valid for all times, which both might and ought to be retained;
but, on the other hand, a great deal occurs which is rough, savage,
barbarous; and this had either to be entirely eliminated, or at
least materially softened. Up to a certain degree it therefore
became necessary to modernize; but the difficulty was to find the
golden mean. On the one hand, the poem ought not to offend too much
our more refined manners and gentler modes of thought; but, on the
other hand, the natural quality, the freshness, the truth to nature
ought not to be sacrificed."
Tegnér fancies he has solved this problem by retaining in Frithjof the
fundamental traits of all heroism, viz., nobility, magnanimity, courage;
but at the same time nationalizing them by giving them a distinctly
Scandinavian tinge. And this he has done by making his hero almost
wantonly defiant, stubborn, pugnacious. As Ingeborg, lamenting his
fierce pugnacity, and yet glorying in it, says:
"How glad, how stubborn, and how full of hope!
The point he setteth of his trusty sword
Against the breast of Fate and crieth, Thou must yield."
"Another peculiarity of the Norseman's character is a certain
tendency to sadness and melancholy which is habitual with all
deeper natures. An elegiac tone pervades all our old national
melodies, and, generally speaking, all that is of significance in
our history; for it rises from the very bottom of the nation's
heart. There is a certain joyousness (commonly attributed to the
French) which in the last instance is only levity. But the
joyousness of the North is fundamentally serious; for which reason
I have in Frithjof endeavored to give a hint of this brooding
melancholy in his repentance of the unintentional burning of the
temple, his brooding fear of Balder,
"Who sits in the sky, and the thoughts he sends down,
Which forever are clouding my mind."
It will be seen from this that Tegnér was fully conscious of what he was
doing. He civilized Frithjof, because he was addressing a civilized
audience which would have taken little interest in the rude viking of
the eighth century, if he had been presented to them in all his savage
unrestraint. He did exactly what Tennyson did, when he made King Arthur
the model of a modern English gentleman and (by implication) a
Protestant a thousand years before Protestantism existed. Ingeborg, too,
had to be a trifle modified and disembarrassed of a few somewhat too
naturalistic traits with which the saga endows her, before she became
the lovely type that she is of the faithful, loving, long-suffering,
womanhood of the North, with trustful blue eyes, golden hair, and a
heart full of sweet and beautiful sentiment. It was because
Oehlenschläger had neglected to make sufficient concessions to modern
demands that his "Helge" (though in some respects a greater poem than
"Frithjof's Saga") never crossed the boundary of Scandinavia, and even
there made no deep impression upon the general public.
Though the story of "Frithjof" is familiar to most readers, I may be
pardoned for presenting a brief _résumé_. The general plot, in Tegnér's
version, coincides in its main outlines with that of the saga. Frithjof,
the son of the free yeoman Thorstein Vikingson, is fostered in the house
of the peasant Hilding, with Ingeborg, the daughter of King Belë of
Sogn. The King and the yeoman have been life-long friends, and each has
a most cordial regard for the other.
"By sword upheld, King Belë in King's-hall stood,
Beside him Thorstein Vikingson, that yeoman good,
His battle-friend with almost a century hoary,
And deep-marked like a rune-stone with scars of glory."
The yeoman's son and the king's daughter, thrown into daily
companionship in their foster-father's hall, love each other; and
Frithjof, after the death of their fathers, goes to Ingeborg's brothers,
Helge and Halfdan, and asks her hand in marriage. His suit is scornfully
rejected, and he departs in wrath vowing vengeance. The ancient King
Ring, of Ringerike, having heard of Ingeborg's beauty, sends also
ambassadors to woo her. Her brothers make sacrifices in order to
ascertain the will of the gods. The omens are inauspicious, and they
accordingly feel compelled to decline the King's offer.
Ingeborg is shut up in Balder's Grove, where the sanctity of the temple
would make it sacrilege for any one to approach her. Frithjof, however,
braves the wrath of the god, and sails every night across the fjord to a
stolen rendezvous with his beloved. The canto called "Frithjof's
Happiness," which is brimming over with a swelling redundance of
sentiment, is so cloyingly sweet that the reader must himself be in love
in order to enjoy it. It is written in the key of the watch-songs of the
German minnesingers and the aubades of Provençal troubadours. The Norse
note is not only wanting, but would never fit into that key:
"'Hush! 'tis the lark.' Nay, those soft numbers
Of doves' faith tell that knows no rest.
