THREE NORTHERN LOVE STORIES.*
WE advise our readers to lose no time in making themselves acquainted with this volume of Sagas. The period of fresh poetic sensations seems to pass away in early youth for those who study • Three Northes-n Looe-storfes, and other Tales. Translated from the Icelandic. By Eirfkr Magnusson, and William Morris. London: Ellis and White. -
poetry with ardour, and such thrills of delight as they may feel in later days are the more precious because they are so rare. The first reading of the Riad, of Romeo and Juliet, of Paradise Lost, or of Endymion, has made poets out of dreamy, lounging boys, but there comes a time in life when all the great masterpieces have been, not exhausted, for that they can never be, but made no longer startling and intoxicating. We long sometimes for a new-old poem of the first class, a fresh Inferno, an unknown Macbeth, some Fairy Queen from India or Japan. If there are any of our readers so wayward as this, they will have a new delight, a fresh pulse of pleasure from the first story in Mr. Morris's new book. Fine as the other tales are in their various ways, they cannot compare for a moment with this saga of Gunnlaug ; and we leave them here, with the passing remark that they consist of the story of Frithiof the Brave, that of Viglund the Fair, that of Hogin and Hedinn, that of Roi the Fool, and that of Thorstein the Staffsmitten.
The story of Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue is timed at the very point most momentous in Icelandic history. According to a com- putation, made by Mr. G. VigfUssen, and published by him in 1855, the hero was seventeen years of age when the whole face of things was changed by the declaration of national Christianity in the year 1000. It was some sixteen summers before that event that Thorstein, a great man in Iceland, had a dream that a fair swan sat on the ridge of his house-roof, and that an eagle came down from the mountains in the north, and made love to her ; that then another eagle came flying from the south, and fought the last eagle, and they both died ; and that at last, while the swan drooped sadly, a falcon came and took her away into the west. It was expounded to Thorstein that this dream showed that he should have an exceedingly beautiful daughter, for whom two of the greatest of men should fight and fall, and that last of all, a man of less fame should win her to wife. Hearing this, Thorstein deter- mines that if his wife bears him a daughter, the child shall be exposed, and he gives orders to that effect. The good wife, how- ever, takes pity of her child, sends her away to be brought up with her husband's brother's children, and in process of time, Thorstein sees her, is delighted with her beauty, and learning that she is his child, forgets the dream, and takes her home and loves her. Her name is Helga the Fair. Meanwhile, up the firth, at White-water-side, a boy has been growing into manhood who is thus described. Observe that he is the very ideal of our latter- day Preraphaelite poets and painters :—
" It is told of Gunnlaug that he was quick of growth in his early youth, big and strong ; his hair was light red, and very goodly of fashion;. he was dark-eyed, somewhat ugly-nosed, yet of lovesome countenance;. thin of flank he was, and broad nf shoulder, and the best-wrought of men ; his whole mind was very masterful; eager was he from his youth up, and in all wise unsparing, and hardy; he was a great skald, bat somewhat bitter in his rhyming, and therefore was he called Gunnlaug Worm-tongue."
It would not be possible, perhaps, to describe a man in language at once simpler, fuller, and more concise than this. It ought to be the despair of those modern novelists who strive to gain distinctness by heaping up one bizarre epithet after another, till they form a great chaos of fine-writing. This boy early showed all the daring and impudence of a powerful nature, imper- fectly developtd. This imperfection of eharacter is hinted by the grave recital of various mad freaks and ebullitions of self-will. At fifteen, he will go a-viking, but his father asks him if he thinks himself good enough for the out-lands when he can scarcely be shaped to his duty at home. Instead of that, he is sent down to learn lawcraft with Thorstein at Burg. There, in Thorstein's house, would often be seen two young, strong creatures at the chess-playing, red head bowed to golden head, the half-grown Gunnlaug and the shy, maiden Helga. Gradually a tender kind of dumb love springs up between them, and we are told in the most natural, the most affecting way how, little by little, they be- came conscious that without the other each must be desolate and incomplete. Meanwhile, down in the south, in Mossfell, a strong lad and a skald, older than either of these, Raven, was grown to full man's estate, and gone away a-viking. Of him we shall hear again. When Gunnlaug was eighteen, he went home to his father Illugi, but soon got into trouble with his hard fists and sharp tongue, so that Illugi found it good that he too, like all young Icelanders of noble birth, should sow his wild oats on the seas and in southern coast-lands. But before he went, Gunnlaug strode down to Burg and demanded betrothal with Helga. Thorstein, astonished at his sudden demand, refused, but at last was brought to promise that she should wait for him three years, and then ff he came not then, should marry some other man. So Gtmnlang went off to try the rough seas in his grey kirtle and his white long-hose, glad, as all the young Northmen were, to feel the gathering salt-sea breeze hard against his hair and lips, dreaming of Helga when the nights were darkest and the long surf loudest. No sooner had he landed in Norway than his blustering face and shrewd tongue offended Earl Eric, and Gunnlaug must fly for his life. -Now he sails for England, and one autumn-tide came south to London Bridge. Ethelred, son of Edgar, was then ruler in England, and Gunnlaug made a song in his honour, of which only Vie burden still exists :—
" As God are all folk fearing The free lord King of England ; Kin of all kings and all folk me- To Ethelred the head bow."
