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"......from Fife,
Where the Norwegian banners flout the sky."
SHAKESPEARE.
"When Denmark's raven
soared on high
Triumphant through Northumbria's sky,
And the broad shadow of her wing
Blackened each cataract and spring."
SCOTT.
THE Phoenician
tin-seekers and the Roman conquerors brought to Britain, as we have
seen, new ideas and new beliefs, besides endowing us with new resources
by opening up the hidden treasures of the mines. Each race as they came
to trade or subject stamped traces of their residence on our folk lore,
but it was undoubtedly the Scandinavians who left most impress on our
character and customs. Their raven flag succeeded the all-conquering
Roman eagle. The ensign bearing the king of birds had soared over
Britain from the time the nameless Roman standard-bearer of the tenth
legion, on their first approach to the strand, had earned deathless
renown by leaping into the surf crying, Follow me," and the hesitating
warriors followed their flag. From that time for some four hundred years
the Romans ruled us, but when our southern conquerors followed their
eagle back to its eerie in the Eternal City, in this northernmost Ultima
Thule of their sword-acquired lands, the natives were gathering
themselves together to grow into the world-possessing power the Druid
sage had foretold would be Britain's destiny.
"Rome shall perish—write
that word
In the blood that she has spilt;
Perish, hopeless and abhorr'd,
Deep in ruin as in guilt.
Then the progeny that
springs
From the forests of our land,
Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings,
Shall a wider world command."
At that period a
seemingly ill wind blew to our shores pillaging bands who in the end
wrought this nation lasting good. As Mr. S. Laing explains in his Kings
of Norway . All would have been Roman in Europe to-day in principle and
social arrangement—Europe would have been like Turkey, one vast den of
slaves, with a few rows in its amphitheatre of kings, nobles, and
churchmen raised above the dark mass of humanity beneath them, if three
boats from the north of the Elbe had not landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle
of Thanet fourteen hundred years ago, and been followed by a succession
of similar boat expeditions of the same people marauding, conquering,
and settling during six hundred years, viz., from 449 to 1066. All that
men hope for of good government and future improvement in their physical
and moral condition—all that civilised men enjoy at this day of civil,
religious, and political liberty, the British constitution,
representative literature, the trial by jury, security of property,
freedom of mind and person, the influence of public opinion over the
conduct of public affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press,
the spirit of the age—all that is or has been of value to man in modern
times as a member of society, either in Europe or in the New World may
be traced to the spark left burning on our shores by these northern
barbarians. The same seed was no doubt sown by the old Anglo-Saxons and
by the Northmen, for they were originally the same people; but the seed
of the former had perished under Roman superstition and church influence
during five centuries in which the mind and property in every country
were subjugated to the priesthood whose home was at Rome; and the seed
of the latter flourished, because it was fresh from a land in which all
were proprietors with interests at stake, and accustomed, although in a
very rude and violent way, to take a part, by Things or assemblies of
the people, in all the acts of their government."
It was well for us that
the wind of God—the nor'-easter - encouraged these sea pirates to come
"conquering from the eastward." "Lords by land and sea," they made a
happy hunting- ground of our coasts, and owing to their blood we inherit
that goodly heritage, the mastery of the ocean. They imbued us with an
undying love for "the beauty and mystery of the ships and the magic of
the sea," till—
"Never was isle so little,
never was sea so lone,
But over the sand and the palm trees an English flag has flown."
