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NOTES 13%
grandfather troll, who rules over all these wild beasts and evil passions,
is thus symbolically seen as his own sinful nature—the old Adam —
here fittingly indicated by the epithet ‘rascal.’
“Arnljot is now—it may be said—self-convicted of sin. He sees
that human justice is greatly crippled, and that the human decisions
resulting therefrom cannot stand in a higher court. He realizes now
that the best man can do is so bad that it provides no foundation upon
which to build his life, but also that the worst he does is in so far jus-
tified that its judgment or punishment is not to be assumed by human
faculty. His gaze seeks a higher justice tempered by love. He has—
like the poet [Ibsen] —‘sat in judgment upon himself.’ His pride is
bent, his self-sufficiency is shattered, his cold defiance ends only in de-
spair. But he does not wholly collapse. The earth heaves, the hills rock
beneath him, he is tossed up and down between valley and tree-tops,
but in the end he keeps his footing.
“ And then—in his uttermost need—a divine word rings through
the air, revealing to his sight a two-fold vision, lighting up the dark-
ness of human volition. He sees a wild, disorderly troll-horde pour forth
from mountains and hills. They are the human passions: untamed
strength, love, vengefulness, hatred, pride, defiance. As long as these
human passions are unrestrained, and not bound to the service of a
noble aim under the banner of a lofty thought, they are dangerous and
devastating ; they are trolls.
“But at the same time he sees upon the other side a shining host,
its driving power these and other passions, restrained and ennobled.
He sees a procession of priests and children, with torches, and crosses,
and garlands, followed by warriors with banners and weapons, and in
the midst he sees the King, Olaf the Holy; bells are ringing, and songs
rising to heaven. All their passions are ordered under the cross. They
have renounced every selfish desire. In quiet strength is their resistless
force ; love has been transformed to self-sacrificing affection, hatred and
vengefulness have become burning zeal, pride and defiance have become
unfaltering courage and unbending faith. His gaze now beholds all
that he has been groping after. His own heavy passions, which he has
nursed, and under which he has suffered, he now understands aright.
They are like the trolls who, in wild disarray, vainly break from the
hills. But they may be transformed into noble warriors, priests, and
’skalds, in the shining march toward the future. They first have their
true value, when they take place and rank under the banner of a higher
vision of life.
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