Norse Myth In English Poetry (1919)

R'5

m

"

NORSE MYTH IN

ENGLISH POETRY

BY

HERFORD,

H.

C.

M.A., Litt.D.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER

Reprinted from Vol.

5,

"

The Bulletin

Nos.

and

2,

August,

John Rylands Library igiS-March,

19 19

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras

Manchester

LoNLTON,

I

of the

:

1919

NORSE MYTH IN

ENGLISH POETRY

PUBLISHED FOR THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY AT

THE UNIVERSITY 12

PRESS

(H. M.

McKechnie, Secretary)

Lime Grove, Oxford Road, Manchester

LONGMANS, GREEN AND

CO.

London 39 Paternoster Row i^EW York 443-449 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street Bombay: 8 Hornby Road Calcutta: 6 Old Court House Street Madras: 167 Mount Road :

:

9

"

NORSE MYTH IN

ENGLISH POETRY

BY

PROFESSOR

01

Reprinted from Vol.

HERFORD,

H.

C.

5,

M.A., Litt.D.

ENGLIS« LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTKK

"

Nos.

The Bulletin of I

and

2,

the

August,

fohn Rylands IJhrarv igi^-March, 191

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONGMANS, GRKRN & COMPANY

Manchester:

London, Nr:w

Y(;kk, Chicago,

iQig

Bomhay, Cai.cui

ia,

Madkas

UNIVERSry OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBAfiA COLLEGE LIBRARY A'

7

/7

NORSE MYTH By

C

ENGLISH POETRY.*

IN

HERFORD,

H.

M.A.. Litt.D., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER. I.

who

and snow and show smile things great and small

Tale

teller,

Had

heart to turn about

With

faint half

That

twixt

fire

in thy fearful land did

Thou and

fall,

thy brethren sure did gain

for which I long in vain. whereby the mist of fear melted, and your ears might hear

That thing

The

spell,

Was

Elarth's Yoices as they are indeed.

W. Morris,

SO

Prefixed to his Translation of the Ryrbyggja Saga.

wrote William Morris,

one of the

may

the preface to his English version of

in

sagas of the " fearful land ".

finest

For no other English poet has

theme.

Norse myth heroism,

its

;

none has done so much

earth-shaking humour, and

pathos, to a place in our memories, I

say to restore

which

we

for

;

sort the recovery of a stories

call

*

so keenly the

to restore its

his

words

and a home be

its

;

and the

in truth

in great part

tale

lecture

power

in

a

gift,

or

thirteen

but in some

The

common

of the Volsungs,

Beowulf}

and

our hearts.

new

a

of

terrible beauty, its

heights of tragic passion

vanished and forgotten possession.

English epic of

Based upon a 1918.

will not

felt

had been sung twelve

told the other day,

before in the old

it

Norse were

the Germanic peoples

13 March.

And

serve as a clue to guide us to the heart of our present

mythic

heritage of

which Morris

hundred years

But between the day

delivered in the John

Rylands Library on

THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

6 whrn c\c

were

ihrst* lalt^s

and

the Conquest,

of

again by

chanted

last

English antiquaries,

which they weie

infancy to meet again,

We

as perfect strangers,

and even

literary

Denmark

northern lands sweeping from in

one dreamed

and a

Europe, had grown up

A

period, find

its

way

into

permanent culture

of

our

beyond the broad

No

towards the end of the effect that

Den-

and import

in the

and with such

literature,

points of dazzling brilliance

But the triumphant

the world.'

story stands absolutely alone

glorious

waif of Scandinavia

came

;

to

and even us with

its

intrusion of the solitary

this

though

Scandinavian char-

not obliterated, by alien romance elements which

if

certainly helped to

the Norse sea-giant

who

of

the lonely fastness of the gi^eat Atlantic

in

Hamlet

acter overlaid,

faces

prose, unsurpassed in their kind in

single northern legend did, indeed,

mark and Elsinore became

Our

and the vast arc

;

every sense beyond our horizon.

spaces of estranging sea, lay

island.

for almost

centuries,

Iceland,

to

The

advanced age.

in

France, to Italy

to

that a poetry

during most of

purposes, beyond our ken.

cultural

were turned the other way,

deciphered

first

are like kindred parted in

whole Scandinavian world passed, during those all

perhaps on the

feasts,

centuries

six

fully

lie

unknown.

utterly

English

at

on which they were

that

commend it Amloth to

to

European

taste.