These strong-handed,
strong-willed Norsemen needed no laboriously-made road for their armed
men to traverse. Their highway was across a field of foam, and with
their sailor-trained, keen eyes and shrewd wits they judged from their
galleys what manner of country they had reached and where the richest
spoil lay. Ofttimes the poor Britons must have been terror-stricken when
they saw the sails of these dare-devil Berserkers looming in the
distance. They were a race who loved to look on the bright face of
danger, to whom the scent of blood was sweet, and the clang of arms in
battle intoxicating music. Possessed of a robust strength, and capable
of accomplishing incredible exploits, they came and settled where they
listed. They brought with them, not the culture and sins and
civilisation of the Romans, but that glory in seafaring, that
unquenchable thirst for world- wandering which, united to a grim
courage, a love of enterprise and of freedom, has helped to weld Britain
into an Imperial dominion. The legends and customs which are our use and
wont to-day they brought with them. They dwelt with that wide
thoroughfare, the German Ocean, for ever lapping or surging at their
very doors, and also as if to spur them to ride thereon "with horse of
tree"; above their homes, their veritable roof trees, there towered the
Norway pines, each worthy to be the mast of some great ammiral." Thus,
their spirit of adventure egging them on, with timber ready to hand,
they turned naturally to shipbuilding. They wielded the axe and hammer
with a will, for their hands longed to handle the oar. The necessity of
foraging for food also drove them afield, for as Conan Doyle truly says,
"Cold and poverty and storm are the nurses of the qualities which make
for empire." The hardy Norsemen could not rest satisfied with steadily
and bucolicly tilling their stationary corner of ground. Their instincts
led them to plough the waves, and their brains were the brighter by
reason of their wanderings. The Norsemen, when winter and rough weather
held them captive, sat round their fires and recited tales of their own
or their forefathers' doughty deeds. The chiefmost theme, however, were
legends of Odin and his strong sons. Truly giants walked on the earth in
their days, and the stories of their prowess did not diminish in the
telling, indeed they grew in stature as time rolled on. "Far-away fowls
have fine feathers" we know, and there is an equivalent Gaelic proverb
which avers, "There are long horns on cattle in mist." These Northern
heroes and the beings and monsters who figure in their myths grew bigger
and bigger as the dark of ages enshrouded them. Their human prototypes
had doubtless been splendid fellows. They came of a race whose portion
and lot were likened to that of the younger brother of fairy story, who
was compelled by ill-usage to go forth to seek his fortune. He went out
into the world and worked—the elder brother stayed at home in slothful
ease, in the slumberous air of the luxuriant East. The younger brother,
strengthened with his trials and struggles, eventually grew into a
renowned man. Honest of purpose, yet observant, he cleared away all
difficulties which obstructed his path, and by his caution and
cleverness he acquired wealth and received visible rewards. The younger
brother's portion was the Scandinavians' and ours. His descendants carry
on the tradition he left. From generation to generation they leave home
to seek or improve their fortune. It is they who with a will take up the
white man's burden and obey the injunction:—
"In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain."
Besides fighting the
savage wars for peace, they fight with the forest, and if it by its
deep-rooted obdureness does not frustrate their efforts and feed on
their bones, they extend civilisation and cultivate lands which have
remained untilled since the creation. The Romans left us the ruins of
altars to Sylvanus, their wood god. The Norsemen, with their axes and
their stubborn courage, taught us how to clear away the impeding trees
and turn what had once been primeval wood into fertile fields. It is
these intrepid- spirited younger brothers of ours who to-day continue to
extend the empire and defend its furthest outpost. They do not forget
the—
"Grey old weary mother
Throned amid the Northern waters,"
but return again to her
rich in this world's gear by reason of their perseverance, having used
their talents with energy and wisdom. it is the younger brother who,
when he has set his affairs in order, visits his opulent but indolent
elder brother whose heritage is waning by reason of his despotic greed.
It is he who fills full the mouth of famine," and institutes law, order,
freedom, and education in the neglected dominion, as for instance
Britain, the younger brother of to-day, has turned his attention to
India, the rich, lazy, effete elder.
On our folk lore as on
our character, the Norse left a deep indent. One, writing of the
Northland and its battle-loving sea-rovers, who took long to adopt, or
adapt themselves to, the gentle tenets of Christianity, says: It is not
surprising that there, rather than in any other part of Europe, we
should find the old world wants, and hopes, and fears, dark guesses,
crude imaginings, child-like poetic expressions, crystalised into a
pretty definite system of belief and worship. We can walk through the
glittering ice halls of the old frozen faith, and count its gems and
wonder at its fearful images; but the warm heart reachings from which
they alike flowed, we can only darkly feel at best, and narrowly pry
into here and there."
