Bragi, &c. , of this school, which closes with the Sun-Song, a powerful Christian Dantesque poem, recalling some of the early compositions of the Irish Church, and with the 12th century Lay of Ragnar, Lay of Starkad, The Proverb Song (Havamal), and Krakumal, to which we may add those singular Gloss-poems, the Thulur, which also belong to the Western Isles.
Poetry of Greenland. To Greenland, Iceland's farthest colony, founded in the 10th century, we owe the two Lays of Atli, and probably Hymiskviða, which, though, as was to be expected, of a weirder harsher cast, yet belong to the Western Isles school and not to Iceland. In form all these poems belong to two or three classes:—kviða, an epic “cantilena”; tal, a genealogical poem; drapa, songs of praise, &c., written in modifications of the old Teutonic metre which we know in Beowulf; galdr and lokkr, spell and charm songs in a more lyric measure; and mal, a dialogue poem, and liod, a lay, in elegiac measure suited to the subject.
The characteristics of this Western school are no doubt the result of the contact of Scandinavian colonists of the viking-tide, living lives of the wildest adventure, tossed by war and storm, with an imaginative and civilized race, that exercised upon them a very strong and lasting influence (the effects of which were also felt in Iceland, but in a different way). The frequent intermarriages which mingled the best families of either race are sufficient proof of the close communion of Northmen and Celts in the 9th and 10th centuries, while there are in the poems themselves traces of Celtic mythology, language, and manners.[1]
Poetry of the commonwealth. When one turns to the early poetry of the Scandinavian continent, preserved in the rune-staves on the memorial stones of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, in the didactic Havamal, the Great Wolsung Lay (i.e., Sigurd II., Fafnis's Lay, Sigrdrifa's Lay), and Hamdismal, all continental, and all entirely consonant to the remains of our own Old English poetry in metre, feeling, and treatment, one can see that it is with this school that the Icelandic “makers” are in sympathy, and that from it their verse naturally descends. The only difference between them is that, while the fundamental characteristics of shrewdness, plain straightforwardness, and a certain stern way of looking at life are common to both, the Icelandic school adds a complexity of structure and ornament, an elaborate mythological and enigmatical phraseology, and a regularity of rhyme, assonance, luxuriance, quantity, and syllabification, which it caught up from the Latin and Celtic poets, and adapted with exquisite ingenuity to its own main object, that of securing the greatest possible beauty of sound.
The first generations of Icelandic poets were very remarkable men, and resemble in many ways the later troubadours; the books of the kings and the sagas are full of their strange lives. Men of good birth (nearly always, too, of Celtic blood on one side at least), they leave Iceland young and attach themselves to the kings and earls of the north, living in their courts as their henchmen, sharing their adventures in weal and woe, praising their victories, and hymning their deaths if they did not fall by their sides—men of quick passion, unhappy in their loves, jealous of rival poets and of their own fame, ever ready to answer criticism with a satire or with a sword-thrust, but clinging through all to their art, in which they attained most marvellous skill.
Such men were Egill, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and the friend of Æthelstan; Kormak, the hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Hakon's poet, called Skaldspoiler, because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer Eiriks-mal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Æthelred's court, and fell at the hands of a brother bard Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet, who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's henchman, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod, Coalbrow's poet, who died singing after Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar the Black, Arnor the earls' poet, and, of those whose poetry was almost confined to Iceland, Gretti, Biorn the Hitdale champion, and the two model Icelandic masters, Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman, both of the 12th century.
It is impossible to do more here than mention the names of the most famous of the long roll of poets which are noted in the works of Snorri and in the two Skalda-tal. It is evident that they must differ greatly in style and tone, as they range from the rough and noble pathos of Egill, the mystic obscurity of Kormak, the pride and grief of Hallfred, and the marvellous fluency of Sighvat, to the florid intricacy of Einar and Markus.
The art of poetry, which stood to the Icelanders in lieu of music, was, and is still, much cultivated in the island; scarcely any prominent man but knew how to turn a mocking or laudatory stanza, and down to the fall of the commonwealth the accomplishment was in high request. In the literary age the chief poets belong to the great Sturlung family, Snorri and his two nephews, Sturla and Olaf, the White Poet, being the most famous “makers” of their day. Indeed, it is in Snorri's Edda, a poetic grammar of a very perfect kind, that the best examples of the whole of northern poetry are to be found. The last part, Hattatal, a treatise on metre, was written for Earl Skuli about 1222, in imitation of Earl Rognvald and Hall s Haltalykill (Clavis metrica), of 1150. The second part, Skaldskapar-mal, a gradus of synonyms and epithets, which contains over 240 quotations from 65 poets, and 10 anonymous lays—a treasury of verse—was composed c. 1230. The first part, an exquisite sketch of northern mythology, Gylfa-ginning, was probably prefixed to the whole later.[2] There is some of Sturla's poetry in his Islendinga Saga, and verses of Snorri occur in the Grammatical Treatise on figures of speech, &c., of Olaf, which contains about one hundred and forty quotations from various authors, and was written about 1250.
