Here is the grandest message that the Old Norse religion had to give, and Matthew Arnold concerned himself with that alone. It is a far cry from Regner Lodbrog to this. There is a fine touch in the introduction of Regner into the lamentation of Balder. Arnold makes the old warrior say of the ruder skalds:

Here is a human Norseman, a figure not often presented in the versions of the old stories that English poets and romancers have given us. Arnold did a good service to Icelandic literature when he put into Regner's mouth mild sentiments and a love for home and family. The note is not lacking in the ancient literature, but it took Englishmen three centuries to find it. It was the scholar, Matthew Arnold, who first repeated the gentler strain in the rude music of the North, as it was the scholar, Thomas Gray, who first echoed the "dreadful songs" of that old psalmody. Gray has all the culture of his age, when it was still possible to compass all knowledge in one lifetime; Arnold had all the literary culture of his fuller century when multiplied sciences force a scholar to be content with one segment of human knowledge. The former had music and architecture and other sciences among his accomplishments; the latter spread out in literature, as "Sohrab and Rustum," "Empedocles on Etna," "Tristram and Iseult," as well as "Balder Dead" attest. The quatrain prefixed to the volume containing the narrative and elegiac poems be-tokens what joy Arnold had in his literary work, and indicates why these poems cannot fail to live:

Balder is the creation of Old Norse poetry that is most popular with contemporary English writers, and Matthew Arnold first made him so. As Bugge points out, no deed of his is "celebrated in song or story. His personality only is described; of his activity in life almost no external trait is recorded. All the stress is laid upon his death; and, like Christ, Baldr dies in his youth." ^[21]

SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT (1820-1896).

Among the scholars who have labored to give England the benefit of a fuller and truer knowledge of Norse matters, none will be remembered more gratefully than Sir George Webbe Dasent. Known to the reading public most widely by his translations of the folk-tales of Asbjörnsen and Moe, he has still a claim upon the attention of the students of Icelandic. As we have seen, he gave out a translation of the Younger Edda in 1842, and during the half century and more that followed he wrote other works of history and literature connected with our subject. Two saga translations were published in 1861 and 1866, The Story of Burnt Njal, and The Story of Gisli the Outlaw, which will always rank high in this class of literature. Njala especially is an excellent piece of work, a classic among translations. The "Prolegomena" is rich in information, and very little of it has been superseded by later scholarship. In 1887 and 1894 he translated for the Master of the Rolls, The Orkney Saga and The Saga of Hakon, the texts of which Vigfusson had printed in the same series some years before. The interest of the government in Icelandic annals connected with English history is indicated in these last publications, and England is fortunate to have had such enthusiastic scholars as Vigfusson and Dasent to do the work. These men had been collaborators on the Cleasby Dictionary, and in this work as in all others Dasent displayed an eagerness to have his countrymen know how significant England's relationship to Iceland was. He was as certain as Laing had been before him of the preeminence of this literature among the mediæval writings. Like Laing, too, he would have the general reader turn to this body of work "which for its beauty and richness is worthy of being known to the greatest possible number of readers." ^[22]

To mark the progress away from the old conception of unmitigated brutality these words of Dasent stand here: ^[23] "The faults of these Norsemen were the faults of their time; their virtues they possessed in larger measure than the rest of their age, and thus when Christianity had tamed their fury, they became the torch-bearers of civilization; and though the plowshare of Destiny, when it planted them in Europe, uprooted along its furrow many a pretty flower of feeling in the lands which felt the fury of these Northern conquerers, their energy and endurance gave a lasting temper to the West, and more especially to England, which will wear so long as the world wears, and at the same time implanted principles of freedom which shall never be rooted out. Such results are a compensation for many bygone sorrows."

CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875).