The barbarian Northmen
formed out of their myths a healthy-toned worship of their own. Odin was
their all-powerful ideal of a god-like man whose word was law. He ruled
over Asgard, the stronghold he had created, throned on its heights among
nebulous clouds. In it were Norns who spun perpetually the web which
formed the destinies of men. They were the Fates, giants' daughters, the
avengers of wrong. Odin dwelt truly under a roof tree for the great ash,
the Yggdrasil, spread its branches over him. The editor of Mallet's
Northern Antiquities says:
We are inclined to regard
this mythic tree as the symbol of ever-enduring time, or rather of
universal nature ever varying in its aspects, but subsisting throughout
eternity. It is called somewhere "Time's hoary nurse," and we see the
principles of destruction and renovation acting upon it." We annually
welcome two offshoots of Odin's ash among us, for the Christmas tree and
the gaily-bedecked Maypole are both saplings from this giant stem. From
Asgard, where its stalwart heroes used to take walks abroad just to see
if any entertaining adventure would befall them, we gather many of our
legends and myths. The Northmen, who were so long in adopting
Christianity, we conjecture from folk lore had, out of their romantic
tales, concocted a scheme which accounted for the manner in which this
earth's machinery moved. They also formed ideas in regard to their
future state which had a ring of reasonable soundness in them. These
sea-born ancestors of ours were gifted with forethought and judgment. Of
course their scientific knowledge was centuries behind the times, but
the practicalness and poetry in their theories and ideas comes into view
when we read of the punishments meted out by Odin to the idle dwarfs and
elves, which resulted in the ultimate benefit of mankind, for the
ill-doing dwarfs were sentenced to toil in the darksome under-world to
give to those above fuel and gems, and the light- fingered elves were
taught to assist the sunshine and the showers in unfolding the secrets
long wrapped in the sheltering snows of winter. Legend made Odin into a
just, benign All Father, whose bravery and nobleness was an example
worthy of worship. A fire-eater in these days was the only august
personage, and Odin was great both as a warrior and as a ruler. The
Norseman's heaven was a place full of men who had fought a good fight,
taking their ease after war. They had a hell, one might almost say in
these complacent advanced days, of the old- fashioned sort. It was a
burning spot in the centre of the earth, and the dwarfs pressed to work
for the good of the community were its stokers. Odin was a nobler, more
practical deity than the gods the civilised Romans had bowed down to.
Odin's followers in their downright, direct manner, from their mythical
legends, forged and hammered out for themselves a high standard to
attain in this life and a belief in the world to come. Their gods were
deified men with aims and objects of human interest, masterful, noble
giants, towering above other mortals by reason of their strength and
force of character, triumphant conquerors in every fight. In those days
when a strong sword was the best and only charter needed to claim land
and honours, a mighty man was the now humble smith. The Norseman
believing that to be slain in battle, or to deal a deadly wound to an
enemy was a passport to the halls of Odin, was careful to take with him
when he went hence his sword and spear, along with his smith's tools
wherewith to sharpen his treasured weapons. He fashioned shield and
buckler with all the skill he could, for he looked on them as his
eternal companions. As tools of war were so all important centuries
after the followers of Odin had been resting in Valhalla, the trade and
skill of the smith was held in esteem. Odin, according to legend,
wrought at the forge to make for himself flawless weapons worthy of his
prowess. His horse Sleipnir, whose careering flight was likened to the
swish of the wind rushing at terrific, unimpeded pace along, was shod by
Odin's own hand, and perhaps owing to the reverence in which his steed
was held, the shoe which it may have cast in its unsurpassed career was
treasured, so horse-shoes to-day are held to bring good fortune to their
finder. These Scandinavians bequeathed to us many a story, and named us
many a name. Day after day as the weeks run round, we have obtruded on
our notice the deities who were worshipped by our sea-loving
forefathers. The Druids gave us the fashion of recording time by nights;
the Scandinavians have named for us the days of the week, and so as we
count the fleeting hours we keep in remembrance our pagan, pirate
progenitors. Sunday may hulk largely as the first of the seven. It is to
us " the quiet hollow scooped out of the windy hill of the week as
George Macdonald calls it; but to the Norsemen Wednesday must have been
all important, for it was named after Odin, commonly called Wodin. The
old spelling is shown in the well- known ballad of Sir Patrick Spens :-
"We hoised our sails on a
Moneday morn,
With all the speed we may;
And we hae landed in Norroway
Upon a Wodnesday."
Wodin's day came shortly
after Sun and Moon days, but between Odin's twenty-four hours and those
sacred to the Queen of Night came Tyr's day. Odin's thunderous son, he
whose strong hammer sent sparks from the cloud, the powerful Thor
follows \Vodin in our calendar, and after him came Freya's day. The last
twenty-four hours of the week were dedicated to Stern. Besides these
names in daily use the Northmen christened many a spot around our
shores. Places easy to them of access became their headquarters. In
winter when, owing to the smallness of their boats, they rested from
their life on the ocean, they settled themselves on islands as being
both secure and convenient, as there were many paths across the sea
whereby to leave if a stronger force came. The Islands of the Hebrides
bear trace of their residence in the names they gave them, for among the
Celtic nomenclature there are many Scandinavian o's and ay's, for
instance, eight Fladdas—i.e., flat isles, three Scalpas—ship's isles,
some Pabavs priest (father) isle, and Raasav—roe isle.
