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(history)
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(skillnad)
(historik)
writers. For times near his own he is an unexceptionable
witness; in describing those more remote,
he exhibits, under a learned and ornate garb, the
shape in which the reminiscences and fables of
the heathendom survived among the people in the
twelfth century. From him we learn the wealth of
that store of national remembrances extant from
ancient days, and the old popular ballads, in which
Denmark’s middle age is most rich, show us the
form usually adopted for the transmission of these
remembrances. Saxo drew with greedy hands from
the living well of popular tradition. Nothing which
such materials could supply is left untold; nothing
seems to him incredible. He appears only perplexed
how to arrange all this into a regular history
of the kingdom from the earliest times; wherein he
succeeded accordingly.
What Denmark is for the history of the Christian
middle age in the north, Norway is for that of
declining heathenism; less, however, owing to its
own literary records than to those of the
Icelanders, who may with reason be denominated a
people of saga-writers. Scandinavian colonists,
for the most part men of birth and consequence,
discontented with their lot at home, or retreating
from the oppression of the powerful, had founded
a new republic, in the period from 874 to 934,
upon this distant island. For 400 years they
maintained their independence, and continued in
active intercourse with the mother country,
especially with Norway, whence most of the settlers
had come, and to whose domination the island
was eventually subjected. In Scandinavia itself
the Icelanders were regarded as being pre-eminently
the depositaries of the old poesy of the
north, and having the most ample knowledge of
its antiquity; the earliest Scandinavian chroniclers
attest this unanimously. In Iceland was longest
practised that venerable Scaldic art, whose origin
was ascribed to Odin and the gods; although,
being inspired by Paganism, it assumed a
character always more artificial, when the faith which
had given it vitality became itself extinct. For a
considerable time after the introduction of
Christianity, the Scald, who was also, according to
ancient custom, the historiographer, still maintained
his place at the courts of the northern kings;
and this office, we find, was in almost all cases
filled by natives of Iceland. The songs of the
Scalds, originally committed to memory only, were
therein the more solicitously preserved. When a
song was recited, some one of the company learned
it by heart, and there are examples of the usual
honorary being refused, if the maker did not
remain at court sufficiently long for that purpose [1].
To these songs were attached narratives, which
constituted, equally in popular assemblies and in
courts, a universal and highly valued source of
enjoyment. Thus were formed the elder Icelandic
legendary histories (sagas) of the chief insular
families, and of the northern kings, more especially
the Norwegian. They rested on the testimony of
the Scalds, and are easily distinguishable by their
character from the later and purely fictitious sagas.
Somewhat more than two hundred and forty years
elapsed from the settlement of Iceland, ere the
sagas began to be written; and as the more old
are interwoven with lays of Scalds, the notation of
the songs was at least not later. Thus the oral
transmission of ancient recollections, in rich store,
we may well suppose, and nurtured by the care of
art, passed soon away into a regular literature,
betimes remarkable for its exclusive use of the
mother tongue, and in the same language which
was then spoken in all the three kingdoms of the
north. Its most important name is that of Snorro
Sturleson, born in the year 1178, judge (lagman)
in Iceland, earl (jarl) in Norway, and contemporary
with the last party conflicts of Icelandic freedom,
of which he was the partaker and the victim.
He wrote the Chronicles of the Norwegian kings [2],
or, as he himself says (for he is rather collector
and compiler than author), embodied in his work
ancient legends of the sovereigns of the north,
after the Scaldic songs, the genealogies of princes
and chieftains, and the narrations of well-informed
men. The so-called younger or prosaic Edda
also bears his name, although this collection of
mythes of gods, and explanations of the types and
metres of the heathen poetic language, was
gradually formed by the labours of several writers.
It was intended for the instruction of the young
Scalds, and shows that the old poetry of the
Icelanders was cultivated in the end as a learned art.
The old mythic odes cited in the younger Edda—among
which we distinguish the song of the
northern prophetess (Völuspà), and the so-called
high song (Hávamál), ascribed to Odin, are for
the most part extant. They are to be found in the
elder, poetical, or Saemund’s Edda, so named
from the priest Saemund the Wise, who died in the
year 1133, and is supposed to have been its
compiler. The Edda of Saemund contains likewise
several heroic ballads [3], the fragments of an epic
cycle, having its root mainly in recollections of
the great migration. Hence remains of this saga
are found among many nations, though in a shape
modified by Christianity, and no where, save in the
north, retaining their original Pagan form. These
mythic and heroic songs of the northern heathendom
are older than any of the Icelandic poetry,
and from this cause anonymous; for otherwise the
Icelanders are very exact in stating the names of
all the Scalds since the colonization of the island.
In compass of thought and depth of feeling, in
audacity of conception and peculiarity of character,
in rude but grandiose simplicity, they are far
superior to all the poetical efforts of the Icelandic
court poets.
Sweden, in respect to its history, stands in nearly
the same relation to Scandinavia generally, as the
latter to the rest of Europe. It came latest in
contact with the European world. Of its heathen
period there remain no such complete accounts as
those of the latter days of heathenism in Norway;
its middle age receives less of the light of history
than that of either Norway or Denmark. In its
more recent annals it has cast both into the shade,
and obtained, what neither of them possesses, fame
and rank in the history of the world; only for a
moment indeed through its great Gustavus
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