The lark yet on the hillside slumbers
Beside his mate in grassy nest.
To them no king seals his dominions
When morning breaks in eastern air;
Their life is free as are their pinions
Which bear aloft the gladsome pair.
"'See day is breaking!' Nay, some tower
Far eastward sendeth forth that light;
We yet may spend another hour,
Not yet shall end the precious night.
May sleep, thou sun, thee long encumber,
And waking may'st thou linger still,
For Frithjof's sake may'st freely slumber
Till Ragnarök, be such thy will.
"Vain hope! The day its gray discloses,
Already morning breezes blow,
Already bend the eastern roses,
As fresh as Ingeborg's can glow;
The winged songsters mount and twitter
(The thoughtless throng!) along the sky,
And life starts forth, and billows glitter,
And far the shades and lover fly.
* * * * *
"Farewell, beloved: till some longer
And fairer eve we meet again.
By one kiss on thy brow the stronger
Let me depart--thy lips, once, then!
Sleep now and dream of me, and waken
When mid-day comes, and faithful tell
The hours as I yearn forsaken,
And sigh as I! Farewell, farewell!"[38]
[38] Translation of L. A. Sherman, Ph.D. Boston, 1878.
The two following cantos, entitled "The Parting" and "Ingeborg's
Lament," though liable to the same criticism as their predecessor, are,
with all their sentimental effusiveness, beautiful. No lover, I fancy,
ever found them redundant, overstrained, spoiled by the lavish splendor
of their imagery. Tegnér has accomplished the remarkable feat of
interveining, as it were, his academic rhetoric with a blood-red
humanity, and making the warm pulse of experience throb through the
stately phrases.
King Ring, incensed at the rejection of his suit, declares war against
Helge and Halfdan, who in their dire need ask Frithjof's aid, which is
promptly refused. In order to be rid of him they then send him on an
expedition to the Orkneys, to collect a tribute which is due to them
from Earl Angantyr. He entreats Ingeborg to flee with him; but she
refuses. She sees from Balder's Grove his good ship Ellida breasting the
waves and weeps bitter tears at his loss:
"Swell not so high,
Billows of blue with your deafening cry!
Stars, lend assistance, a shining
Pathway defining!
"With the spring doves
Frithjof will come, but the maiden he loves
Cannot in hall or dell meet him,
Lovingly greet him.
Buried she sleeps
Dead for love's sake, or bleeding she weeps
Heart-broken, given by her brother
Unto another."
It is perfectly in keeping with the character of Norse womanhood in the
saga age that Ingeborg should refuse to defy her brother's authority by
fleeing with Frithjof and yet deeply mourn his departure without her.
The family feeling, the bond of blood, was exceptionally strong; and
submission to the social code which made the male head of the house the
arbiter of his sister's fate was bred in the bone. It is, therefore,
perfectly natural that, when King Ring has beaten her brothers in
battle, and exacted Ingeborg as the prize of victory, she yields
unmurmuringly to their decree.
Frithjof, in the meanwhile, distinguishes himself greatly in the Orkneys
by his strength and prowess, gains Earl Angantyr's friendship, and
returns with the tribute. As he sails into the fjord, a sight greets him
which makes his heart quail. Framnaes, his paternal estate, is burnt to
the ground, and the charred beams lie in a ruined heap under the smiling
sky. The kings, though they had pledged their honor that they would not
harm his property, had broken faith with him; and Ingeborg, in the hope
of gaining whom he had undertaken the perilous voyage, was wedded to
King Ring. In a white-heat of wrath and sorrow Frithjof starts out to
call her perjured brothers to account. He finds them in the temple in
Balder's Grove, preparing for the sacrifice. There he flings the bag
containing the tribute into King Helge's face, knocking out his front
teeth, and observing on his wife's arm the ring with which he had once
pledged Ingeborg, he rushes at her to recover it. The woman, who had
been warming the wooden image of Balder before the fire, drops, in her
fright, the idol into the flame. Frithjof seizes her by the arm and
snatches the ring from her. In the general confusion that follows the
temple takes fire, and all attempts to quench the flames are futile. In
consequence of this sacrilege Frithjof is outlawed at the _Thing_ as a
_vargr-i-véum_, _i.e._, wolf in the sanctuary, and is forced to go into
exile. His farewell to his native land strikes one as being altogether
out of tune. The old Norse viking is made to anticipate sentiments which
are of far later growth; but for all that the verses are quite stirring:
"Brow of creation,
Thou North sublime!
