Northern Antiquities/Chapter 13

by Paul Henri Mallet

CHAPTER XIII.

Sequel of the customs, arts and Sciences of the ancient Scandinavians.

THE arts which are necessary to the convenience of life, are but indifferently cultivated among a people, who neglect the more pleasing and refined ones. The Scandinavians held them all equally in contempt: What little attention they bestowed on any, was chiefly on such as were subservient to their darling passion. This contempt for the arts, which mens’ desire of justifying their own sloth inspires, received additional strength from their sanguinary religion, from their extravagant fondness for liberty, which could not brook a long confinement in the same place, and especially from their rough, fiery and quarrelsome temper, which taught them to place all the happiness and glory of man in being able to brave his equals and to repel insults.

As long as this inclination had its full sway among a people, who were perpetually migrating from one forest to another, and entirely maintained from the produce of their flocks and herds, they never thought of cultivating the soil. In the time of Tacitus, the Germans were little used to agriculture. “They cultivate,” says that historian, “sometimes one part of the country, and sometimes another; and then make a new division of the lands. They will much easier be persuaded to attack and reap wounds from an enemy, than to till the ground and wait the produce. They consider it as an indication of effeminacy and want of courage to gain by the sweat of their brow, what they may acquire at the price of their blood^[1].” This prejudice gradually wore out, and they applied themselves more to agriculture. The great consumption of grain in a country, where the principal part of their food and their ordinary liquor was chiefly made of nothing else, could not but produce this effect. In the ninth and tenth centuries we see the free-men, the nobility and the men of great property, directing the operations of husbandry themselves^[2]. At length Christianity Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/426 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/427 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/428 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/429 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/430 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/431 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/432 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/433 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/434 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/435 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/436 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/437 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/438 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/439 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/440 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/441 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/442 We have hitherto only proposed doubts: Let us now see if we can ascertain some truths. The Roman history tells us, that under the reign of the emperor Valens, Ulphilas^[3], bishop of those Goths who were settled in Moesia and Thrace, translated the Bible into the Gothic language. But we know from other authorities, that the character in which this version was written, was either Runic, or one nearly resembling it. Several authors say, that Ulphilas invented it; but is it probable that any man should form a new alphabet for a nation which had one already? If the Goths of Mœsia and Thrace had not before his time had any knowledge of letters, would it not have been better to have taught them the use of the Greek character, already understood? Befides, Ulphilas neither wrote the Gospels on wood nor on stone, but on parchment; he would not therefore be under the necessity of disfiguring the alphabet of other nations for the sake of strait lines, which it is alledged gave birth to the Runic Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/446 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/447 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/448 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/449 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/450 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/451 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/452 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/453 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/454 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/455 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/456 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/457 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/458 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/459 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/460 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/461 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/462 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/463 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/464 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/465 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/466 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/467 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/468 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/469 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/470 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/471 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/472 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/473 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/474 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/475 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/476 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/477 It is not easy to discover wherein consisted the mechanism and harmony of those ancient verses which were not in rhime. The learned who have made the northern languages their study, fancy they discover in some of them the Saphic measure, which many Greek lyric poets and Horace in Latin so frequently chose^[4]. In others the poet seems to have tied himself up to begin the two first lines of each strophe with the same letters, and to confine his verse within six syllables. Others think they observe that the initial letters of the lines correspond in many different respects, either in the fame or in different strophees. The most skilful investigators of this subject assure us, that the poets perpetually invented new measures, and reckon up one hundred and thirty-six kinds^[5]. The explication of them we must leave to the assiduity of those who have reckoned them up.

This taste for the abstruse and complicated, could not fail of running them into allegories and enigmas of every kind: We often meet with princes and great warriors in the ancient chronicles, proposing riddles and affixing penalties on such as could not unravel them. In the first interview king Regner had with the beautiful shepherdess before mentioned, he tried by enigmas to discover whether her wit was answerable to her beauty. Another king, named Eric, rendered himself famous for being able to give immediate answers to thirty riddles, which Odin himself had come to propose to him, having assumed the appearance of one Gest, a man extremely well versed in this art. These are still extant in an old Icelandic romance^[6]. But excepting some few, which are tolerably ingenious, they are either totally unintelligible, or built on verbal equivocations. The poets were not limited to this kind only. There is mention made from the earliest ages of Logogryphs^[7], and other still more trifling species of wit, for which we happily want even names. Some of them must have cost much labour, and all imply such an acuteness and patience in the inventors, as would hardly be expected from a nation of warriors.

In regard to the old poems, all that is most needful to be known about them, is the peculiar genius, manner and taste that runs through them. Some of them present us with the faithful and genuine mode of thinking of those times, but they are often difficult to understand, and still more to translate. Nevertheless, to satisfy the curiosity of those readers who like to view the original manners and spirit of a people, I have endeavoured to translate such fragments of ancient northern poetry as would best answer this purpose. These translations, together with a few explanatory notes, will be thrown to the end by way of sequel, and as affording vouchers to this little work.

1. Tac. Germ. c. 14, &c.
2. Vid. Arng. Jon. Crymog. lib. i. p. 52.
3. In the year 369. Vid. Socrat. Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. and Sozomen. lib. vi. 36.

   In the following account of Ulphilas and the Gothic letters, our ingenious author has committed several mistakes; occasioned by his too closely following Wormius in his Literatur. Run. not considering that since the time of Wormius some very important discoveries have been made, and great light thrown upon this subject.

