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STORIES AND
BALLADS OF THE FAR PAST, Nora Kershaw
THE SAGAS
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The following stories are taken from the Fornaldarsögur
Northrlanda, or 'Stories of Ancient Times
relating to the countries of the North'—a collection
of Sagas edited by Rafn in 1829-30 and re-edited by
Valdimar Ásmundarson in 1886-1891. The stories
contained in this collection deal almost exclusively
with times anterior to Harold the Fairhaired
(c. 860-930) and the colonization of Iceland, and
stop therefore where the better know stories
relating to Iceland and the historical kings of
Norway begins. Some of them relate to persons and
events of the ninth century, while others are concerned
with times as remote as the fourth or fifth
centuries. Their historical value is naturally far
inferior to that of the Íslendiga Sögur, or 'Stories
of Icelanders' and the Konunga Sögur, or 'Stories
of the Kings.'
From the literary point of view also the 'Stories
of Ancient Times' are generally much inferior to
the others. The 'Stories of Icelanders' are derived
from oral tradition, which generally goes back in
more or less fixed form to the time at which the
characters in the stories lived, and they give us a
vivid picture of the persons themselves and of the
conditions of life in their time. In the 'Stories of
Ancient Times,' on the other hand, though there
4 THE SAGAS [PT. I]
is some element derived from tradiion, often
apparently of a local character, it is generally very
meagre. More often perhaps the source of the
stories is to be found in poems, notable instances of
which will be found in Hervarar Saga and in
Vösunga Saga. In many cases, however, the stories
without doubt contain a large proportion of purely
fictitious matter.
The texts of the 'Stories of Ancient Times'
which have come down to us date as a rule from the
thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth
centuries, though the actual MSS. themselves are
generally later. Most of the stories, however, were
probably in existence before this time. The Danish
historian Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200) was familiar
with many of them, including the story of Hethin
and Högni and one of the scenes recorded in
Hervarar Saga. And we are told that a story which
seems to have correspoinded, in its main outlines at
least, to the story of Hfromund Greipsson was composed
and recited at a wedding in Iceland in 1119.
But in many cases the materials of our stories were
far earlier than this, though they no doubt underwent
considerable changes before they assumed their
present form.
Indeed many stages in the literary history of the
North are represented in the following translations.
Of these probably the oldest is that section of the
Hervarar Saga which deals with the battle between
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
5
the Goths and the Huns "at Dylgia nad on Dunheith
and upon all the heights of Jösur." The poetry
here included in the saga dates even in its present
form probably from the Viking Age, perhaps from
the tenth century. But the verses themselves do not
appear to be all of the same date. Some of them show
a ceratain elaboration and a sense of conscious art,
while others are comparatively bare and primitive
in type and contain very early features; and there
is every probability that such poetry was ultimately
derived from poetry composed at a time when the
Goths were still remembered. This is not surprising
in view of the fact that stories relating to the Goths
were popular in English and German heroic poetry,
as well as in the heroic lays of the North. Indeed we
know from Jordanes and elsewhere that heroic poetry
was common among the Goths themselves and that
they were wont to celebrate the deeds of their
ancestors in verse sung to the accompaninment of
the harp.
This poem is no doubt much older than the saga.
Originally it would seem to have been complete in
itself; but many verses have porbably been lost.
Thus there can be litle doubt that the prose passages
in chs. XII-XV are often merely a paraphrase of lost
verses, though it must not be assumed that all the
prose in this portion of th e saga originated in such
a way. "It is difficult to tell...where the prose of
156 THE SAGAS [PT. I]
the manuscripts is to be taken as standing in the
place of lost narrative verses, and where it fills a
gap that was never intended to be filled with verse,
but was always left to the reciter to be supplied in
his own way." The difficulty, however, is greater
in some cases than in others. The following picturesque
passage from the opening of ch. 14 of the
Hervarar Saga is a very probable instanc of a
paraphrase of lost verses:
It happened one morning at sunrise that as Hervör was
standing on the summit of a tower over the gate of the
fortress, she looked southwards towards the forest and
couds of dust, arising from a great body of horse, by which
the sun was hidden for a long time. Next she saw a gleam
beneath the dst, as thought she were gazing on a mass of
gold — fair shields overlaid with gold, gilded helmets and
white corslets.
The motif of a chief or his lady standing on the
pinnacle ofa tower of th fort and looking out
overe the surrounding country for an approaching
army is a very common one in ballads. The motif of
the above passage from Hervarar Saga, including the
armour of he foe and the shining shields, occurs in
the opening stanzas of the Danish Ballad De vare
syv og syvsindstyve, which probably dates from the
fourteenth century (though it may possibly be later)
and which derives its material ultimately from old
heroic lays.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
7
To the same period approximately as the poem on
the battle with the Huns belong the two pieces from
the Older Edda contained in the Thátr of Norna-gest. The Reginsmál indeed, of which only about
half is quoted, may be even earlier than the former
(in hte form in which it appears in Hervarar Saga),
while the Hellride of Brynhild can hardly be later
than the early part of the eleventh century.