In reward for this song, the Worm-tongue received the cloak which was the fairest of all things made, a scarlet and gold- broidered cloak, lined with the most precious furs. Gunnlaug has a row in London streets with a great viking who has been bullying Ethelred, and he invites him to duel by kolmgang, and kills him. In the spring, the restless longing comes on him again, and he prays the King that he may go to sea. Doubtfully, grudgingly, with a promise forced that he will come back next autumn, he is oaded with gifts and allowed to go. Then we find him in Ireland at the Court of King Sigtrygg Silky-beard, to whom he sings a song. The Irish monarch has never bad a song made in his honour before, and is anxious to give two war-ships to the poet ; but his treasurer substitutes scarlet and gold. Next to the Court of Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, and then to a wild, strange place called Skarir, up in Sweden, and so on to 1.1psala itself, to the Court of King Olaf the Lap, we follow him through one adventure after another. But in Upsala he meets Raven. At first they are friendly, but an intense rivalry springs up between them about the respective merits of their poems, and as both are not only bards, but hard-handed, turbulent men, there is a riot in King Olaf's Court. It does not, however, actually come to fighting, but they part in savage dudgeon. Raven thereupon went straight back to Iceland, and seeing Helga, fell in love with her, though she heeded not him, and longed only for the return of Gunnlaug, who delayed, and still delayed. Raven must wait, however, till the three years are over. That same summer Gunnlaug, mindful of his oath, went south to Ethelred, but when he would go back home, leave was refused him, for the Danes were in the land, and the King said, "It ill beseems that thou, my man, shouldst go away now, when all bodes such mighty war." At last he got away to Norway, and thence took the last ship that sailed for Iceland before the winter set in. He reached Burg-firth the very Saturday night when Folk sat at the wedding of Helga and Raven, a broken-hearted bride and a bridegroom already doubtful of his happiness ; though he did not ride down to the house of Thorstein, Helga soon heard that he was come back again, and she wept much. Soon she was so hard with her husband that he was scarcely fain of his life, and one day at a feast she and Gunnlaug met. He took her aside, and sang this stave to her :—
Worst reward I owe them, Father thine, 0 wine-may, And mother, that they made thee, So fair beneath thy maid-gear; For thou sweet field of sea-flame, All joy 1ast slain within me. Lot here, take it, loveliest E'er made of lord and lady."
And with that he gave her the cloak, Ethelred's gift ; and SD they parted.
After this the tragedy hurries to its close. Helga no longer feigns to tolerate Raven, and his heart, too, is broken with scorned love and fatal disappointment. So when Gunnlaug challenges him to hohngang before all the people assembled at the Thing, he is glad to go, but at the holm men separate them before they can kill each other. Then one day Gunnlaug and his brother go down to the river, and on the other side are many women, and Helga among them. Gunnlaug swims across, and they take a long and passionate farewell. When they parted, Helga stood and gazed long after Gunnlaug, and he, too, looked back, and sang her a beautiful and melancholy stave, full of despair and desire. And this was their last meeting. But Raven soon came to Gunnlaug, and they agreed to go east to Norway, and there fight till one was dead ; but it was two years before they met ; then at last, on a little promontory between two rivers in Sweden, they came face to face. Gunnlaug slew Raven, but died of his wounds three nights after. At the last, Thorstein married his daughter to a man named
Thorkel, and Helga served him truly, though ever she thought on Gunnlaug in her heart :—
"But Helga's chief joy was to pluck at the threads of that cloak, Gunnlaug's gift; and she would be ever gazing at it. But on a time there came a great sickness to the house of Thorkol and Helga, and many were bedridden for a long time. Helga also fell sick, and yet she could not keep abed. So one Saturday evening Helga sat in the fire-hall, and leaned her head upon her husband's knees, and had the cloak, Gunnlaug's gift, sent for ; and when the cloak came to her she sat up and plucked at it, and gazed thereon awhile, and then sank back upon her husband's bosom and died."
We have given a bare and crude outline of the story, but every one will read it in full in Mr. Morris's exquisitely pure and perfect English. It is one of the finest works of the imagination it has been our lot to light upon for many a day.
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