Besides those sources, the Kings' Lives of Snorri and later authors contain a great deal of verse by Icelandic poets. King Harold Sigurdsson, who fell at Stamford Bridge 1066, was both a good critic and composed himself. Many tales are told of him and his poet visitors and henchmen. The Icelandic sagas also comprise much verse which is partly genuine, partly the work of the 12th and 13th century editors. Thus there are genuine pieces in Nial's Saga (chaps. 34, 78, 103, 126, 146), in Eyrbyggia, Laxdæla, Egil's Saga (part only), Grettla (two and a half stanzas, cf. Landnamabek), Biorn's Saga, Gunnlaug's Saga, Havard's Saga, Kormak's Saga, Viga-Glum's Saga, Erik the Red's Saga, and Fostbrældra Saga. In Nial's, Gisli's, and Droplaug's Sons' Sagas there is good verse of a later poet, and in many sagas worthless rubbish foisted in as ornamental wherever there was a chance of doing so.
To these may be added two or three works of a semi-literary kind, composed by learned men, not by heroes and warriors. Such are Konunga-tal, Hugsvinnsmal (a paraphrase of Cato's Distichs), Merlin's Prophecy (paraphrased from Geoffrey of Monmouth by Gunnlaug the monk), Jomsvikinga-drapa (by Bishop Ketil), and the Islendinga-drapa, which has preserved brief notices of several lost sagas concerning Icelandic worthies, with which Gudmundar-drapa, though of the 14th century, may be also placed.
Mediæval poetry. Just as the change of law gave the death-blow to an already perishing commonwealth, so the rush of mediæval influence, which followed the union with Norway, merely completed a process which had been in force since the end of the 11th century, when it overthrew the old Icelandic poetry in favour of the Rimur.
The introduction of the Danz, ballads (or fornkvædi as they are now called) for singing, with a burden, usually relating to a love-tale, which were immensely popular with the people and performed by whole companies at weddings, yule feasts, and the like, had relegated the regular Icelandic poetry to more serious events or to the more cultivated of the chiefs. But these “jigs,” as the Elizabethans would have called them, dissatisfied the popular ear in one way: they were, like our own old ballads, which they closely resembled, in rhyme, but void of alliteration, and accordingly they were modified and replaced by the “Rimur,” the staple literary product of the 15th century. These were rhymed but also alliterative, in regular form, with prologue or mansong (often the prettiest part of the whole), main portion telling the tale (mostly derived in early days from the French romances of the Carlovingian, Arthurian, or Alexandrian cycles, or from the mythic or skrök-sögur), and epilogue. Their chief value to us lies in their having preserved versions of several French poems now lost, and in their evidence as to the feelings and bent of Icelanders in the “Dark Age” of the island's history. The ring and melody which they all possess is their chief beauty.
Of the earliest, Olafsrima, by Einar Gilsson (c. 1350), and the best, the Aristophanic Skida-rima (c. 1430), by Einar Fostri, the names may be given. Eimur on sacred subjects was called “Diktur”; of these, on the legends of the saints' lives, many remain. The most notable of its class is the Lilia of Eystein Asgrimsson, a monk of Holyfell (c. 1350), a most “sweet sounding song.” Later the poems of the famous John Arason, last Catholic bishop of Holar (c. 1530), Liomr (“Gleam”) and Píslargrátr (“Passion-tears”), deserve mention.
Taste has sunk since the old days; but still this Rimur poetry is popular and genuine, and in such hard and evil days as came upon Iceland after the fall of the old houses had destroyed such traditional history and civilization as had fostered the saga, it is perhaps rather a wonder that the torch was still alight than that its glimmer was feeble and smoky. Moreover, the very prosaic and artificial verse of Sturla and the last of the old school certainly deserved the oblivion which came over them, as a casual perusal of the stanzas scattered through Islendinga will surely prove. It is interesting to notice that a certain number of kenningar (poetical paraphrases) have survived from the old school even to the present day, though the mass of them have happily perished. The change in the phonesis
- ↑ Many of these poems were Englished in prose by the translator of Mallet, by B. Thorpe in his Sœmund's Edda, and two or three by Messrs Morris and Magnussen, as appendices to their translation of Volsunga Saga. Earlier translations in verse are those in Dryden's Miscellany (vol. vi.), A. Cottle's Edda, Mathias's Translations, and W. Herbert's Old Icelandic Poetry. Gray's versions of Darradar-liod and Vegtamskvida are well known.
- ↑ This prose Edda (from which the Eddic Lays got their name) has been partly turned into English by Sir G. W. Dasent, by the translator of Mallet, and by Mr Anderson, and will be found treated of more at length under Edda. Mallet's Northern Mythology, a book which first drew Englishmen's attention to the religious ideas of their forefathers, is not to be depended on in any way, belonging, as it does, to the pre-scientific age. Bunsen's speculations at a later date are entirely fanciful and visionary.