In 1874, Charles Kingsley visited America and delivered some lectures. Among these was one entitled "The First Discovery of America." This interests us here because it displays an appreciation, if not a deep knowledge, of Icelandic literature. In it the lecturer commended to Longfellow's attention a ballad sung in the Faroes, begging him to translate it some day, "as none but he can translate it." "It is so sad, that no tenderness less exquisite than his can prevent its being painful; and at least in its denouement, so naive, that no purity less exquisite than his can prevent its being dreadful." ^[24] Later in the lecture he commends to his hearers the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson, the "Homer of the North." ^[25]

Speaking of the elements that mingled to produce the British character, Kingsley says: "In manners as well as in religion, the Norse were humanized and civilized by their contact with the Celts, both in Scotland and in Ireland. Both peoples had valor, intellect, imagination: but the Celt had that which the burly, angular Norse character, however deep and stately, and however humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature, tenderness, grace, rapidity, playfulness; just the qualities, combining with the Scandinavian (and in Scotland with the Angle) elements of character which have produced, in Ireland and in Scotland, two schools of lyric poetry second to none in the world." ^[26] Over the page, Kingsley has this to say: "For they were a sad people, those old Norse forefathers of ours." ^[27] Humorous and sad are not inconsistent words in these sentences; the Norseman had a sense of the ludicrous, and could jest grimly in the face of death. Of the sadness of his life, no one needs to be told who has read a saga or two. Kingsley says: "There is, in the old sagas, none of that enjoyment of life which shines out everywhere in Greek poetry, even through its deepest tragedies. Not in complacency with Nature's beauty, but in the fierce struggle with her wrath, does the Norseman feel pleasure." ^[28]

This lecture shows a deeper acquaintance with Old Norse literature than Kingsley was willing to acknowledge. Not only are the stories well chosen which he uses throughout, but the intuitions are sound, and the inferences based upon them. He anticipated the work of this investigation in the last words of the address. He has been telling the fine story of Thormod at Sticklestead:

"I shall not insult your intelligence by any comment or even epithet of my own. I shall but ask you, Was not this man your kinsman? Does not the story sound, allowing for all change of manners as well as of time and place, like a scene out of your own Bret Harte or Colonel John Hay's writings; a scene of the dry humor, the rough heroism of your own far West? Yes, as long as you have your Jem Bludsos and Tom Flynns of Virginia City, the old Norse blood is surely not extinct, the old Norse spirit is not dead." ^[29]

EDMUND GOSSE (1849-).

This drama by Gosse is not strictly Icelandic in motive. Jealousy was not the passion to loosen the tongue of the sagaman, and in so far as that is the theme of "King Erik," the play is not Old Norse in origin. Christian material, too, has been introduced that gives a modern tinge to the drama, but there is enough of the genuine saga spirit to warrant attention to it here. Something more than the names is Icelandic. Here is a woman, Botilda, with strength of character enough to recall a Brynhild or a Bergthora. Gisli is the foster-brother that takes up the blood-feud for Grimur. Adalbjörg and Svanhilda are the whisperers of slander and the workers of ill. Marcus is the skald who is making a poem about the king. Here are customs and beliefs distinctly Norse:

Although this work is dramatic in form, it is not so in spirit. The true dramatist would have put such an incident as the swearing of brotherhood into a scene, instead of into a speech. This effort is, however, the nearest approach to a drama in English founded on saga material. It is curious that our poets have inclined to every form but the drama in reproducing Old Norse literature. It is not that saga-stuff is not dramatic in possibilities. Ewald and Oehlenschläger have used this material to excellent effect in Danish dramas. Had the sagas been accessible to Englishmen in Shakespeare's time, we should certainly have had dramas of Icelandic life.

IV.

WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896).

