Part 7 (1/2)

It seems that Snorre had a beautiful sister, named Thured of Froda, with whom a certain gallant gentleman--called Bjorn, the son of Astrand--fell head and ears in love.

Unfortunately, a rich rival appears in the field; and though she had given her heart to Bjorn, Snorre--who, we have already seen, was a prudent man--insisted upon her giving her hand to his rival. Disgusted by such treatment, Bjorn sails away to the coasts of the Baltic, and joins a famous company of sea-rovers, called the Jomsburg Vikings. In this worthy society he so distinguishes himself by his valour and daring that he obtains the t.i.tle of the Champion of Breidavik. After many doughty deeds, done by sea and land, he at last returns, loaded with wealth and honours, to his native country.

In the summer-time of the year 999, soon after his arrival, was held a great fair at Froda, whither all the merchants, ”clad in coloured garments,” congregated from the adjacent country. Thither came also Bjorn's old love, the Lady of Froda; ”and Bjorn went up and spoke to her, and it was thought likely their talk would last long, since they for such a length of time had not seen each other.” But to this renewal of old acquaintance both the lady's husband and her brother very much objected; and ”it seemed to Snorre that it would be a good plan to kill Bjorn.”

So, about the time of hay-making, off he rides, with some retainers, to his victim's home, having fully instructed one of them how to deal the first blow. Bjorn was in the home-field (tun), mending his sledge, when the cavalcade appeared in sight; and, guessing what motive had inspired the visit, went straight up to Snorre, who rode in front, ”in a blue cloak,” and held the knife with which he had been working in such a position as to be able to stab the Pontiff to the heart, should his followers attempt to lift their hands against himself. Comprehending the position of affairs, Snorre's friends kept quiet.

”Bjorn then asked the news.” Snorre confesses that he had intended to kill him; but adds, ”Thou tookest such a lucky grip of me at our meeting, that thou must have peace this time, however it may have been determined before.” The conversation is concluded by an agreement on the part of Bjorn to leave the country, as he feels it impossible to abstain from paying visits to Thured as long as he remains in the neighbourhood. Having manned a s.h.i.+p, Bjorn put to sea in the summer-time ”When they sailed away, a north-east wind was blowing, which wind lasted long during that summer; but of this s.h.i.+p was nothing heard since this long time.” And so we conclude it is all over with the poor Champion of Breidavik! Not a bit of it. He turns up, thirty years afterwards, safe and sound, in the uttermost parts of the earth.

In the year 1029, a certain Icelander, named Gudlief, undertakes a voyage to Limerick, in Ireland. On his return home, he is driven out of his course by north-east winds, Heaven knows where. After drifting for many days to the westward, he at last falls in with land. On approaching the beach, a great crowd of people came down to meet the strangers, apparently with no friendly intentions. Shortly afterwards, a tall and venerable chieftain makes his appearance, and, to Gudlief's great astonishment, addresses him in Icelandic. Having entertained the weary mariners very honourably, and supplied them with provisions, the old man bids them speed back to Iceland, as it would be unsafe for them to remain where they were. His own name he refused to tell; but having learnt that Gudlief comes from the neighbourhood of Snaefell, he puts into his hands a sword and a ring. The ring is to be given to Thured of Froda; the sword to her son Kjartan. When Gudlief asks by whom he is to say the gifts are sent, the ancient chieftain answers, ”Say they come from one who was a better friend of the Lady of Froda than of her brother Snorre of Helgafell.” Wherefore it is conjectured that this man was Bjorn, the son of Astrand, Champion of Breidavik.

After this, Madam, I hope I shall never hear you depreciate the constancy of men. Thured had better have married Bjorn after all!

I forgot to mention that when Gudlief landed on the strange coast, it seemed to him that the inhabitants spoke Irish. Now, there are many antiquaries inclined to believe in the former existence of an Irish colony to the southward of the Vinland of the Northmen. Scattered through the Sagas are several notices of a distant country in the West, which is called Ireland ed Mekla--Great Ireland, or the White Man's land. When Pizarro penetrated into the heart of Mexico, a tradition already existed of the previous arrival of white men from the East. Among the Shawnasee Indians a story is still preserved of Florida having been once inhabited by white men, who used iron instruments. In 1658, Sir Erland the Priest had in his possession a chart, even then thought ancient, of ”The Land of the White Men, or Hibernia Major, situated opposite Vinland the Good,” and Gaelic philologists pretend to trace a remarkable affinity between many of the American-Indian dialects and the ancient Celtic.

But to return to the ”Foam.” After pa.s.sing the cape, away we went across the s.p.a.cious Brieda Fiord, at the rate of nine or ten knots an hour, reeling and bounding at the heels of the steamer, which seemed scarcely to feel how uneven was the surface across which we were speeding.