The monasteries and
nunneries which were near to the North Sea fared badly at the hands of
the Scandinavian pirates. Even the Cross did not awe them. King Olaf
Trgyvason, the "beautifullest man ever seen," went over Norway It a
rough harrow of conversion " as Carlyle explained; but the Northmen had
travelled down the ages far from Odin's creed, and along with their
valour and robust strength they were deemed to he in no-wise unmanly,
despite a vein of avarice and cruelty which made them steer towards the
spoils of the Church, and not only men but women and children suffered
from their blades, for such were the ethics of their day. They swept Out
of the Outer Isles much material trace of the mission of St. Columba.
It was round their winter
fire when inactive, owing to the season, that the tales of stirring
deeds were told in these isles to keep green the memory of the men "
great in song craft and hands that loved the oar." The fame of these
heroes descended by word of mouth till collected about the time the
Normans invaded England by Semund the Learned and others, and became
known as the Edda. There is the poetic or Elder Edda full of the
mythological tale of the birth of the world and the adventures of the
gods, which was the golden age of the Northmen, but "the golden age
ceased when gold was invented." The yellow metal became as an apple of
discord among them, and the god-like heroes, seized with a lust for the
acquiring of gold, quarrelled. The Skalds speak of the gold as feminine,
" a worker of evil magic arts she knew and practised. Ever was she the
joy of evil people." From one of these sagas we have an idea of the kind
of life led by these heroes of Asgard. They for ever sailed westward.
"Where shall we go?" asked Odin when he and his kinsmen looked for new
worlds to conquer and settle in. "Southward," he explained, "heat lies,
and northward, night. From the dim east the sun begins his journey
westward home "Westward home," shouted they all, and westward they went.
The name of their great saga, the Heimskringla (the world's circle) was
a true one, conquering from the eastward they circled the globe." They
settled in small, determined bands on our shores and took what they
listed. They were not averse as time went on to turn their swords into
ploughshares, though they were ever readier to handle the former. The
men of the woods and wilds held that the plough was an enemy, and so it
was to a hunting community. In northern lore there is always a hatred to
peace and its civilisation, and the driving away of that spoil which
falls captive to how and spear. The fairy arrows were always directed at
the ploughman to scare him from his work. The Boer to-day resents the
farmer growing crops and cultivating the veldt.
The Norsemen and the
Anglo-Saxon (both sprung from the same stock) came here in the days
before the world was waxen old. They were alike descendants of the
"younger brother" who went out and did. We owe much to them. They
inoculated us with a desire to assume the sceptre of the sea—a nation "
whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the
earth." They laid the foundations of our Parliament. They had for their
conclaves the green mound with its grassy steps for the speakers and
hearers to stand or sit on. Tynwald Hill still hears the Manxman issue
laws in that little kingdom in the centre of the British Isles. The name
of this Thing " wald is in our place names in Scotland. Like the stone
of destiny the lawmakers have journeyed off to the banks of the Thames;
there, enclosed with walls and state, no longer, as in Asgard, with the
"blue dome's measureless content" for a roof tree, they hold their
conclaves.
The Norsemen were no
architects. "The name of the main body of the Gothic church— the nave,
naves or ship of the building—is the inside of a ship turned upside down
and raised on pillars," but this word nave, suggestive of vaulted
aisles, is all their contribution to our architecture. The axe was a
familiar tool in their hands, and they wielded a hammer with the skill
descended from Thor, so they made their houses as they did their ships
of wood, and thatched them with rushes from the lake. Wood did not
withstand the inroads of time. They left no sign of their whilom homes
as did the burrowing Picts with the cunningly-narrow entrance which one
man could guard. The Roman villas with their inlaid floors are laid bare
to-day, but of the Scandinavians' homes we have no trace, though in
their last resting-places we have still with us a trace of their
handiwork. Their "grave goods" dug from the grassy barrows of the
happier dead, where they laid their chief slain after battle, are in our
museums, for they buried their dead with their clothes fastened by
brooches which have survived. On the Fife shores of Tay was a field
called locally the field of the Danes' gold. Digging there lately men of
Victoria's era came on golden ornaments richly wrought in the precious
metal. That same Fife, from its being a peninsula, was a spot overrun by
the piratical Vikings, so it is not astonishing there was found there
recently a man all in shining armour clad, buried in a knowe by the
present roadside. Local folk lore dubbed the mound Norrie's Law. This
armed man of old had struck terror into bygone Fifers with that
self-same sword, and in that kingly suit of armour defied their blows.
