The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory Part 21

[Footnote 166: "The Lovers of Gudrun;" _November_, part iii. p. 337, original edition. London, 1870.]

[Footnote 167: London, 1869.]

The lesser sagas of the same group are some thirty in number, the best known or the most accessible being those of Gunnlaug Serpent's-Tongue, often printed in the original,[168] very short, very characteristic, and translated by the same hands as _Grettla_;[169] _Viga Glum_, translated by Sir Edmund Head;[170] _Gisli the Outlaw_ (Dasent);[171]

_Howard_ or _Havard the Halt_, _The Banded Men_, and _Hen Thorir_ (Morris and Magnusson)[172]; _Kormak_, said to be the oldest, and certainly one of the most interesting.[173]

[Footnote 168: _Gunnlaug's Saga Ormstungu_. Ed. Mogk. Halle, 1886.]

[Footnote 169: In _Three Northern Love-Stories_. London, 1875.]

[Footnote 170: London, 1866.]

[Footnote 171: Edinburgh, 1866.]

[Footnote 172: In one volume. London, 1891.]

[Footnote 173: Not translated, and said to require re-editing in the original, but very fully abstracted in _Northern Antiquities_, as above, pp. 321-339. The verse is in the _Corpus Poetic.u.m Boreale_.]

So much of the interest of a saga depends on small points constantly varied and renewed, that only pretty full abstracts of the contents of one can give much idea of them. On the other hand, the attentive reader of a single saga can usually give a very good guess at the general nature of any other from a brief description of it, though he must of course miss the individual touches of poetry and of character.

And though I speak with the humility of one who does not pretend to Icelandic scholars.h.i.+p, I think that translations are here less inadequate than in almost any other language, the attraction of the matter being so much greater than that of the form. For those who will not take the slight trouble to read Dasent's _Njala_, or Morris and Magnusson's _Grettla_, the next best idea attainable is perhaps from Sir Walter Scott's abstract of the _Eyrbyggja_ or Mr Blackwell's of the Kormak's Saga, or Mr Gosse's of _Egla_. Njal's Saga deals with the friends.h.i.+p between the warrior Gunnar and the lawyer Njal, which, princ.i.p.ally owing to the black-heartedness of Gunnar's wife Hallgerd, brings destruction on both, Njal and almost his whole family being burnt as the crowning point, but by no means the end, of an intricate series of reciprocal murders. For the blood-feuds of Iceland were as merciless as those of Corsica, with the complication--thoroughly Northern and not in the least Southern--of a most elaborate, though not entirely impartial, system of judicial inquiries and compensations, either by fine or exile. To be outlawed for murder, either in casual affray or in deliberate attack, was almost as regular a part of an Icelandic gentleman's avocations from his home and daily life as a journey on viking or trading intent, and was often combined with one or both. But outlawry and fine by no means closed the incident invariably, though they sometimes did so far as the feud was concerned: and there is hardly one saga which does not mainly or partly turn on a tangle of outrages and inquests.

[Sidenote: Njala.]

[Sidenote: Laxdaela.]

As _Njala_ is the most complete and dramatic of the sagas where love has no very prominent part except in the Helen-like dangerousness, if not exactly Helen-like charm, of Hallgerd, of whom it might certainly be said that

"Where'er she came, She brought Calamity";

so _Laxdaela_ is the chief of those in which love figures, though on the male side at least there is no lover that interests us as much as the hapless, reckless poet Kormak, or as Gunnlaug Serpent's-Tongue.

