"THE SAGA OF KING OLAF."

Otago Witness, Issue 2925, 6 April 1910, Page 86

"THE SAGA OF KING OLAF."

3r Jessie Mack ay.

TV. In the rune of “Iron-Beard” we saw the fall of the leader of the pagan Tronders and the blood-atonement made by Olaf in marrying the slain man’s daughter, Gudrun. Here in “Gudrun” we have the suvage sequel 01 an atonement which itself to us ie a repulsive episode of savagery. The story of Gudrun and her attempted vengeance on her newlywedded lord recalls the more brutal tale of that Rosamond of Lombardy who became the wife of the Gothic conqueror, who slew her father. This Gothic barbarian, in a drunken revel, commanded his wife to pledge him in a winecup made from her father’s skull. Rosamond, roused to fury by the insult, had him murdered shortly after. Gudrun, living four or five centuries later than Rosamond, vindicated her stern faithful daughterbood like a true child of Odin, not waiting for any further incitement to her natural desire for vengeance. But Olaf was no sodden reveller, and Gudrun’s dagger did not find its mark. She was sent back to her kinsfolk, and the ill-starred union was dissolved.

Then the poem relaxes tension, and turns from blood and broil to consider the mission c-f Thaugbrand to the learned and patriotic, heathen of Iceland. There is a crisp though homely Teutonic humour in this picture of Olaf's very unclerical and quite historical chaplain, a great contrast to the really mild and excellent Bishop Sigurd, who was his best counsellor throughout his brief reign. This rune is only rotable as embodying a reference to Iceland, the subjugation of which cost Norway much labour in those far-off years. Iceland (which means simply "Ireland") did not figure in Teutonic annals till about 850, or about the beginning of the Viking time. Then three noble Norwegians with their followers settled there, and Iceland became a Norse country. When these Norwegians came they found the island in the hands of a small body of Irish Culdees, who had probably left home shortly after the time of Columba, driven by the same passion for lonely communion with the Divine that had peopled the Egyptian Thebaid with hermits, and founded many a stormbeaten cell in the Hebrides. The Irish occupation jf Iceland, though by some deemed a slight thing, is by others, held important in its bearings on the splendid Saga literature of the country in later days. For student® of the Norse writings are emphatic on the strong and enriching Celtic element which gave them a vivid beauty that no later northern literature has surpassed or often equalled. Most of the old Saga men were half Celts, some from the Orkneys or the Hebrides, mow still from Ireland. As early as the tenth, century Iceland- had acquired a peerless name for bravery and song, and was the favourite resort of daring spirits from the mainland. Yet it was no Alsatia: long before the time of King Olaf it possessed a full set of national institutions and laws, these latter being: embodied later in the Icelandic code calle>3 the Jousbok, of about the same time as Magna Charta. In its own struggles for unity Norway had found time to. cast greedy eyes on the brave little isle of heroes. In his brief reign of five years Olaf Tryggveson had too much to do at home to press any temporal claim, and showed his care for its spiritual weal only by sending this doubtful miesioner who had proved himself very troublesome at home. Thaugbrand, a Saxon born, seemed to have been picked up during Olaf's early wanderings, and to have been retained in spite of his unpriestly misdemeanours. After being torn by long dissension, Iceland fell at last to Norway about 1264, and with Norway passed under the yoke of Denmark in the fourteenth century. Its island prestige had passed long before; it entered upon an age of stagnation, and almost was forgotten by Europe till a century and a-half ago, when something of its old! picturesque interest returned. Its remarkable language has been stiidied carefully, while Hall Caine's "Bondman" and Rider Haggard's "Eric Brighteyes" have brought it within the pale of English literature.

Up to 1000 a.d., as we have seen, the Teutons spoke practically one language from, Iceland to Normandy. Partly owing to its long isolation and partly to the extremely literary character of the people. Icelandic has remained the least affected j Teutonic language—a mine to philologists. During the eleventh century Iceland was | the haunt of the most brilliant of poets j in Northern Europe. At that time there j were but two literatures in Europe worth the name—the northern Sagas and the far-famed but much inferior poetry of Provence, an offshoot of the Latin. Yet there is something of a misapprehension current about this • this mass of valuable Saga literature has been deemed indigenous' to ! Iceland; but it should more properly be j called Songs of the Western Isles. They were the work of cosmopolitan island ; bards from Ireland, Man, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, and the bays of Norway, j who all found their rendezvous in Iceland, which thus became a treasure-house of runes and legends, strongly dashed with j the subtle tenderness and the esoteric imagery of the Gelt. Not till the year of 01 af Tryggveson's death, in 1000, did Iceland really receive Christianity by some more fitting instrument than Thaugbrand. We have already noted the compilation of these treasures of Saga literature by Icelandic waiters in their own conn/try ' 150 or 200 years after Olaf's time—in the Older Ed'da. of 'Saemund Frode, and the Younger Edda of Snorre Sturlasson, out ; of which the "Saga of King Olaf" was J drawn. . '

this long digression about Iceland we return to Olaf's stern methods with the heathens and warlocks of Norway. Here, in "Rand the Strong" and "Bishop Sigurd at Salten Fiord " we have the terrible end of the robber wizard, and the old record of Snorre spares no detail of Rand's death by the adder. However far removed such cruelty is from the Christian ideal, it must be remembered that Olaf in all his zeal was not ten years weaned from the savage way of the Viking himself, and that as a medieval king he had to punish in striking medieval fashion a stark robber and outlaw. The superstition, too, that regards as the result of wizardry the storm and mist of the Rand's island retreat is all of the time. In "King Olaf's Christmas" we have a milder but equally characteristic view of Olaf's methods to gain the object of his sincere desire—tht establishment of Christianity in Norway. This is one of the finest nines in the epic, throwing a vivid light on the festal spirit of the old Teutons, with its wedded worship of harp and sword—a spirit that most naturally evolved Odin's Valhalla. Most naturally now the devotion of Olaf to the Song of the Sword counted to the new faith among those unshorn eons of Thor ; and thus we see him winning the hearts of the wild Vikings at the Yule-feast, which, one must remember, was already the greatest festival of ancient Scandinavia, as the 10l feast or winter solstice. When they saw that Olaf's. new faith still held the old festival with its wilder accompaniments of song and wassail, that the King still led the chorus with all the spirit that befitted the first soldier in Norway, it seemed a less thing to change the sign of Thor's hammer for the sign of the Cross Then over the waste of snows The noonday sun uprose, 'Through the driving mists revealed. On the shining wall a vast And shadowy cross was cast From the hilt of the lifted sword, And in foaming cups of ale The Berserks drank Was-hael To the Lord!" (To be continued.)