Down dropped Snaefell beneath the sea, and dim before us, clad in evening haze, rose the shadowy steeps of Bardestrand. The north-west division of Iceland consists of one huge peninsula, spread out upon the sea like a human hand, the fingers just reaching over the Arctic circle; while up between them run the gloomy fiords, sometimes to the length of twenty, thirty, and even forty miles. Anything more grand and mysterious than the appearance of their solemn portals, as we pa.s.sed across from bluff to bluff, it is impossible to conceive. Each might have served as a separate entrance to some poet's h.e.l.l--so drear and fatal seemed the vista one's eye just caught receding between the endless ranks of precipice and pyramid.

There is something, moreover, particularly mystical in the effect of the grey, dreamy atmosphere of an arctic night, through whose uncertain medium mountain and headland loom as impalpable as the frontiers of a demon world, and as I kept gazing at the glimmering peaks, and monstrous crags, and shattered stratifications, heaped up along the coast in cyclopean disorder, I understood how natural it was that the Scandinavian mythology, of whose mysteries the Icelanders were ever the natural guardians and interpreters, should have a.s.sumed that broad, ma.s.sive simplicity which is its most beautiful characteristic.

Amid the rugged features of such a country the refinements of Paganism would have been dwarfed into insignificance.

How out of place would seem a Jove with his beard in ringlets--a trim Apollo--a sleek Bacchus--an ambrosial Venus--a slim Diana, and all their attendant groups of Oreads and Cupids--amid the ocean mists, and icebound torrents, the flame-scarred mountains, and four months'

night--of a land which the opposing forces of heat and cold have selected for a battle-field!

The undeveloped reasoning faculty is p.r.o.ne to attach an undue value and meaning to the forms of things, and the infancy of a nation's mind is always more ready to wors.h.i.+p the MANIFESTATIONS of a Power, than to look beyond them for a cause. Was it not natural then that these northerns, dwelling in daily communion with this grand Nature, should fancy they could perceive a mysterious and independent energy in her operations, and at last come to confound the moral contest man feels within him, with the physical strife he finds around him, to see in the returning sun--fostering into renewed existence the winter-stifled world--even more than a TYPE of that spiritual consciousness which alone can make the dead heart stir; to discover even more than an a.n.a.lOGY between the reign of cold, darkness, and desolation, and the still blanker ruin of a sin-perverted soul? But in that iron clime, amid such awful a.s.sociations, the conflict going on was too terrible--the contending powers too visibly in presence of each other, for the practical, conscientious Norse mind to be content with the puny G.o.ds.h.i.+ps of a Roman Olympus. Nectar, Sensuality, and Inextinguishable Laughter were elements of felicity too mean for the n.o.bler atmosphere of their Walhalla; and to those active temperaments and healthy minds,--invigorated and solemnized by the ma.s.sive mould of the scenery around them,--Strength, Courage, Endurance, and above all Self-sacrifice--naturally seemed more essential attributes of divinity than mere elegance and beauty. And we must remember that whilst the vigorous imagination of the north was delighting itself in creating a stately dreamland, where it strove to blend, in a grand world-picture--always harmonious, though not always consistent--the influences which sustain both the physical and moral system of its universe, an undercurrent of sober Gothic common sense induced it--as a kind of protest against the too material interpretation of the symbolism it had employed--to wind up its religious scheme by sweeping into the chaos of oblivion all the glorious fabric it had evoked, and proclaiming--in the place of the transient G.o.ds and perishable heaven of its Asgaard--that One undivided Deity, at whose approach the pillars of Walhalla were to fall, and Odin and his peers to perish, with all the subtle machinery of their existence; while man--himself immortal--was summoned to receive at the hands of the Eternal All-Father the sentence that waited upon his deeds. It is true this purer system belonged only to the early ages. As in the case of every false religion, the symbolism of the Scandinavian mythology lost with each succeeding generation something of its transparency, and at last degenerated into a gross superst.i.tion. But traces still remained, even down to the times of Christian ascendency, of the deep, philosophical spirit in which it had been originally conceived; and through its homely imagery there ran a vein of tender humour, such as still characterises the warm-hearted, laughter-loving northern races. Of this mixture of philosophy and fun, the following story is no bad specimen. [Footnote: The story of Thor's journey has been translated from the Edda both by the Howitts and Mr. Thorpe.]

Once on a time the two OEsir, Thor, the Thunder G.o.d, and his brother Lopt, attended by a servant, determined to go eastward to Jotunheim, the land of the giants, in search of adventures. Crossing over a great water, they came to a desolate plain, at whose further end, tossing and waving in the wind, rose the tree tops of a great forest. After journeying for many hours along its dusty labyrinths, they began to be anxious about a resting-place for the night. ”At last, Lopt perceived a very s.p.a.cious house, on one side of which was an entrance as wide as the house itself, and there they took up their night-quarters. At midnight they perceived a great earthquake; the ground reeled under them and the house shook.