The biographer of William Morris fixes 1868 as the beginning of the poet's Icelandic stories. ^[30] Eirikr Magnusson, an Icelander, was his guide, and the pupil made rapid progress. Dasent's work had drawn Morris' attention to the sagas, and within a few months most of the sagas had been read in the original. Although The Saga of Gunnlang Worm-tongue was published in the Fortnightly Review, for January, 1869, the Grettis Saga, of April, was the first published book on an Old Norse subject. The next year gave the Völsunga Saga. In 1871, Morris made a journey through Iceland, the fruits of which were afterwards seen in many a noble work. In 1875, Three Northern Love Stories was published, and, in 1877, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs. More than ten years passed before he turned again to Icelandic work, the Romances of the years of 1889 to 1896 showing signs of it, and the translations in the Saga Library, "Howard the Halt," "The Banded Men," Eyrbyggja and Heimskringla of 1891-95. These contributions to the subject of our examination are no less valuable than voluminous, and we make no excuses for an extended consideration of them. They deserve a wider public than they have yet attained.

1.

2.

Here is the man, William Morris, in perfect miniature. Modern life and training had given him a speech and aspect quite suave and cultured, but the blood that flowed in his veins was red, and the tincture of iron was in it. In religion, in art, in poetry, in economics, he loved the past better than the present, though he was never unconscious of "our glorious gains." In all departments of thought the scanty, the bare, the hard, the unworthy, drew first his attention and then his love and enthusiastic praise. And so perhaps it is explained that of all the poems in The Earthly Paradise, the one indited first in the scarred and dreadful land where neither wheat nor wine is at home, shall be the finest in this latter-day retelling.

The first seventy years of the thirteenth century were the blossoming time of the historic saga in Iceland, and those writings that record the doings of the families of the land form, with the old songs and the best of the kingly sagas, the flower of Northern literature. These family records never extend over more than one generation, and sometimes they deal with but a few years. They are half-way between romance and history, with the balance oftenest in favor of truth. In this group are found Egils Saga, known at second hand to Warton, the Eyrbyggja Saga, translated by Walter Scott, and the Laxdæla Saga. It is the Laxdæla Saga that gives the story told by Morris in "The Lovers of Gudrun." Among sagas it is famous for its fine portrayal of character.

The saga and the poem tell the story of two neighboring farms, Herdholt and Bathsted, whose sons and daughters work out a dire tragedy. Kiartan and Bodli are the son and foster-son of the first house, and Gudrun is the daughter of the second. These are the principal personages in the drama, though the list of the other dramatis personæ is a long one. Not only in the name of its heroine does the story suggest the Nibelungenlied. The machinery of the Norse stories resembles the German story's in many of its parts. In this version of Morris, the main features of the saga are kept, and distracting details are properly subordinated to the principal interest. Through the nineteen divisions of this story the interest moves rapidly, and wonder as to the issue is never lost. As a story-teller, Morris is distinctly powerful in this poem, and all the qualities that endear the story-teller to us are here found joined to many that make the poet a favorite with us. There are no lyrics in the poem—the original saga was without the song-snatches that are often found in sagas—but there are dramatic scenes that recall the power of the Master-poet. Least of all the poems in the Earthly Paradise does "The Lovers of Gudrun" show the Chaucerian influence, and the reader must be captious indeed who complains of the length of this story.

To the unenlightened reader this poem reveals no traits that are un-English. What there is of Old Norse flavor here is purely spiritual. The original story being in prose, no attempt could be made to keep original characteristics in verse-form. So "The Lovers of Gudrun" can stand on its own merits as an English poem; no excuses need be made for it on the plea that it is a translation.

Local color is not laid on the canvas after the figures have been painted, but all the tints in the persons and the things are grandly Norse. This story is a true romance, in that the scene is far removed from the present day, and the atmosphere is very different from our own. This story is a true picture of life, in that it sets forth the doings of men and women in the power of the master passion. And so for the purposes of literature this poem is not Norse, or rather, it is more than Norse, it is universal. Now and then, to be sure, the displaced Norse ideals are set forth in the poem, but in such wise that we almost regret that the old order has passed away. The Wanderer who tells the tale assures his listeners of the truth of it in these last words of the interlude between "The Story of Rhodope" and "The Lovers of Gudrun":

It is aside from our purpose to tell this story here. The more we study this marvelous work, the more it is impressed upon us that in the reign of love all men and all literatures are one. To the Englishman this description of an Iceland maiden is no stranger than it was to the men who sat about the spluttering fire in the Icelander's hall. It is the form of Gudrun that is here described:

Not less accustomed are we to such heroes as Kiartan:

The Old Norse touch here is in the last three lines which intimate that the warrior was often a bard; but be it remembered that the Elizabethan warrior could turn a sonnet, too.