A second stage in the literary history of the NOrth
is represented by the 'episodic' poems Hjlamar's
Death Song and the Waking of Angantyr, both of
which are attributed to the twelfth century by
Heusler and Ranishch. Unlike the poem on the
battle between the Goths and the Huns, neither of
these forms a story complete in itself. They presuppose
the existennce of a saga in some form or
other, presumably oral, dealing at least with the
fight at Samsø; and the existence of such a saga in
the twelfth century is confirmed by the account of
the same event given by Saxo.
A third stage in the literary development of the
heroic legends is represented by the written sag
itself, which has evidently been formed by the
welding together, with more or less skill as the case
may be, of seversal distinct stories, and of more than
one literary form. A particularly striking instance of
this is to be found in the Hervarar Saga with its
stories of the Heroic and Viking Ages, the poems
8 THE SAGAS [PT. I]
dealing with the fight on Samsø, the primitive
Riddles of Gesstumblindi and the early poem of the
battle between the Goths and Huns. Something of
the same kind has also taken place in the composition
of the Thættir of Nornagest and of Sörli respectively,
though into the former has entered a considerable
element of folk-tale which is introduced with a
certain naïveté and no little skill alongside the old
heroic legends. As has been already mentioned,
these three sagas, like others of the smae type,
appear to have been written down in the late thirteenth
or the early years of the fourteenth century.
On the other hand most if not the whole of the
Saga of Hromund Greipsson appears to have been
composed early in the twelfth century, but we do
not know when it was first written down.
A fourth stage is represented by the Icelandic
Rímur which are for the most part rhyming metrical
versions of the sagas an which date from the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. As an illustration of
this stage I have translated a few stanzas from the
Gríplur, a Ríma based on an aearly from of the
story of Hromund Greipsson. The Rímur are,
so far as we can judge, somewhat wearisome paraphrases
of the prose stories, and while the metre and
dictiona are elaborate in the extreme, the treatment of
the story is often mechanical and puerile. Comparatively
few of the Rímur have as yet been pulbished,
and hte Gríplur is the only one known to me which
is primarily concerned with any of ht sagas contained
in this volume.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
9
The ballads, both Faroese and Danish, belong to
a fifth stage in the life of heroic legend in the North;
but their origin and history is by no means so clear
as that of the Rímur, and it is at present impossible
to assign even approximate dates to more than a
few of them with any degree of certainty. I have
touch on this question at somewhat greater length
below; and I would only add here that some Danish
and Swedish ballads, e.g. Ung Sveidal, Thord af Haffsgaard, and perhaps Her Aage, appear to be
derived more or less directly from poems of the
Viking Age, such as Fjölsvinsmál, Thrymskvitha and
Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I—without any intermediate
prose stage.
A careful study of the Faroese ballads as aw whole
might enable one to determine something more of
the relation of ballads to 'Literature' and of the
various ballad forms to one another, such as that of
the short and simple Ballad of Hjalmar and Angantyr
to the longer and more complicated Ballad of Arngrims
Sons. Simplification and confusion are among
the chief characteristics of popular poetry; but it is
10 THE SAGAS [PT. I]
to be noted that in the case of the Hervarar Saga
confusion set in long before the days of the ballad—
as early as the saga itself, where there must surely be
at least one case of repititiono of character. In reality,
considering through how many stages the ballad
material has passed, one is amazed at the vitality of
the stories and the amount of original groundwork
presered. A careful comparison of the Völsunga Saga
and the Faroese cycle of ballads generally classed
together as Sjúrðar Kvæði—which, be it observed,
were never written down at all till the nineteenth
century—brings out to a degree literally amazing the
conservatism of the ballads on the old heroic themes.
Readers who desire to make further acquaintance
with the 'Stories of Ancient Times' as a whole will
find a further account of the subject in Professor
Craigie's Icelandic Sagas (p. 92 ff). More detailed
accounts will be found in Finnur Jónsson's Oldnorske
og Oldislandske Litteraturs Historie, Vol., II,
pp. 789-847, and in Mogk's Geschichte der Altnordischen
Literatur in Paul's Grundriss der Germanischen
Philologie, Ed. II, 1904, Vol. II, pp. 830-
857, while a discussion of the heroic stories will be
found in Professor Chadwick's Heroic Age, chs. I-VIII.
For a full bibliography of the texts, translations,
and general literature dealing with the Fornaldarsögur
collectively, see the annual Islandica, Vol. V,
pp. 1-9, compiled by Haldór Hermannsson and
issued by the Conrnell University Library, 1912.
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