The _Earthly Paradise_ should have made familiar to all the quarrel or, if hardly quarrel, feud between the cousins Kiartan and Bodli, or Bolli, owing to the fatal fascinations of Gudrun. Gudrun is less repulsive than Hallgerd, but she cannot be said to be entirely free from the drawbacks which, as above suggested, are apt to be found in the Icelandic heroine. It is more difficult to sentiment, if not to morality, to pardon four husbands than many times four lovers, and the only persons with whom Gudrun's relations are wholly agreeable is Kiartan, who was not her husband. But the pathos of the story, its artful unwinding, and the famous utterance of the aged heroine--

"I did the worst to him I loved the most,"

which is almost literally from the Icelandic, redeem anything unsympathetic in the narrative: and the figure of Bodli, a strange mixture of honour and faithlessness to the friend he loves and murders, is one of the most striking among the thralls of Venus in literature.

[Sidenote: Eyrbyggja.]

The defect of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_ is its want of any central interest; for it is the history not of a person, nor even of one single family, but of a whole Icelandic district with its inhabitants from the settlement onwards. Its attraction, therefore, lies rather in episodes--the rivalry of the sorceresses Katla and Geirrid; the circ.u.mventing of the (in this case rather sinned against than sinning) bersarks Hall and Leikner; the very curious ghost-stories; and the artful ambition of Snorri the G.o.di. Still, to make an attractive legend of a sort of "county history" may be regarded as a rare triumph, and the saga is all the more important because it shows, almost better than any other, the real motive of nearly all these stories--that they are real _chansons de geste_, family legends, with a greater vividness and individuality than the French genius could then impart, though presented more roughly.

[Sidenote: Egla.]

The Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson, again, s.h.i.+fts its special points of attraction. It is the history partly of the family of Skallagrim, but chiefly of his son Egil, in opposition to Harald Harf.a.gr and his son Eric Blood-axe, of Egil's wars and exploits in England and elsewhere, of his service to King Athelstan at Brunanburh, of the faithfulness of his friend Arinbiorn, and the hero's consequent rescue from the danger in which he had thrust himself by seeking his enemy King Eric at York, of his son's s.h.i.+pwreck and Egil's sad old age, and of many other moving events. This has the most historic interest of any of the great sagas, and not least of the personal appeal. Perhaps, indeed, it is more like a really good historical novel than any other.

[Sidenote: Grettla.]

If, however, it were not for the deficiency of feminine character (a deficiency which rehandlers evidently felt and endeavoured to remedy by the expedient of tacking on an obvious plagiarism from _Tristan_ as an appendix, ostensibly dealing with the avenging of the hero), the fifth, Grettis Saga or _Grettla_, would perhaps be the best of all.

[Sidenote: _Its critics._]

It is true that some experts have found fault with this as late in parts, and bolstered out with extraneous matter in other respects beside the finale just referred to. The same critics denounce its poetical interludes (see _infra_) as spurious, object to some traits in it as coa.r.s.e, and otherwise pick it to pieces. Nevertheless there are few sagas, if there are any, which produce so distinct and individual an effect, which remind us so constantly that we are in Iceland and not elsewhere. In pathos and variety of interest it cannot touch _Njala_ or _Laxdaela_: in what is called "weirdness," in wild vigour, it surpa.s.ses, I think, all others; and the supernatural element, which is very strong, contrasts, I think, advantageously with the more business-like ghostliness of _Eyrbyggja_.

After an overture about the hero's forebears, which in any other country would be as certainly spurious as the epilogue, but to which the peculiar character of saga-writing gives a rather different claim here, the story proper begins with a description of the youth of Grettir the Strong, second son to Asmund the Grey-haired of Biarg, who had made much money by sea-faring, and Asdis, a great heiress and of great kin. The sagaman consults poetical justice very well at first, and prepares us for an unfortunate end by depicting Grettir as, though valiant and in a way not ungenerous, yet not merely an incorrigible scapegrace, but somewhat unamiable and even distinctly ferocious.

