Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1936, Blaðsíða 15

period was largely a public courage. It was based upon loyalty
to the Polis or Urbs Roma. It was the thought of Sparta which
kept Leonidas and his three hundred faithful to the last at
Thermopylae. If they stood firm “Sparta’s fair fame was not
blotted from the earth.” The Roman Regulus returned to the
face of the Carthaginian torture lest the dread thought prove
true—‘O magna Carthago, probrosis altior Italiae ruinis!’ In
contrast to this spirit of patriotism the Norse courage was
personal, and was closely linked with the personal relation-
ships.
Again, the Greek valour portrayed in the Homeric poems is
definitely of a more feminine type than the Norse. No Norse
warrior would ever have cried aloud, “Ah me!”—he would
have scorned such an exhibition of weakness. Nor did he look
for the miraculous intervention of some god to rescue his
human favourite from the onset of dark death. We read in
the Iliad (21 136, 137) that, on the approach of Achilles, “a
trembling seized Hector as he -was aware of him, nor endured
he to abide in his place, but left the gates behind him and
fled in fear.” No Viking would have so behaved. However
overwhelming the odds he would have stood his ground, at once
blithe and grim to the end. The wild North Sea grew a
harder breed of men than the smiling Mediterranean.
But it is high time for us to cull from the Sagas a few
instances of this Norse courage, at once so strong and so
beautiful; so personal, and so closely knit up with personal
relationships. In a rich garden we may only pick some of
the fairest flow’ers.
The Laxdsela Saga reaches one of its culminating points
in the narrative of the death of Kjartan. This warrior wras
one of the lovers of Gudrun, and his love was returned. But
his foster-brother, Bolli, had by a trick robbed him of his
bride. Gudrun is now Bolli’s wife, and cannot endure the
humiliations brought upon her husband by the man she loves.
She instigates Bolli to set an ambush for Kjartan. Kjartan
disposes of the others in the fight and at last stands alone in
the presence of Bolli. With the words “It seems to me much
better to get my death at your hand, kinsman, than to slay
you,” the hero casts away his weapons, and unarmed and
unresisting, receives the death-blow from the man who has
already stolen awTay the woman of his heart. Quixotic? Pos-
sibly, but superbly grand!
The Saga of Grettir the Strong records a magnificent
instance of the devotion of a younger brother. Grettir, the
Icelandic Hercules, long an outlaw, makes his last stand on
Drangey, the islet in the Arctic Ocean. He is accompanied
by his younger brother, Illugi, and a thrall. By this man’s
negligence the foe scale the steep rock-cliff and falling upon
the sick Grettir, slay him. Illugi had put up a magnificent
13