
inconvenient brother who wants his help. His wife puts him to bed, and
he comes to think better of himself and the world; the change of his
mind being represented in the unobtrusive manner which the Sagas
employ in their larger scenes.
One of the most humorous and effective contradictions of the popular
judgment is that episode in _Njála_, where Kari has to trust to the
talkative person whose wife has a low opinion of him. It begins like
farce: any one can see that Bjorn has all the manners of the
swaggering captain; his wife is a shrew and does not take him at his
own valuation. The comedy of Bjorn is that he proves to be something
different both from his own Bjorn and his wife's Bjorn. He is the
idealist of his own heroism, and believes in himself as a hero. His
wife knows better; but the beauty of it all is that his wife is wrong.
His courage, it is true, is not quite certain, but he stands his
ground; there is a small particle of a hero in him, enough to save
him. His backing of Kari in the fight is what many have longed to see,
who have found little comfort in the discomfiture of Bobadil and
Parolles, and who will stand to it that the chronicler has done less
than justice to Sir John Falstaff both at Gadshill and Shrewsbury.
Never before Bjorn of _Njála_ was there seen on any theatre the person
of the comfortable optimist, with a soul apparently damned from the
first to a comic exposure and disgrace, but escaping this because his
soul has just enough virtue to keep him steady. The ordeal of Bjorn
contains more of the comic spirit than all the host of stage cowards
from Pyrgopolinices to Bob Acres, precisely because it introduces
something more than the simple humour, an essence more spiritual and
capricious.
Further, the partnership of Kari and Bjorn, and Kari's appreciation of
his idealist companion, go a long way to save Kari from a too
exclusive and limited devotion to the purpose of vengeance. There is
much to be said on behalf of this Bjorn. His relations with Kari
prevent the hero of the latter part of the book from turning into a
mere hero. The humorous character of the squire brings out something
new in the character of the knight, a humorous response; all which
goes to increase the variety of the story, and to widen the difference
between this story and all the monotonous and abstract stories of
chivalrous adventures.
The Sagas have comedy in them, comic incidents and characters, because
they have no notion of the dignity of abstract and limited heroics;
because they cannot understand the life of Iceland otherwise than in
full, with all its elements together. The one intentionally comic
history, _Bandamanna Saga_, "The Confederates," which is exceptional
in tone and plot, is a piece of work in which what may be called the
form or spirit or idea of the heroic Saga is brought fully within
one's comprehension by means of contrast and parody. _Bandamanna Saga_
is a complete work, successful in every detail; as an artistic piece
of composition it will stand comparison with any of the Sagas. But it
is comedy, not tragedy; it is a mock-heroic, following the lines of
the heroic model, consistently and steadily, and serving as a
touchstone for the vanity of the heroic age. It is worth study, for
Comedy is later and therefore it would seem more difficult than
Tragedy, and this is the first reasonable and modern comedy in the
history of modern Europe. Further, the method of narrative, and
everything in it except the irony, belong to all the Sagas in common;
there is nothing particularly new or exceptional in the style or the
arrangement of the scenes; it is not so much a parody or a
mock-heroic, as an heroic work inspired with comic irony. It is not a
new kind of Saga, it is the old Saga itself put to the ordeal by the
Comic Muse, and proving its temper under the severest of all strains.
This is the story of the Confederates.--There was a man named Ufeig
who lived in Midfirth, a free-handed man, not rich, who had a son
named Odd. The father and son disagreed, and Odd, the son, went off to
make his own fortune, and made it, without taking any further notice
of his father. The two men are contrasted; Ufeig being an unsuccessful
man and a humorist, too generous and too careless to get on in the
world, while Odd, his son, is born to be a prosperous man. The main
plot of the story is the reconciliation of the respectable son and the
prodigal father, which is brought about in the most perfect and
admirable manner.
Odd got into trouble. He had a lawsuit against Uspak, a violent person
whom he had formerly trusted, who had presumed too much, had been
disgraced, and finally had killed the best friend of Odd in one of the
ways usual in such business in the Sagas. In the course of the lawsuit
a slight difficulty arose--one of Odd's jurymen died, and another had
to be called in his place. This was informal, but no one at first made
anything of it; till it occurred to a certain great man that Odd was
becoming too strong and prosperous, and that it was time to put him
down. Whereupon he went about and talked to another great man, and
half persuaded him that this view was the right one; and then felt
himself strong enough to step in and break down the prosecution by
raising the point about the formation of the jury. Odd went out of the
court without a word as soon as the challenge was made.