That, being made gooseherd, and finding the birds troublesome, he knocks them about, killing some goslings, may not be an unpardonable atrocity. And even when, being set to scratch his father's back, he employs a wool-comb for that purpose, much to the detriment of the paternal skin and temper, it does not very greatly go beyond the impishness of a naughty boy. But when, being promoted to mind the horses, and having a grudge against a certain "wise" mare named Keingala, because she stays out at graze longer than suits his laziness, he flays the unhappy beast alive in a broad strip from shoulder to tail, the thing goes beyond a joke. Also he is represented, throughout the saga, as invariably capping his pranks or crimes with one of the jeering enigmatic epigrams in which one finds considerable excuse for the Icelandic p.r.o.neness to murder. However, in his boyhood, he does not go beyond cruelty to animals and fighting with his equals; and his first homicide, on his way with a friend of his father's to the Thing-Parliament, is in self-defence. Still, having no witnesses, he is, though powerfully backed (an all-important matter), fined and outlawed for three years. There is little love lost between him and his father, and he is badly fitted out for the grand tour, which usually occupies a young Icelandic gentleman's first outlawry; but his mother gives him a famous sword. On the voyage he does nothing but flirt with the mate's wife: and only after strong provocation and in the worst weather consents to bale, which he does against eight men.

They are, however, wrecked off the island of Haramsey, and Grettir, lodging with the chief Thorfinn, at first disgusts folk here as elsewhere with his sulky, lazy ways. He acquires consideration, however, by breaking open the barrow of Thorfinn's father, and not only bringing out treasures (which go to Thorfinn), but fighting with and overcoming the "barrow-wight" (ghost) itself, the first of the many supernatural incidents in the story. The most precious part of the booty is a peculiar "short-sword." Also when Thorfinn's wife and house are left, weakly guarded, to the mercy of a crew of unusually ruffianly bersarks, Grettir by a mixture of craft and sheer valour succeeds in overcoming and slaying the twelve bersarks single-handed.

Thorfinn on his return presents him with the short-sword and becomes his fast friend. He has plenty of opportunity: for Grettir, as usual, neither entirely by his own fault nor entirely without it, owing to his sulky temper and sour tongue, successively slays three brothers, being in the last instance saved only with the greatest difficulty by Thorfinn, his own half-brother Thorstein Dromond, and others, from the wrath of Swein, Jarl of the district. So that by the time when he can return to Iceland, he has made Norway too hot to hold him; and he lands in his native island with a great repute for strength, valour, and, it must be added, quarrelsomeness. For some time he searches about "to see if there might be anywhere somewhat with which he might contend." He finds it at a distant farm, which is haunted by the ghost of a certain G.o.dless shepherd named Glam, who was himself killed by Evil Ones, and now molests both stock and farm-servants. Grettir dares the ghost, overcomes him after a tremendous conflict, which certainly resembles that in _Beowulf_ most strikingly,[174] and slays him (for Icelandic ghosts are mortal); but not before Glam has spoken and p.r.o.nounced a curse upon Grettir, that his strength, though remaining great, shall never grow, that all his luck shall cease, and, finally, that the eyes of Glam himself shall haunt him to the death.

[Footnote 174: It seems almost incredible that the resemblances between _Beowulf_ and the _Grettis Saga_ should never have struck any one till Dr Vigfusson noticed them less than twenty years ago. But the fact seems to be so; and nothing could better prove the rarity of that comparative study of literature to which this series aims at being a modest contribution and incentive.]

Grettir at first cares little for this; but the last part of the curse comes on almost at once and makes him afraid to be alone after dark, while the second is not long delayed. On the eve of setting out once more for Norway, he quarrels with and slays a braggart named Thorbiorn; during the voyage itself he is the unintentional cause of a whole household of men being burnt to death; and lastly, by his own quarrelsome temper, and some "metaphysical aid," he misses the chance of clearing himself by "bearing iron" (ordeal) before King Olaf at Drontheim. Olaf, his own kinsman, tells him with all frankness that he, Grettir, is much too "unlucky" for himself to countenance; and that though he shall have no harm in Norway, he must pack to Iceland as soon as the sea is open. He accordingly stays during the winter, in a peace only broken by the slaying of another bersark bully, and partly pa.s.sed with his brother Thorstein Dromond.