It is

a far cry from

the mediaeval emulator of Livy's Brutus

spoke to the Elizabethans through the ambitious Latinity of Saxo,

or the polished French of Belleforest.

But before the beginning cultural estrangement, there

of these centuries of

was

at least

The

intimate.

ture of

Vikings

Northumbria

in

a

who swept away

of

between

disastrously

and devout

the lettered

and

cul-

the ninth century were not persuasive heralds

of the richer

and stronger but

But from the time of Alfred onwards,

settlement of a

was

it

the North. ent

literary

lively intercourse

Some

Northern and the English stems.

the

complete

still

large tract

of

unshaped cosmos

of the

poetry of

vrith the

perman-

England by Scandinavians, more

humane

relations

that the

Norsemen could make a song

The Old

diversify their encounters.

as well as fight,

formidable galleys of theirs were sometimes launched,

English found

and

that those

like

the bark of

the aged Ulysses, for voyages of exploration not of plunder.

We have

made analogous the

discoveries in our

Norwegian enthusiasms

than

at

own

time

;

and

it is

easier to parallel

of the later nineteenth century in the tenth

any intervening date.

Just a thousand years before

Nansen

NORSE MYTH came

Norway's ambassador

as

to the English court, another

and kindled the

explorer, Ohthere, visited Alfred,

White

region of the

7

Norwegian

king's quick imagina-

voyage round the North Cape into the Mur-

tion with the story of his

man

ENGLISH POETRY

IN

And

Sea.'

one

most romantic of

of the

Viking adventurers, Egil Skallagrimsson, equally renowned as warrior

and

became the

as singer,

trusted

henchman and warm

After doing him yeoman's service

stane.

Athel-

friend of

and counsel, and

in field

ceiving royal rewards, Egil improvised a Norse panegyric {drdpa)

Athelstane gave him two gold rings as poet's

praise at the palace board.*

but there

fee,

no

is

Icelander's staves thought of emulating in his

—

that

is

who listened to the own tongue their brief,

any English scop

hint that

A

weighty rhythm and bold imagery. English court

Norse song chanted

to the

the nearest recorded approach to a literary

contact between Scandinavia and England before the Conquest

even contact so casual and seemingly

as

fruitless

after

it.

so profoundly akin despite their deadly encounter,

England, herself

after a centuiy of tragic

bound

web

in the

emulating strains of island colony

once of

its

and impotent

of continental culture,

drew

definitely apart.

awoke

silence,

and rudely or

to find

childishly

While Norway and her

alien song.

great

had been working out undisturbed the splendid promise

of their chaotic at

and

;

becomes more

this,

The new Northmen completed the England from the old. The two Germanic civilizations,

and more inconceivable estrangement of

re-

in his

and unbridled youth, and creating the great monument

their heroic traditions

and

Eddas

of their national art, in the

Iceland has kept even her language almost unchanged

and the Sagas.

to the present day."'

" Undisturbed "

:

that

at

is

would appreciate the energy story

upon the imagination

disturbed, Christ,

above

all,

bottom the clue

And

equality of literary fortune.

of

it

the impact,

of civilized

until the

by the powerful solvent

to

when

very close of the of the Christian

first

faith."'

up by the Viking marauders

affect the truth of this contention.

hypothesis, only enriched the

or lessening

treat of

its

paganism

power in the

millennium after

The

fascinating

of

of

in Christian lands,

Christianity, even

pagan myth world without

of resistance.

West

Un-

Norse myths are transformations

certain

in-

we

if

came, of Norse

it

Christian legends, caught

it,

startling

and Romanized Europe.

theory of Bugge, that

does not

this

has to be borne in mind

disintegrating

Scandinavia was the

Europe, and behind

on that

its

last

re-

successive

— 8

JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

Till-.

harrirrs of sea

and mountain and sea again, the

and Walhalla held

tide of Christianity.

Tlir further \vc go north and west, the more freely tions arc

unfolded and elaborated

world and

l>eg)nning of the

death

their

of the feats of

heroes and

of feasting in

Odin's

Sweden and Denmark paganism was soonest submerged, and Norway, in its deepset the fewest and the faintest traces.

In

halls.

has

doom,

crowned by an immortality

in battle,

primeval tradi-

its

stones of gods and men, of the

its

its final

Thor and Odin

faith of

ground against the onsurging

its

left

guarded a

fiords,

Norse

of old

island of fire

as of

literature,

and snow

in

its

and

its last

almost completely blotted

it

real capital

was

the great

loneliest outpost.

And

missionaries

won

their difficult

even after the conversion,

myth

sagacity or patriotism saved the

England

republican statecraft,

Norway, the Christian

triumph only after A.D. 1000.

But the

sagas.

wastes of the North Atlantic, which

in the far

might seem destined to be

Here, and

and

rich treasure of lays

their

from the fate which

literature

out elsewhere, and has reduced

us in

our primitive paganism by a few empty names

to attest

Wednesday and Thursday, Wednesbury and Thoresby, and the legend of Wayland the Smith, and the pre-Christian core of Beowulf. The result was, in the first place, the great collection of lays known Older Edda, written partly

as the

then

the thirteenth,

and

first

of

occasions.

thirty-five

In

distinct pieces,

of the gods,

and

edited at the end of the eighteenth.

critically

Secondly, a great mass of songs, historic

its

still

mystic in colouring but arising out

extant form the

falling into

stories of

Loki

(

world

to procure

hild, its

his

of

his

f.)

or

some

—

stories

few cognate lays are pre-

these stories have counted as

These are (1) Odin, treacherously slain by

(2) the story of Odin's descent to the under-

reform i^Baldrs drauniai^

Volsungs,-

Medea

;

consists of

English poetry.

Balder, the beloved son of

Voluspd, 32,

story of the

A

the heroes.

creative or even stimulating forces for

the story of

Edda

two nearly equal groups

Three only

sented in certain sagas.

Norway in the ninth century, They were collected in

in

and eleventh.

Iceland in the tenth

in

;

(3) the great heroic

of Sigurd the Achilles of the

North, and Bryn-

Lady Macbeth, and Gudrun and

her vengeance for

death {Grippisspd,

etc.).

But several others have powerfully

contributed to mould our impressions of the scope and reach of this

northern poetry (

:

notably, in the

Voluspd), a sublime

hymn

first

group, (4) the Sibyl's prophecy

of the beginning

and the end

of the world,

NORSE MYTH of

which the story of Balder

and the

giant Skirnir, a

ENGLISH POETRY

IN is

only an incident

huge piece

(5) the story of

;

of Aristophanic

Thrymskvitha)

9

Thor

humour, man mak-

and (6) the great Waking of Angentyr, where Hervor the warrior maid goes to her father's burial

ing sport of his gods (

mound

burning island to

in the

knows, will be ruin to her race

;

demand from him

{Hervar saga).

two must be mentioned

historical class,

:

the sword which, he

Further, from the partly

(7) the death-song of

Lodbrok, a chieftain of the twelfth century, thrown into a

{Krakumdl\ and

Ragnar

pit of serpents

(8) the song of the Norns after the battle of Clontarf

{Darratkarljoth).

From

introductory

this

fortunes of these piimeval

when

let

the youngest of

us

now

turn

to

watch the

strangers from the North, with

and witching beauty,

their mysterious

England,

summary

and rugged

in enlightened

and prosperous

them was already almost

half a mil-

lenium old. II.

For the

report of

first

which ushered

and the philosophy Sir

W.

a text of

common

sense.

scholars in Holland,

and read

in a northern chronicle

Here was

and heroic among these barbaric peoples

something, he

and he made "on Heroic Virtue," 1690 much as Sidney, had confessed how his heart stirred as with a trumpet

his Essay,

a century before,

with William,

chief agent in the negotiations

death-song of Ragnar Lodbrok.

thought, fine it

of

Temple, the

met Scandinavian in Latin the

them concurs with the famous Revolution

Dutch William and Whig government, John Locke

in

;

;

at the rude lay of Chevy-chase.'^

But erudition

new

curiosities.

too, at

The

Oxford

old

in particular,

had

felt

the sting of the

Germanic world, overlaid and almost ob-

was beginning to be tracked out and pieced together. friend of Milton, was the first thoroughly to master Old

literated,

the

and

his fount of

types,

bequeathed to the Oxford

press,

Junius,

English,

were used

to

by George Hickes. But Hickes was Thesaurus of the Northern Languages, 689, to print and translate a Norse poem in English. And fortunately it was one of the grandest of all— the Waking of AngentyrJ'' Hervor s Incantation, as it is also called, was widely admired, and in 763 was included with Ragnar Lodbrok (No. 7) and three print the

also the

first

first,

\

I

Icelandic grammar,

in his great

—

!

—

;

THE JOHN KYLANDS LIBRARY

10

otheni by Bishop Pcicy. the editor of the A\//\vor.

the

luddy death

at the

waves

the

of

the Kinjj of the Kinsfolk

in.Ate is

And m^Kked it

JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

THh:

24

;

tells

Gudrun "

O

Brynhild, on the night had the ring the semblance of Gunnar left thee

Thus he wooed

who

clutches a knife ".

the deadly secret.

