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NOTES 125
was fought, on September g, 1000, the great sea-fight between Olaf
Trygvason and his allied foes, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark,
King Olaf of Sweden, and Earl Erik of Norway, which resulted in the
defeat and death of Olaf Trygvason, and the capture and destruction
of the Long Serpent, the most famous of Norse galleys.
PAGE 35. ARNLJOT’S YEARNING FOR THE SEA.
This Song, as well as At the Winter-Thing, was written in 1860, and
appeared at that time in a Danish magazine. The year (1870) that wit-
nessed the publication of the completed Aruljot Gelline was also the year
in which Bjornson’s collected Poems and Songs appeared, and it is to
be noted that Araljot’s Yearning for the Sea was included in that
collection as an independent poem, entitled Te Sea. This poem is in
many respects a piece of psychological self-portraiture. In the late
fifties, Bjornson had been a storm-centre of political controversy, and
at times must have felt with Arnljot, that every man’s hand was
against him. The years during which Arzljot Gelline was written were
the years in which the thought of the modern world was fecundating
Bjornson’s mind, and broadening his outlook. He was coming, like
his hero, to feel that the old beliefs were outworn, and to get glimpses
of the new world of ideas that was to transform the manner of his
thinking, and open broad new horizons to his view. This transition
period of unrest and intellectual ferment is not so much revealed as
foreshadowed in Arnljot’s musings upon the sea, which to him, as to
every Norseman, had such appealing and dreadful significance.
“For the old Norsemen the sea stood as the goal of all desire when
their minds were stirred by ambition and the lust for adventure. There
was something very alluring in the free and joyous life of the viking
ship. There were new things to see, and booty to gain. To foreign lands
overseas fared the discontented who had been balked or had suffered
misfortune at home. This longing was in the very blood of youth. At
sea indeed dangers threatened from every side, and foes lurked in every
fjord, or behind every island. But this danger-filled warrior-life, in which
heroic deed and noble death went hand in hand, was the ideal of the
old Esir-religion. He who fell in battle entered straightway into the
warrior-life of the chosen with Odin in Valhalla.” (J. Morland.)
PacE 38. IN THE Mist oF THE NORTHERN OCEAN.
’ There are two Sagas of Olaf Trygvason. One is the work of Snorri, in
the Heimskringla; the other, very much longer, is a compilation made
about the middle of the thirteenth century from many earlier narra-
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