We have said that the Laxdæla Saga is famous for its portrayal of character. This English version falls not at all below the original in this quality. The lines already quoted show Gudrun and Kiartan as to exterior. But this is a drama of flesh and blood creations, and they are men and women that move through it, not puppets. Souls are laid bare here, in quivering, pulsating agony. The tremendous figure of this story is not Kiartan, nor Gudrun, nor Refna, but Bodli, and certainly English narrative poetry has no second creation like to him. The mind reverts to Shakespeare to find fit companionship for Bodli in poetry, and to George Eliot and Thomas Hardy in prose. The suggestion of Shakespearean qualities in George Eliot has been made by several great critics, among them Edmond Scherer; ^[31] in Hardy and Morris, here, we find the same soul-searching powers. These writers have created sufferers of titanic greatness, and in the presence of their tragedies we are dumb.

An English artist has made Napoleon's voyage on H.M.S. Bellerophon to his prison-isle a picture that the memory refuses to forget. The picture of Bodli as he sails back to Iceland, which, though his home, is to be his prison and his death, is no less impressive:

Here we have the poet's conception—and the sagaman's—of Bodli—a man in the grip of terrible Fate, who can no more swerve from the paths she marks out for him than he can add a cubit to his stature. The Greek tragedy embodies this idea, and Old Norse literature is full of it. Thomas Hardy gives it later in his contemporary novels. We sympathize with Bodli's fate because his agony is so terrible, and we call him the most striking figure in this story. But the others suffer, too, Gudrun, Kiartan, Refna; they make a stand against their woe, and utter brave words in the face of it. Only Bodli floats downward with the tide, unresisting. Guest prophesies bitter things for Gudrun, but adds:

And Gudrun takes heart. When Thurid tells her brother Kiartan that Gudrun has married another, his joy is shivered into atoms before him. But he can say, even then:

And Kiartan does his work in the world. Poor Refna, when she has married Kiartan hears women talking of the love that still is between Gudrun and Kiartan. She goes to Kiartan with the story, beginning with words whose pathos must conquer the most stoical of readers:

And thus she gains strength to live her life.

Here, then, in Bodli, is another of the great tragic figures in literature—a sick man. There are many of them, even in the highest rank of literary creations, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Macbeth! Wrong-headed, defective as they are, we would not have them otherwise. The pearl of greatest price is the result of an abnormal or morbid process.

Bodli comes to us from Icelandic literature, and in that fact we note the solidarity of poetic geniuses. Not only is the great figure of Bodli proof of this solidarity, but many other features of this poem prove it. "Lively feeling for a situation and power to express it constitute the poet," said Goethe. There are dramatic situations in "The Lovers of Gudrun" which hold the reader in a breathless state till the last word is said, and then leave him marveling at the imagination that could conceive the scene, and the power that could express it. There are gentler scenes, too, in the poem, where beauty and grace are conceived as fair as ever poet dreamed, and the workmanship is thoroughly adequate. As an example of the first, take the scene of Bodli's mourning over Kiartan's dead body. It is here that we get that knowledge of Bodli's woe that robs us of a cause against him. What agony is that which can speak thus over the body of the dead rival!

Examples of the gentler scenes are scattered lavishly throughout the poem and it is not necessary to enumerate.

One other sign that the Icelandic sagaman's art was kin to the English poet's. The last line of this poem is given thus by Morris:

These are the very words of Gudrun in the saga, and summing up as they do her opinion of Kiartan, they stand as a model of that compression which is so admired in our poetry. Many such multum in parvo lines are found in Morris' poem, and at times they have a beauty that is marvelous. Joined with this quality is the special merit of Morris—picturesqueness, and so the reader often feels, when he has finished a book by Morris, like the Cook tourist after he has "done" a country of Europe—it must be done again and again to give it its due.