When death claimed him, his followers buried him in the silver mail and
he—
"......whose gallant deeds
Haply at many a solemn festival
The skald hath sung,"
with his prized blade
rusted, his bones dust, in the Victorian era was robbed of his
long-preserved grave goods by the folk of Fife.
Though the Scandinavians
left us no cathedrals to show their handiwork, the tales told by their
hearths survive. In the long nights of winter, when anchored on land,
within their wooden homes by their firesides, or at the banqueting
board, skalds sang of their skippers' conquests in the summer, and of
the prowess of the heroes long gone hence. So the history descended to
us—
".....of the sea fight far
away
How it thundered over the tide."
The Norsemen gloried to
hear of the doughty deeds when winter and rough weather held them
captive, and the time soon came when these oral tales of eld were
written down. " A nation's literature is its breath of life, without
which a nation has no existence—is but a congregation of individuals."
The tales of the sea-kings make the heart of this nation still throb.
During the five centuries in which the Northmen were riding over the
waves and conquering wheresoever they landed, the literature of the
people they overcame was locked up in a dead language and within the
walls of monasteries. But the Northmen had a literature of their own,
rude as it was.
Nowadays, with paper so
attainable every child can get a book to scribble in, we forget at the
time when the Normans were going to cross the silver streak and invade
South Britain, that not only was a knowledge of writing needed to
transcribe the sagas, but material on which to write. Parchment was
rare; fair skin, dark skin, and wrinkled skin are names applied by
Torfaeus describing parchment to his correspondent at Copenhagen, and to
get parchment enough to inscribe a chronicle thereon meant money. The
very derivation of the word book carries us back to the time when, as
Collier in the opening page of his English literature describes how,
in"' the depth of some Asiatic forest shadowy with the green fans and
sword blades of the palm tribe, a sinewy savage stood one day long ago
etching with a thorn on the thick fleshed leaf, torn from the luxuriant
shrub wood around him, rude images of the beasts he hunted or the arrows
he shot—the first step was taken towards the making of a book. Countless
have been the onward steps since then, but the old fact that the tree is
the parent of the book still survives in many well-known words. For
example, take the Latin liber and the English book and leaf. Who does
not know that liber means originally the inner bark of a tree. Book is
merely a disguised form of the word beech, into which it easily changes
when we tone down k to ch soft. The word leaf tells its own tale." Even
with centuries of progress it took Torfaus time and money to get his
various complexioned parchments sent to Iceland. It seems to us even
nowadays a faraway spot, and strange that books should have emanated
from there when written deeds were scarce, but we must remember from
bare isles all that was good and cultured came. Iona sent us
Christianity. From Lindisfarne, before its great church on the sandy
islet was reared in stone, the monks made the most beautifully
illuminated Bible, which is still to be seen, though the Priory's
roofless aisles are crumbling. Iceland was formed by a colony of strong,
intelligent men who had emigrated from Norway to avoid some tyrannical
laws of Harold Haarfager's. "New England perhaps and Iceland are the
only modern colonies ever founded on principle and peopled at first from
higher motives than want or gain; and we see at this day a lingering
spark in each of a higher mind than in populations which have set out
from a lower level. The original settlers in Iceland carried with them
whatever there was of civilisation or intelligence in Norway; and for
some generations at least were free from the internal feuds, and always
were free from the external wars and depredations on their coasts which
kept other countries in a state of barbarism." So from the strange,
ice-girt island with its volcanic fires laying it waste, there has been
given us a written chronicle of these tales told in the Sea-kings' hall.
We follow in black and white the deeds of valour done so long ago, and
learn from this parchment history how these Northmen left us not only
the birthright of their blood, but also laws and customs which are ours
to-day, and also bequeathed to us legends and myths telling of the time
when:—
"There dwelt men merry
hearted
In hope exceeding great;
Meeting the good days and the evil
As they came in the way of fate." |