I have no station
Within thy clime.
Proud, hence descended
My race I tell;
Of heroes splendid,
Fond nurse, farewell!
* * * * *
My love false-hearted,
My manor burned,
My name departed,
An outlaw, spurned,
I now appealing
From earth, will dwell
With waves, for healing.
Farewell, farewell!"[39]
[39] Sherman's translation.
Frithjof now roams for many years over the sea as a viking, and gains
much booty and honor. His viking code, with its swift anapestic rhythm,
has a breezy melody which sings in the ear. It is an attempt to embody
the ethics of Norse warfare at its best, and to present in the most
poetic light the rampant, untamable individualism of the ancient
Germanic paganism. In defiance of his friend Björn's advice, Frithjof,
weary of this bootless chase for glory and pelf, resolves to see
Ingeborg once more before he dies, and, disguised as a salt-boiler, he
enters King Ring's hall. There he sees his beloved sitting in the
high-seat beside her aged lord; and the sorrow which the years had
dulled revives with an exquisite agony. He punishes with fierce
promptitude one of the King's men who insults him; and his answer to the
King's rebuke betrays him as a man of rank and station. He then throws
away his disguise, without, however, revealing his name, but Ingeborg
instantly recognizes him.
"Then even to her temples the queen's deep blushes sped,
As when the northlight tinges the snow-clad fields with red,
And like two full-blown lilies on racking waves which rest,
With ill-concealed emotion so heaved her throbbing breast."
The king now invites the stranger, who calls himself Thjof, to remain
his guest during the winter, and Frithjof accepts. He makes, however, no
approach to Ingeborg, with whom he scarcely exchanges a single word.
During a sleigh-ride on the ice he saves, by a tremendous feat of
strength, the life of the king and queen. With the coming of the spring
preparations are made for a grand chase, in which Frithjof participates.
"Spring is coming, birds are twittering, forests leaf, and smiles
the sun;
And the loosened torrents downward singing to the ocean run;
Glowing like the cheek of Freya, peeping rosebuds 'gin to ope,
And in human hearts awaken love of life and joy and hope."
The canto called "The Temptation" contains the most dramatic and
altogether the most beautiful situation in the poem. The old king,
feigning weariness, begs Frithjof to tarry with him alone, while he
takes a rest. Frithjof tries to dissuade him, but in vain.
"Then threw Frithjof down his mantle, and upon the green sward
spread;
And the ancient king, so trustful, laid on Frithjof's knee his head;
Slept as calmly as the hero sleepeth after war's alarms
On his shield, calm as an infant slumbers in its mother's arms."
Then the temptation comes to Frithjof to slay the old man who had stolen
his bride; but after a brief struggle he hurls his sword far away into
the forest.
"Straight the ancient king awakens. 'Sweet has been my sleep,' he
said.
'Pleasant 'tis to sleep in shadow, guarded by a brave man's blade.
But where is thy sword, O stranger, lightning's brother, where is
he?
Who has parted one from other that should never parted be?'"
"'Not a whit care I,' said Frithjof, 'I shall find a sword some day;
Sharp, O King, are tongues of falchions, words of peace they seldom
say;
In the steel dwell swarthy demons, demons strayed from Nifelhem,
No man's sleep to them is sacred, silver locks embitter them.'
"'Youth, no moment have I slumbered, but to prove thee feigned to
rest,
Unproved men and weapons never trusts King Ring without a test.
Thou art Frithjof. I have known thee since thou first cam'st to my
hall;
Much that thou hast hidden from me; from the first I guessed it
all.'"
Soon after this interview the aged king feels death approaching; and in
order not to go to the dark abode of Hela, he cuts death-runes upon his
breast and ascends to Odin's bright hall. But before dying he gives
Ingeborg to Frithjof, and makes him the guardian of his son. The people,
in _Thing_ assembled, glorying in Frithjof's great renown, desire,
however, to make him King's successor; but he lifts the small boy above
his head upon his shield and proclaims him king. He returns home and
rebuilds Balder's temple, whereupon the sentence of outlawry is removed,
and he is reconciled to Ingeborg's brothers and marries the beloved of
his youth.