Meanwhile Asmund has died, his eldest son Atli has succeeded him, and has been waylaid by men suborned by Thorbiorn Oxmain, kinsman of the Thorbiorn whom Grettir slew before leaving Iceland the second time.

Atli escapes and slays his foes. Then Thorbiorn Oxmain himself visits Biarg and slays the unarmed Atli, who is not avenged because it was Grettir's business to look after the matter when he came home. But Glam's curse so works that, though plaintiff in this case, he is outlawed in his absence for the burning of the house above referred to, in which he was quite guiltless; and when he lands in Iceland it is to find himself deprived of all legal rights, and in such case that no friend can harbour him except under penalty.

Grettir, as we might expect, is not much daunted by this complication of evils, but he lies hid for a time at his mother's house and elsewhere, not so much to escape his own dangers as to avenge Atli on Thorbiorn Oxmain at the right moment. At last he finds it; and Thorbiorn, as well as his sixteen-year-old son Arnor, who rather disloyally helps him, is slain by Grettir single-handed. His plight at first is not much worsened by this; for though the simple plan of setting off Thorbiorn against Atli is not adopted, Grettir's case is backed directly by his kinsmen and indirectly by the two craftiest men in Iceland, Snorri the G.o.di and Skapti the Lawman, and the latter points out that as Grettir had been outlawed _before_ it was decreed that the onus of avenging Atli lay on him, a fatal flaw had been made in the latter proceeding, and no notice could be taken of the death of Thorbiorn at all, though his kin must pay for Atli. This fine would have been set off against Grettir's outlawry, and he would have become a freeman, had not Thorir of Garth, the father of the men he had accidentally killed in the burning house, refused; and so the well-meant efforts of Grettir's kin and friends fall through.

From this time till the end of his life he is a houseless outlaw, abiding in all the most remote parts of the island--"Grettir's lairs,"

as they are called, it would seem, to this day--sometimes countenanced for a short time by well-willing men of position, sometimes dwelling with supernatural creatures,--Hallmund, a kindly spirit or cave-dweller with a hospitable daughter, or the half-troll giant Thorir, a person of daughters likewise. But his case grows steadily worse. Partly owing to sheer ill-luck and Glam's curse, partly, as the saga-writer very candidly tells us, because he "was not an easy man to live withal," his tale of slayings and the feuds thereto appertaining grows steadily. For the most part he lives by simple cattle-lifting and the like, which naturally does not make him popular; twice other outlaws come to abide with him, and, after longer or shorter time, try for his richly priced head, and though they lose their own lives, naturally make him more and more desperate. Once he is beset by his enemy Thorir with eighty men; and only comes off through the backing of his ghostly friend Hallmund, who not long after meets his fate by no ign.o.ble hand, and Grettir cannot avenge him. Again, Grettir is warmly welcomed by a widow, Steinvor of Sand-heaps, at whose dwelling, in the oddest way, he takes up the full _Beowulf_ adventure and slays a troll-wife in a cave just as his forerunner slew Grendel's mother.

But in the end the hue and cry is too strong, and by advice of friends he flies to the steep holm of Drangey in Holmfirth--a place where the top can only be won by ladders--with his younger brother Illugi and a single thrall or slave. Illugi is young, but true as steel: the slave is a fool, if not actually a traitor. After the bonders of Drangey have done what they could to rid themselves of this very damaging and redoubtable intruder, they give up their shares to a certain Thorbiorn Angle. Thorbiorn at first fares ill against Grettir, whose outlawry is on the point of coming to an end, as none might last longer than twenty years. With the help of a wound, witch-caused to Grettir, and the slave's treacherous laziness, Thorbiorn and his crew climb the ladders and beset the brethren--Grettir already half dead with his gangrened wound. The hero is slain with his own short-sword; the brave Illugi is overwhelmed with the s.h.i.+elds of the eighteen a.s.sailants, and then slaughtered in cold blood. But Thorbiorn reaps little good, for his traffickings with witchcraft deprive him of his blood-money; the deaths of his men, of whom Illugi and Grettir had slain not a few, are set against Illugi's own; and Thorbiorn himself, after escaping to Micklegarth (Constantinople) and joining the Varangians, is slain by Thorstein Dromond, who has followed him thither and joined the same Guard on purpose, and who is made the hero of the appendix above spoken of.