   When Wormius wrote, the translation of Ulphilas was supposed to be irrecoverably lost, and therefore Wormius having nothing to guide him but conjecture, supposed the Runic character and that of Ulphilas to be the same. ——— But some years after, there was found in the abbey of Werden in Westphalia, a very curious fragment of what is believed to have been the identical version of Ulphilas; written in the language of the Mœso-Goths, and exhibiting the characters which that prelate made use of: These are so very remote from the Runic, that we may now safely allow the Gothic bishop the honour of their invention, without in the least derogating from the antiquity of the Runic letters. This fragment is now preserved in the library at Upsal in Sweden, and is famous among all the northern literati, under the name of the Codex argenteus, or Silver Book: for which reason a short account of it may not be unacceptable.

   The Codex argenteus contains at present only the four Gospels, though somewhat mutilated; and is believed to be a relic of the Gothic Bible, all or the greater part of which Ulphilas had translated. The leaves are of vellum of a violet colour; all the letters are of silver, except the initials, which are of gold. These letters (which are all capitals) appear not to have been written with the pen, but stamped or imprinted on the vellum with hot metal types, in the same manner as the book-binders at present letter the backs of books. This copy is judged to be near as ancient as the time of Ulphilas, or at least not later than a century or two after; yet so near was the copyist to the discovery of printing, that if he had but thought of combining three or four of these letters together he must have hit upon that admirable invention; whereas he only imprinted each letter singly. ——— This curious fragment has been several times printed in 4to, first by Junius in 1665; and lately in a very elegant manner at Oxford by the learned Mr. Lye in 1750. —Another fragment of this curious version (containing part of the Epistle to the Romans) has been since discovered in the library at Wolfenbottle, and was published a few years ago in a very splendid volume in 4to by the Rev. F. A. Knitell, archdeacon of Wolfenbottle.

   It must not be concealed that Mr. Michaelis and one or two other learned men have opposed the current opinion, that the Silver Book contains part of Ulphilas’s Gothic version; and have offered arguments to prove that it is rather a venerable fragment of some very ancient Fancic Bible but they have been confuted by M. Knitell and others; and the Gothic claim has been further confirmed by a curious relic of the same language lately discovered in Italy, plainly written by one of the same Goths, being evidently of their time. The explanation of this we owe to the reverend Mr. Lye: See his Notes on the Gothic Gospels, &c.

   To conclude; The letters used in the Gothic Gospels, being 25 in number, are formed with slight variations from the capitals of the Greek and Latin alphabet, and are extremely different from the Runic. The invention of them may therefore be very safely attributed to Bp. Ulphilas (as the ancients expressly assert); who might not chuse to employ in so sacred a work as the translation of the Bible, the Runic characters, which the Goths had rendered infamous by their superstitious use of them. T.

4. Dalin. Suea. Rik. Hist. lib. viii. ——— [This resemblance to the Sapphic meafure, will I am afraid be found only imaginary. It may with with more certainty be affirmed that the vast variety of metre used by the ancient Scalds may chiefly, if not altogether be reduced to different kinds of Alliteration. In Wormius we have an exact analysis of one of these sorts of metre in which it was requisite that the stanza or strophe should consist of four distichs, and each verse of six syllables. In each distich three words at least were required to begin with the same letters, (that is, two words in one verse, and one in the other), that there should besides this be two correspondent syllables in each verse, and that none of the correspondences ought immediately to follow each other; &c. as in the following Latin couplet:
   ChrisTus Caput noSTrum
    CorONet te bONis.
   
   

   This appears to us at present, to be only a very laborious way of trifling; however we ought not to decide too hastily: every language has its own peculiar laws of harmony; and as the ancient Greeks and Romans formed their metre of certain artful distributions of their long and short syllables: so the northern Scalds placed the structure of theirs in the studied repetition and adaptation of the vowels and consonants. ——— The same mode of versification was admired by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and hath not wholly been laid aside much more than two centuries among our English poets; see “Reliques of ancient Engl. poetry,” Vol. II. p. 260. ——— It may not be amiss to add, that the metre of the Welsh bards is altogether of the alliterative kind, and full as artificial as that of the ancient Scandinavians: Yet those who thoroughly understand that language, assert that this kind of metre is extremely pleasing to the ear, and does not subject the poet to more restraint than the different sorts of feet did the Greek and Roman poets.

   Perhaps it will not be difficult to find the difference between the metre of the ancient Classics, and that of the Gothic and Celtic bards, in the different genius of their respective languages. The Greek and Latin tongues chiefly consisted of polysyllables, of words ending with vowels, and not overburdened with consonants: their poets therefore (if they would produce harmony) could not but make their metre to consist in quantity, or the artful disposal of the long and short syllables; whereas the old Celtic and Teutonic languages being chiefly composed of monosyllables, could have had hardly any such thing as quantity, and on the other hand abounding in harsh consonants, the first effort of their bards to reduce it to harmony must have been by placing these consonants at such distances from each other, so intermixing them with vowels, and so artfully interweaving, repeating and dividing these several founds, as to produce an agreeable effect from their structure. T.

5. Worm. App. Litt. Run. p. 165. rec. edit.
6. Vid. Hervarer Saga. c. xv.
7. A Logogryph is a kind of enigma, which consists of taking, in different senses, the different parts of the same word. See instances of this species of false wit in Ol. Wormii Literat. Runic. p. 183, 185, &c. T.