The last canto, called "The Atonement," is perhaps the most flagrant
violation of historical verisimilitude in the whole epic. A hoary priest
of Balder actually performs the wedding ceremony in the restored temple,
and pronounces a somewhat unctuous wedding oration, which differs from
those which Tegnér himself had frequently delivered chiefly in the
substitution of pagan for the Christian deities. As a matter of fact,
marriage was a purely civil contract among the ancient Norsemen, and had
no association with the temple or the priesthood, which, by the way, was
no separate office but a patriarchal function belonging to the secular
chieftainship. But Tegnér's public were in nowise shocked by
anachronisms of this sort; they probably rejoiced the more heartily in
the happiness of the reunited lovers, because their marriage was,
according to modern notions, so "regular."
It was soon after his publication of "Frithjof's Saga" that Tegnér
became Bishop of Wexiö. He then removed from Lund and took up his
residence upon the estate Oestrabo, near the principal town in his
diocese. The great fame of his poem came to him as a surprise; and he
even undertook to protest against it, declaring with perfect sincerity
that he held it to be undeserved. In letters to his friends he never
wearied of pointing out the faults of "Frithjof" and his own
shortcomings as a poet. In a letter to the poet Leopold (August 17,
1825), who had praised the poem to the skies, he argues seriously to
prove that his admiration is misplaced:
"My great fault in 'Frithjof' was not that I chose my theme from
the old cycle of sagas, but that I treated it in a tone and with a
manner which was neither ancient nor modern, neither antiquarian
nor poetical, but hovered, as it were, on the boundary of both. For
what does it mean to treat a subject poetically if not this, to
eliminate everything which belongs to an alien and past age and now
no longer appeals to any heart? The hearts to which it once did
appeal are now all dust. Other modes of thought and feeling are
current. It is impossible to properly translate one age into
another. But to poetry nothing is really past. Poetry is the
beautifying life of the moment; she wears the colors of the day;
she cannot conceive of anything as dead.... But I am convinced that
all poetic treatment of a theme belonging to a past age demands its
modernization; and that everything antiquarian is here a mistake.
This holds good not only in regard to the northern tone but also in
regard to the Greek. Look, for instance, at Goethe's 'Iphigenie.'
Who does not admire the beautiful, simple, noble, Hellenic form?
And yet who has ever felt his soul warmed by this image of
stone?... No living spirit has been breathed into these nostrils;
the staring eyes gaze upon me without life and animation; no heart
beats under the Hellenically rounded marble bosom. The whole is a
mistake, infinitely more beautiful than 'Frithjof,' but fashioned
according to the game principles of art. The Greeks said that the
Muse was the daughter of Memory; but this refers only to the
material, the theme itself, which is everywhere of minor
consequence. The question, then, is as to the proper treatment.
Where it tends toward the antiquarian it misses the mark; it
represents, like 'Frithjof,' only a restored ruin."
This passage is by no means the only one in which Tegnér, with an utter
absence of vanity or illusion, judged his work and found it wanting.
There is no mock modesty in his manly deprecation of the honors that
were showered upon him; but as a father knows best the faults of his
child whom he loves, so he knew the defects of his work, as measured by
his own high standard, and refused to accept any more praise than was
his due. Not even the fact that Goethe expressed his admiration of
"Frithjof's Saga" could persuade him that he was entitled to the
extravagant homage which his enthusiastic countrymen accorded him. There
were even times when he disclaimed the title of poet. Whether he was
forgotten a little sooner or a little later, he said, was a matter of
small moment.
"Speaking seriously," he writes in 1824 (accordingly before the
publication of "Frithjof"), "I have never regarded myself as a poet in
the higher significance of the word.... I am at best a John the Baptist,
who is preparing the way for him who is to come."
He is always just and inclined to be generous in his judgment of every
one except himself. It is necessary, however, after the year 1824, to
make due allowance for the terrible strain upon his mind which disposed
him to give violent and hyperbolical expression to the mood of the
moment. The unhappy passion which he could at times smother, but never
subdue, went boring away into his heart like a subterranean fire,
consuming his vitals, and occasionally breaking forth into a wild blaze.
The following reference to it, in his letter to Franzén (November 13,
1825), is very pathetic:
"It is to-day my forty-third birthday. I have thus long since
passed the highest altitude of life where the waters divide. With
every year one now becomes smaller and smaller; one star is
extinguished after another. And yet the sun does not rise. One dies
by degrees and by halves. Therefore only children and youth ought
to celebrate their birthdays with joy; we who have passed into the
valley of age, which with every step is growing darker and
chillier, are right in celebrating them with--whims.... However,
this is not my only or my greatest affliction, I have had and have
others. But the night is silent and the grave is dumb, and their
sister, Sorrow, should be as they. Therefore--let this suffice."
December 29th. "Alas, this old year! What I have suffered in it no
one knows, if not, perhaps, the Recorder beyond the clouds. But I
am indebted to this year. It has been darker, but also more serious
than all the others put together. I have learned at my own expense
what a human heart can endure without breaking, and what power God
has deposited in a man under his left nipple. As I say, I am under
obligation to this year, for it has enriched me with what is the
real sinking fund of human wisdom and human independence--a mighty,
deeply rooted contempt for man.... My inner nature emerges from the
crisis like the hibernating bear from his den, emaciated and
exhausted, but happily with my ursine sinews well preserved; and by
and by some flesh will be growing on them again. It seems to me
that my old barbaric, Titanic self, with its hairy arms, is
constantly more and more rubbing the sleep out of its eyes. I hope
that some vine may still grow upon the scorched and petrified
volcano of my heart."
January, 1826. "But when one is compelled to despise the
_character_ of a human being, especially of one who has been or is
dear to one, then that is the bitterest experience which life can
afford; then it is not strange if a frank and ardent soul turns
with loathing from this false, hypocritical generation and shuts
himself up, as well as may be, in the hermitage of his own heart.
"My mind is unchristian, for it has no day of rest. Generally I
think that my disease has its seat in the abdomen or in the waist.
Mineral waters I can no more drink this summer. But is there not a
mineral water which is called Lethe?
"Whether my little personality returns thither whence it came, with
or without consciousness, a few months later or earlier, in order
to be drowned in its great fountain-head, or to float for some time
yet like a bubble, reflecting the clouds and an alien light--this
appears to me constantly a matter of less and less consequence."
There is to me a heartrending pathos in these confessions. It is easy to
stand aloof, of course, like a schoolmaster with his chastising rod, and
lash the frailties of poor human nature. It is easy to declare with
virtuous indignation that the man who covets his neighbor's wife is a
transgressor who has no claim upon our sympathy. And yet who can help
pitying this great, noble poet, who fought so bravely against his
"barbaric, Titanic self with its hairy arms"? His passionate intensity
of soul was, indeed, part of his poetic equipment; and he would not have
been the poet he was if he had been cool, callous, and self-restrained.
The slag in him was so intimately moulded with the precious metal that
their separation would have been the extinction of the individuality
itself. The fiery furnace of affliction through which he passed warped
and scorched and cracked this mighty compound, but without destroying
it. A glimpse of this experience which transformed the powerful, joyous,
bright-visaged singer into a bitter, darkly brooding pessimist, fleeing
from the sinister shadow which threatened to overtake him, is afforded
us in the poem "Hypochondria[40]":
"I stood upon the altitude of life,
Where mingled waters part and downward go
With rush and foam in opposite directions.
Lo, it was bright up there, and fair to stand.
I saw the sun, I saw his satellite,
Which, since he quenched his light, shone in the blue;
I saw that earth was fair and green and glorious,
I saw that God was good, that man was honest.
"Then rose a dread black imp, and suddenly
The black one bit himself into my heart;
And lo, at once the earth lay void and barren,
And sun and stars were straightway drenched in gloom.
The landscape, glad erewhile, lay dark, autumnal;
Each grove was sere, each flower stem was broken;
Within the frozen sense my strength lay dead,
All joy, all courage withered within me.
"What is to me reality--its dumb,
Dead bulk, inert, oppressive, grim, and crude?
How hope has paled, alas, with roseate hue!
And memory, the heavenly blue, grown hoary!
And even poesy! Its acrobatic
Exertions, leaps--they pall upon my sense;
Its bright mirage can satisfy no soul--
Light skimmings from the surface fair of things.