Of the other two Old Norse poems in The Earthly Paradise not much need be said. "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" is a fairy tale, in the strain of Morris' prose romances. It was suggested by Thorpe's Yule-tide Stories, the tale coming from the Völundar Saga. There is a witchery about it that makes it pleasant reading in a dreamy hour, but except the names and a few scenes about the farmstead, there is nothing Icelandic about it. The virile element of the best Icelandic literature is wanting here, and the hero's excuse for leaving weapons at home when he goes to his watch is not at all natural:

This passage is nominally in the same meter as the opening lines of the poem:

According to old time English prosody, it is the same, too, as the meter of Scott's Marmion!

In the passages quoted from "The Lovers of Gudrun" we see a measure called the same as that of Pope's Essay on Man! Not seldom in "The Lovers" do we forget that the lines are rhymed in twos; indeed, often we do not note the rhyme at all. We are sometimes tempted to think that in this piece, if not in "The Land East of the Sun," rhyme might have been dispensed with altogether, since it often forces archaic words and expressions into use. But it is to be said generally of Morris's management of the meter in the Old Norse pieces, that it was adequate to gain his end always, whether that end was to tell an Old Norse story in English, or to carry over an Old Norse spirit into English. Of this second achievement we shall speak further in considering Sigurd the Volsung.

There is one more tale in The Earthly Paradise which originated in Norse legend. "The Fostering of Aslaug" is drawn from Thorpe's Northern Mythology, which epitomizes older sources. Aslaug is the daughter of Iceland's great hero, Sigurd, and Iceland's great heroine, Brynhild, and her life is set down in this poem most beautifully. Again we note that the added touches of later poets fail to leave the sense of the strenuous in the picture. Aslaug is like a favorite representation of Brynhild that we have seen, a lily-maid in aspect, or a Marguerite. Her mother's masculinity is gone, and with it the Old Norse flavor. It is the privilege of our age to enjoy both the virility of the Old Norse and the delicacy of the mediæval conceptions, and William Morris has caught both.

3.

It is a common complaint against the poetry of William Morris that it is too long-winded. Each to his taste in this matter, but we beg to call attention to one line in the above passage:

Whatever may have been Morris' tendency when he wrote his own poetry, he knew when concision was a virtue in the poetry of others. There is no better description of the Völsunga Saga than the above line, and William Morris gave the English people a literal version of the saga, if mayhap that strenuous paucity might translate the old spirit. But, as if he knew that many readers would fail to make much of this version, he tried again on a larger scale, and the great volume Sigurd the Volsung, epic in character and proportions, was the result. Of these two we shall now speak.

The Völsunga Saga was published in 1870, only two years after Morris had begun to study Icelandic with Eirikr Magnusson. The latter's name is on the title page as the first of the two co-translators. The Saga was supplemented by certain songs from the Elder Edda which were introduced by the translators at points where they would come naturally in the story. The work, both in prose and verse, is well done, and the attempt was successful to make, as the preface proposes, the "rendering close and accurate, and, if it might be so, at the same time, not over prosaic." The last two paragraphs of this preface are particularly interesting to one who is tracing the influence of Old Norse literature on English literature, because they are words with power, that have stirred men and will stir men to learn more about a wonderful land and its lore. We copy them entire:

"As to the literary quality of this work we might say much, but we think we may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break through whatever entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by finding, amidst all its wildness and remoteness, such startling realism, such subtilty, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move himself to-day.

"In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to us, that this Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should never before have been translated into English. For this is the Great Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks—to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has been—a story too—then should it be to those that come after us no less than the Tale of Troy has been to us."

Morris wrote a prologue in verse for this volume, and it is an exquisite poem, such as only he seemed able to indite. So often does the reader of Morris come upon gems like this, that one is tempted to rail against the common ignorance about him: