The Icelandic Sagas
EglPs Saga. Translated by E. Ft. ELIdNon. (Cambraigo University I'rees. las.)
English and Norse Documents. Relating to the Reign of Ethelred. By Margaret Ashdown. (Cain. Univ. Press, Its.) Tur. Icelandic sagas must always enthral those who love to read of naked, unsophisticated passions, of heroic courage and endurance, of defiance in the face of irresistible destiny, and of action directed to a single end. All this, and much more, the sagas describe in language worthy of its theme, simple and straightforward. The style is sharp, plain, and hammer-like ; the sentences brief and staccato. In no literature is there less waste of words : the tale goes straight to the point, without hurry but without loitering by the way. No works could provide a more satisfying relief for those who weary of the endless circumlocutions and " psycho- logical " vagaries of the modern novel.
But while these stories have thus a general appeal, they make a special claim on us as Englislunen. The famous men they praise are our fathers who begat us : and we feel a filial pride as we hear of their glorious deeds. We see in them the ancestors of Drake and Hawkins, but also—for almost every one of them was a poet as well as a viking- the ancestors of Tennyson and Masefield. The man we call loosely the " Dane" is probably the predominant partner in the English stock ; more than any other of the score of partners he has made England what she is : and if we wish to learn what he was like when he thrust himself into stir midst we must study the sagas. Not to know him irgues that we but half know ourselves.
Perhaps the most typical of all these old heroes is Egil Shallagrimsson, a man of many quarrels, restless, incessantly wandering and harrying, litigious, piratical, true to his friend like Jonathan to David, infinitely daring and infinitely tender, an Ishmael and a poet. No poem of its kind in any language is more impressive, when once its peculiar dialect has become familiar, than Sona-Torrak, in which Egil bewails the loss of his two sons : a dirge mingled of pathos and defiance, of the sense of desolation and the courage to challenge the gods to do their worst. They may overcome him, but they shall not break his spirit ; and at the end of all he will go down unshrinking to the domain of Hell.
Of this saga Mr. Eddison gives us a translation, enriched with very valuable notes and essays. Everyone who has tried his hand at translating the sagas knows the immense difficulty of keeping the simplicity without being bald and jejune, and of being brief without being abrupt. Mr. Eddison has chosen a style of extreme literality, and a language not unlike that of William Morris—more archaic than that of the Authorized Version. He defends his choice in a special essay. It is not likely that he will convince all his readers ; but whoever will give the necessary pains will find his trouble well rewarded.
The " Danes,- of course, crossed our path again and again before the time of Sweyn and Cnut. They swarmed about all our coasts, and occupied whole islands and countries. Alfred found himself compelled to give them half the land. Individual Icelanders fought now for our kings, now against them. Eel himself fought for Athelstan, perhaps at Brun- anburh, against the Scots. But it was in the time of Ethelred the Unready that the Danes proper made their main effort, and that vikings from the whole Scandinavian world impressed themselves upon us most vigorously. The famous little English epic, the Batik of Malden, tells the story of one of the thousand skirmishes that happened in those terrible years ; the Chronicle tells of many others ; and the sagas add to our knowledge from the side of the invaders. Miss Ashdown, in this learned volume, collects practically everything that has remained of these various records, and edits them with con- summate erudition. In particular, she gives a thorough critical commentary on Malden, along with a translation : the Norse stories she translates with notes. The book is highly interesting. One may hope that she will follow it up with another, in which the later Norse stories which illustrate English history may be made more accessible than they now are in the work of Vigfusson and Dasent.
The Norsemen carried with them to Iceland and Greenland a vast mass of poetic tradition, which their " skalds," in the course of centuries, enlarged and adorned. Much of this is preserved to us in the so-called "Edda of Saemund." Of this the most famous portion is that which deals, in isolated semi-lyrical epics, with the great Nibelung cycle. Upon these poems, and in part on others which arc lost, an Icelandic sagaman based his prose Volsuriga Saga, in which he has made a more or less unified narrative out of the separate lays. This saga is well known to the English people through Morris's translation, and also through his Story of Sigurd, as well as through innumerable abridgments. Miss Schlauch, to whom, unlike Mr. Eddison, Morris's style is repellent, here translates it again : and those who prefer a more modern manner will find in her work as attractive a representation of the original as they can desire. She adds to it a version of Ragnar Lodbrok, a story which is not without interest from its connexion with England, but which is probably, in its loose construction and total absence of power of characterization, the very worst of all the Icelandic tales. As, however, it is a kind of sequel to I'ofsunga, Miss Schlauch was justified in adding it.
Great as is the intrinsic value of these books, their chief worth lies in the inducement they offer to go further, in the study of a natural literature, almost wholly unaffected by foreign influences or by artificial laws. It matters not how cultured a man may be—his culture will be widened by ' reading Njal's Saga or the Waking of Angarifyr.
E. E. listtErr.
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