”Then up rose Thor and called to his companions. They sought about, and found a side building to the right, into which they went. Thor placed himself at the door; the rest went and sat down further in, and were very much afraid.

”Thor kept his hammer in his hand, ready to defend them.

Then they heard a terrible noise and roaring. As it began to dawn, Thor went out, and saw a man lying in the wood not far from them; he was by no means small, and he slept and snored loudly. Then Thor understood what the noise was which they heard in the night. He buckled on his belt of power, by which he increased his divine strength. At the same instant the man awoke, and rose up. It is said that Thor was so much astonished that he did not dare to slay him with his hammer, but inquired his name. He called himself Skrymer. 'Thy name,' said he, 'I need not ask, for I know that thou art Asar-Thor.

But what hast thou done with my glove?'

”Skrymer stooped and took up his glove, and Thor saw that it was the house in which they had pa.s.sed the night, and that the out-building was the thumb.”

Here follow incidents which do not differ widely from certain pa.s.sages in the history of Jack the Giant Killer.

Thor makes three several attempts to knock out the easy- going giant's brains during a slumber, in which he is represented as ”snoring outrageously,”--and after each blow of the Thunder G.o.d's hammer, Skrymer merely wakes up--strokes his beard--and complains of feeling some trifling inconvenience, such as a dropped acorn on his head, a fallen leaf, or a little moss shaken from the boughs. Finally, he takes leave of them,--points out the way to Utgard Loke's palace, advises them not to give themselves airs at his court,--as unbecoming ”such little fellows” as they were, and disappears in the wood; ”and”--as the old chronicler slyly adds--”it is not said whether the OEsir wished ever to see him again.”

They then journey on till noon, till they come to a vast palace, where a mult.i.tude of men, of whom the greater number were immensely large, sat on two benches. ”After this they advanced into the presence of the king, Utgard Loke, and saluted him. He scarcely deigned to give a look, and said smiling: 'It is late to inquire after true tidings from a great distance, but is it not Thor that I see? Yet you are really bigger than I imagined. What are the exploits that you can perform? For no one is tolerated amongst us who cannot distinguish himself by some art or accomplishment.'

”'Then,' said Lopt, 'I understand an art of which I am prepared to give proof, and that is, that no one here can dispose of his food as I can.' Then answered Utgard Loke: 'Truly this IS an art, if thou canst achieve it; which we will now see.' He called from the bench a man named Loge to contend with Lopt. They set a trough in the middle of the hall, filled with meat. Lopt placed himself at one end and Loge at the other. Both ate the best they could, and they met in the middle of the trough.

Lopt had picked the meat from the bones, but Loge had eaten meat, bones, and trough altogether. All agreed Lopt was beaten. Then asked Utgard Loke what art the young man (Thor's attendant) understood? Thjalfe answered, that he would run a race with any one that Utgard Loke would appoint. There was a very good race ground on a level field. Utgard Loke called a young man named Huge, and bade him run with Thjalfe. Thjalfe runs his best, at three several attempts--according to received Saga customs,--but is of course beaten in the race.

”Then asked Utgard Loke of Thor, what were the feats that he would attempt corresponding to the fame that went abroad of him? Thor answered that he thought he could beat any one at drinking. Utgard Loke said, 'Very good,'

and bade his cup-bearer bring out the horn from which his courtiers were accustomed to drink. Immediately appeared the cup-bearer, and placed the horn in Thor's hand. Utgard Loke then said, 'that to empty that horn at one pull was well done; some drained it at twice; but that he was a wretched drinker who could not finish it at the third draught.' Thor looked at the horn, and thought that it was not large, though it was tolerably long. He was very thirsty, lifted it to his mouth, and was very happy at the thought of so good a draught. When he could drink no more, he took the horn from his mouth, and saw, to his astonishment, that there was little less in it than before. Utgard Loke said: 'Well hast thou drunk, yet not much. I should never have believed but that Asar-Thor could have drunk more; however, of this I am confident, thou wilt empty it at the second time.'

He drank again; but when he took away the horn from his mouth, it seemed to him that it had sunk less this time than the first; yet the horn might now be carried without spilling.

”Then said Utgard Loke: 'How is this, Thor? If thou dost not reserve thyself purposely for the third draught, thine honour must be lost; how canst thou be regarded as a great man, as the Aesir look upon thee, if thou dost not distinguish thyself in other ways more than thou hast done in this?'

”Then was Thor angry, put the horn to his mouth, drank with all his might, and strained himself to the utmost; and when he looked into the horn it was now somewhat lessened. He gave up the horn, and would not drink any more. 'Now,' said Utgard Loke, 'now is it clear that thy strength is not so great as we supposed. Wilt thou try some other game, for we see that thou canst not succeed in this?' Thor answered: 'I will now try something else, but I wonder who, amongst the Aesir, would call that a little drink! What play will you propose?'