[Sidenote: _Merits of it._]

The defects of this are obvious, and may be probably enough accounted for in part by the supposition of the experts above referred to--that the saga as we have it is rather later than the other great sagas, and is a patchwork of divers hands. It may perhaps be added, as a more purely literary criticism, that no one of these hands can have been quite a master, or that his work, if it existed, must have been mutilated or disfigured by others. For the most is nowhere made, except in the Glam fight and the last scenes on Drangey, of the admirable situations provided by the story; and the presentation of Grettir as a man almost everywhere lacks the last touches, while the sagaman has simply thrown away the opportunities afforded him by the insinuated amourettes with Steinvor and the daughters of the friendly spirits, and has made a mere _fabliau_ episode of another thing of the kind. Nevertheless the attractions of _Grettla_ are unique as regards the mixture of the natural and supernatural; not inferior to any other as ill.u.s.trating the quaintly blended life of Iceland; and of the highest kind as regards the conception of the hero--a not ungenerous Strength, guided by no intellectual greatness and by hardly any overmastering pa.s.sion, marred by an unsocial and overbearing temper, and so hardly needing the ill luck, which yet gives poetical finish and dramatic force to the story, to cast itself utterly away. For in stories, as in other games, play without luck is fatiguing and jejune, luck without play childish. It is curious how touching is the figure of the ill-fated hero, not wholly amiable, yet over-matched by Fortune, wandering in waste places of a country the fairest spots of which are little better than a desert, forced by his terror of "Glam-sight" to harbour criminals far worse than himself, and well knowing that they seek his life, grudgingly and fearfully helped by his few friends, a public nuisance where he should have been a public champion, only befriended heartily by mysterious shadowy personages of whom little is positively told, and when, after twenty years of wild-beast life, his deliverance is at hand, peris.h.i.+ng by a combination of foul play on the part of his foes and neglect on that of his slave. At least once, too, in that parting of Asdis with Grettir and Illugi, which ranks not far below the matchless epitaph of Sir Ector on Lancelot, there is not only suggestion, but expression of the highest quality:--

[Sidenote: _The parting of Asdis and her sons._]

"'Ah! my sons twain, there ye depart from me, and one death ye shall have together, for no man may flee from that which is wrought for him.

On no day now shall I see either of you once again. Let one fate, then, be over you both; for I know not what weal ye go to get for yourselves in Drangey, but there ye shall both lay your bones, and many shall grudge you that abiding-place. Keep ye heedfully from wiles, for marvellously have my dreams gone. Be well ware of sorcery; yet none the less shall ye be bitten with the edge of the sword, for nothing can cope with the cunning of eld.' And when she had thus spoken she wept right sore. Then said Grettir, 'Weep not, mother; for if we be set upon by weapons it shall be said of thee that thou hast had sons and not daughters.' And therewith they parted."

[Sidenote: _Great pa.s.sages of the sagas._]