When

For he cloaked him

as one

in

Gunnar's semblance and

the bride for

morn, golden hall forlorn."

that followed the in thy

Gunnar, and

his

shape

in

Gunnar rode

for

Gunnar's hid

the

:

fire.

And he held thy hand for Gunnar, and lay by thy dead desire. Brynhild, and great is thy renown have known thee for long, In this shalt thou joy henceforward, and nought in thy nodding crown.

O

We

;

Now

is Brynhild wan as the dead, and she openeth her mouth to speak, But no word cometh outward. .

.

Then ing gloom,

.

follows the long, bitter brooding of Brynhild in ever deepen-

and the great scene where Sigurd seeks her

(or her love despite the

and begs

out,

bonds which bind them both elsewhere.

Like

the sun-god he shines upon her despair, radiant with the temper that looks eagerly to the future

Awake, With But

O

Brynhild

the light of the sun

all

And she And my

hope

fled

is

cried

is

!

will not for the

succumb

house

is

awakened, and the hope

to the past

:

smitten thro' of

deeds

to do.

from her.

"1 may

:

heart

Then once

A

arise,

and

live

no longer,

for the

the forge of sorrow, and

my

gods have forgotten the

life is

earth.

a wasting dearth."

again spoke Sigurd, once only and no more

:

golden he stood on the sunlit floor eyes were the eyes of Odin, and his face was the hope of the world,

pillar of light all

And

his

And

he cried

:

"

1

am

Sigurd the Volsung, and belike the tales shall be true,

That no hand on the earth may hinder what

my hand would

fashion

and do

:

— NORSE MYTH O

ENGLISH POETRY

IN

25

and thee on the earth will 1 wed. and all those shall be as the dead." (But his breast so swelled within him that the breastplate over it burst,) And he saw the eyes of Brynhild, and turned from the word she spake " / will not wed thee, Sigiird, nor any man alive" Brynhild beloved

live, live,

And

away Gudrun

put

!

the Nibling,

—

:

A great she

line, terrible in its

own

Sigurd, Brynhild's victim,

is

now

to

herself, like the

more

naked

simplicity, preluding the ruin

about to bring upon them both.

is

wan

is

Then,

Her vengeance

end.

be her bridegroom and she

dying Cleopatra,

"

pray thee a prayer, the

I

That ye bear me

And

my

She arrays

her royal robes, and her face no

in

side

'

word

last

:

world

in the

and the hand

forth to Sigurd,

lay his sword,

Betwixt

her

Sigurd,

;

his bride.

then thrusts the blade into her breast, and delivers her

;

charge to Gunnar helplessly standing by

last

over

is

which

death of

after the

speak,

1

my hand would

seek.

the blade that frighted death,'

and Sigurd's as

lay that while agone,

it

When once in one bed together we twain were laid alone How then when the flames flare upward may be left behind ? :

I

How How Clash

to

With **

may

then

the road he

wendeth be hard

then in the gates of Valhall

on the heels of Sigurd, as

that magnificent

Husband,

come

I

cry

"

I

!

for

of

I

triumph

in

death,

facile

among

world,

it

is

style of

plainly not wdth the subtle

style.

art of

poetry (

1

?

)

who up

It

to

expository, tell

then, has

we

If

are to

and compressed manner, or the

Nor, save

Homer.

for its

The

we

Norse myth and

things

simplicity of

influence

its

must place

spontaneous flow, does

Homer

a flawless clarity of outline and a limpid speech which

Two

bom

Sigurd with that of any of the great epics of the

easy, spontaneous flow.

What,

poems

admit, save at rare

high-v^ought harmonies of Vergil or Milton, that

recall the simpler

the supreme

troubadour eloquence of the

romancer was too deeply engrained in him to moments, the rigour and the economy of great

compare the

Cleopatra's

like

close.

The

English literature.

feet to find ?

the door of the gleaming ring " follow on my king ?

Morris's Sigui'd can hardly be counted of

my

may

fits

meant

its it

goes with

the meaning. for

English

:—

brought to the cognizance of our eighteenth century poets, 1

760, with

and

a story, a

all their brilliant

satiric verse,

new and noble

knew

accomplishment

neither

how

in oratorical,

to sing a song nor to

poetry of which song and story were the

THt JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

26

Percy's Rt'/ujucs were

breath and blcxxd.

vital

Burns was but

Bums'

born

just

can match the

s