Part 10 (2/2)

”Who sits in the sky, and the thoughts he sends down, Which forever are clouding my mind.”

It will be seen from this that Tegner 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 disembarra.s.sed 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 Oehlenschlager 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 _resume_. The general plot, in Tegner'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 Bele 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 Bele in King's-hall stood, Beside him Thorstein Vikingson, that yeoman good, His battle-friend with almost a century h.o.a.ry, And deep-marked like a rune-stone with scars of glory.”

The yeoman's son and the king's daughter, thrown into daily companions.h.i.+p 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 amba.s.sadors to woo her. Her brothers make sacrifices in order to ascertain the will of the G.o.ds. 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 sanct.i.ty of the temple would make it sacrilege for any one to approach her. Frithjof, however, braves the wrath of the G.o.d, and sails every night across the fjord to a stolen rendezvous with his beloved. The canto called ”Frithjof's Happiness,” which is br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 Provencal troubadours. The Norse note is not only wanting, but would never fit into that key:

”'Hus.h.!.+ '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 gra.s.sy 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 enc.u.mber, And waking may'st thou linger still, For Frithjof's sake may'st freely slumber Till RagnarOk, 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, ent.i.tled ”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. Tegner 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 s.h.i.+p Ellida breasting the waves and weeps bitter tears at his loss:

”Swell not so high, Billows of blue with your deafening cry!

Stars, lend a.s.sistance, a s.h.i.+ning 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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-veum_, _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 antic.i.p.ate 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!

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