These moments, whether of incident or expression, are indeed frequent enough in the sagas, though the main attraction may consist, as has been said, in the wild interest of the story and the vivid individuality of the characters. The slaying of Gunnar of Lithend in _Njala_, when his false wife refuses him a tress of hair to twist for his stringless bow, has rightly attracted the admiration of the best critics; as has the dauntless resignation of Njal himself and Bergthora, when both might have escaped their fiery fate. Of the touches of which the Egil's Saga is full, few are better perhaps than the picture in a dozen words of King Eric Blood-axe "sitting bolt upright and glaring" at the son of Skallagrim as he delivers the panegyric which is to save his life, and the composition of which had been so nearly baulked by the twittering of the witch-swallow under his eaves. The "long" kisses of Kormak and Steingerd, and the poet's unconscious translation of aeschylus[175] as he says, "Eager to find my lady, I have scoured the whole house with the glances of my eyes--in vain," dwell in the memory as softer touches. And for the sterner, nothing can beat the last fight of Olaf Trygveson, where with the crack of Einar Tamberskelvir's bow Norway breaks from Olaf's hands, and the king himself, the last man with Kolbiorn his marshal to fight on the deck of the Long Serpent, springs, gold-helmed, mail-coated, and scarlet-kirtled, into the waves, and sinks with s.h.i.+eld held up edgeways[176] to weight him through the deep green water.

[Footnote 175: Compare, _mutatis mutandis_, _Agam._, 410 _sq._, and Kormak's "Stray verses," ll. 41-44, in the _Corpus_, ii. 65.]

[Footnote 176: _Heimskringla_ does not _say_ "edgeways," but this is the clear meaning. Kolbiorn held his s.h.i.+eld flat and below him, so that it acted as a float, and he was taken. Olaf sank.]

[Sidenote: _Style._]

The saga prose is straightforward and business-like, the dialogue short and pithy, with considerable interspersion of proverbial phrase, but with, except in case of bad texts, very little obscurity. It is, however, much interspersed also with verses which, like Icelandic verse in general, are alliterative in prosody, and often of the extremest euphuism and extravagance in phrase. All who have even a slight acquaintance with sagas know the extraordinary periphrases for common objects, for men and maidens, for s.h.i.+ps and swords, that bestrew them. There is, I believe, a theory, not in itself improbable, that the more elaborate and far-fetched the style of this imagery, the later and less genuine is likely to be the poem, if not the saga; but it is certain that the germs of the style are to be found in the _Havamal_ and the other earliest and most certainly genuine examples.

It is perhaps well to add that very small sagas are called _thaettir_ ("sc.r.a.ps"), the same word as "tait" in the Scots phrase "tait of wool." But it is admitted that it is not particularly easy to draw the line between the two, and that there is no difference in real character. In fact short sagas might be called _thaettir_ and _vice versa_. Also, as hinted before, there is exceedingly little comedy in the sagas. The roughest horse-play in practical joking, the most insolent lampoons in verbal satire, form, as a rule, the lighter element; and pieces like the _Bandamanna Saga_, which with tragic touches is really comic in the main, are admittedly rare.

[Sidenote: _Provencal mainly lyric._]

In regard to the second, and contrasted, division of the subject of the present chapter, it has been already noted that, just as Icelandic at this period presents to the purview of the comparative literary historian one main subject, if not one only--the saga--so Provencal presents one main subject, and almost one only--the formal lyric. The other products of the Muse in _langue d'oc_, whether verse or prose, are so scanty, and in comparison[177] so unimportant, that even special historians of the subject have found but little to say about them. The earliest monument of all, perhaps the earliest finished monument of literature in any Romance language, the short poem on Boethius, in a.s.sonanced decasyllabic _laisses_,--even in its present form probably older than our starting-point, and, it may be, two centuries older in its first form,--is indeed not lyrical; nor is the famous and vigorous verse-history of the Albigensian War in _chanson_ style; nor the scanty remnants of other _chansons_, _Girart de Rossilho_, _Daurel et Beton_, _Aigar et Maurin_, which exist; nor the later _romans d'aventure_ of _Jaufre_, _Flamenca_, _Blandin of Cornwall_. But in this short list almost everything of interest in our period--the flouris.h.i.+ng period of the literature--has been mentioned which is not lyrical.[178] And if these things, and others like them in much larger number, had existed alone, it is certain that Provencal literature would not hold the place which it now holds in the comparative literary history of Europe.