Part 1 (1/2)

Eric Brighteyes

by H Rider Haggard

DEDICATION

Madaence that during the weary weeks spent far fro and mortal trial--a Prince whose memory all men must reverence, the E of my stories: that ”they interested and fascinated hi daily at the bedside of your Majesty's Ie in our supremest need from the spectacle of that heroic patience, a distant writer little knew that it had been his fortune to bring to such a sufferer an hour's forgetfulness of sorrow and pain

This knowledge, to an author, is far dearer than any praise, and it is in gratitude that, with your Majesty's perhteyes

The late Eh by duty a soldier of soldiers, ht perhaps have cared to interest hio, a hero of our Northern stock, whose days were spent in strife, and whose latest desire was Rest But it a, and after a nobler fashi+on, he has passed through the Hundred Gates into the Valhalla of Renown

To you, then, Madaht and unworthy, of profound respect and sympathy

I am, Madam,

Your Majesty's ard

November 17, 1889

To HIM Victoria, Empress Frederick of Gerhteyes” is a roa?” ”Is it a fable or a true story?” The answer is not altogether sias as those of Burnt Njal and Grettir the Strong partake both of truth and fiction: historians dispute as to the proportions This was the rowth: In the early days of the Iceland community--that republic of aristocrats--say, between the dates 900 and 1100 of our era, a quarrel would arise between two great faa, its cause, probably, was the ill doings of sohter

Then blood called for blood, and a vendetta was set on foot that ended only with the death by violence of a e numbers of their adherents In the course of the feud, th and mould would coe which bore theood or ill, according to their natural gifts and characters At last the tragedy was covered up by death and ti only a few dinted shi+elds and haunted cairns to tell of those who had played its leading parts

But its faeneration skalds wandered through the winter snows, much as Homer may have wandered in his day across the Grecian vales and mountains, to find a welcome at every stead, because of the old-tiht, they would sit in the ingle and while away the weariness of the dayless dark with histories of the tiht the in the ears of folk to coreatest of crirees undoubtedly the sagas did suffer alteration The facts reathered a le instance: the account of the burning of Bergthorsknoll in the Njal Saga is not only a piece of descriptive writing that for vivid, siht is scarcely to be matched out of Homer and the Bible, it is also obviously true We feel as we read, that no reat skald threw it into shape That the tale is true, the writer of ”Eric” can testify, for, saga in hand, he has followed every act of the dras beneath the surface of the lonely mound that looks across plain and sea to West, and see what appears to be the black sand hich the hands of Bergthora and her woo, and even the greasy and clotted remains of the whey that they threw upon the flame to quench it He may discover the places where Fosi drew up his s were burnt fro ruin, and the dell in which he laid down to rest--at every step, in short, the truth of the narrative becomes more obvious And yet the tale has been added to, for, unless we ht, we cannot accept as true the prophetic vision that came to Runolf, Thorstein's son; or that of Njal who, on the evening of the onslaught, like Theoclymenus in the Odyssey, saw the whole board and the ore of blood”

Thus, in the Norse romance now offered to the reader, the tale of Eric and his deeds would be true; but the dream of As head, and the visions of Eric and Skallagrienerations of skalds; and, finally, in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the story would have been written doith all its supernatural additions

The tendency of the human mind--and more especially of the Norse mind--is to supply uncommon and extraordinary reasons for actions and facts that are to be a of natural forces Swanhild would have needed no ”familiar” to instruct her in her evil sche about his overthrow Our common experience of mankind as it is, in opposition to mankind as we fable it to be, is sufficient to teach us that the passion of one and the human weakness of the other would suffice to these ends

The natural ic, the beauty and inherent power of such a woicians have invented, or any demon they are supposed to have sua would be complete without the intervention of such extraneous forces: the need of them was always felt, in order to throw up the acts of heroes and heroines, and to invest their persons with an added importance Even Homer felt this need, and did not scruple to introduce not only second sight, but Gods and Goddesses, and to bring their supernatural agency to bear directly on the personages of his chant, and that far aman A word may be added in explanation of the appearances of ”familiars” in the shapes of animals, an instance of which will be found in this story It was believed in Iceland, as now by the Finns and Eskimo, that the passions and desires of sorcerers took visible form in such creatures as wolves or rats These were called ”sendings,” and there are as

Another peculiarity that may be briefly alluded to as eas is their fatefulness As we read we sees will happen as they are fated_”: that is the keynote of them all The Norse mind had little belief in free will, less even than we have to-day Men and woiven to them in order that their lives should run in appointed channels, and their acts bring about an appointed end They do not these things of their own desire, though their desires prompt them to the deeds: they do them because they must The Norns, as they nao; their feet are set therein, and they must tread it to the end

Such was the conclusion of our Scandinavian ancestors--a belief forced upon them by their intense realisation of the futility of huedy of life, the vanity of its desires, and the untravelled gloom or sleep, dreah the Sagas are entrancing, both as examples of literature of which there is but little in the world and because of their living interest, they are scarcely known to the English-speaking public This is easy to account for: it is hard to persuade the nineteenth century world to interest itself in people who lived and events that happened a thousand years ago Moreover, the Sagas are undoubtedly difficult reading The archaic nature of the work, even in a translation; the a endless side-plots, and the persistence hich he introduces the genealogy and adventures of the ancestors of every unimportant character, are none of thehteyes” therefore, is clipped of these peculiarities, and, to some extent, is cast in the for avoided as ratified should he succeed in exciting interest in the troubled lives of our Norse forefathers, and still as--to the prose epics of our own race Too ample, too prolix, too croith detail, they cannot indeed vie in art with the epics of Greece; but in their pictures of life, simple and heroic, they fall beneath no literature in the world, save the Iliad and the Odyssey alone

ERIC BRIGHTEYES

I