Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.10.2018, Page 12

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12 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • October 15 2018
If he promised Hákon, king of Norway, to bring Iceland
under his dominion, he did so to obviate an armed
invasion from Norway. In any event, he never did
anything to implement that promise and the enraged
king regarded him as a troth-breaker and it was at the
king’s instigation that Snorri was slain by his own son-
in-law, on the 23rd day of September, 1241.
It can be said that Snorri Sturluson possessed the
complex personality that characterizes so many other
great men in history. In one respect his greatness is
without any qualification; as an author and historian he
occupies deservedly a seat in the international hall of
fame.
Some great writers of other lands are little read even
by their own countrymen, but one may venture to say
that there is hardly an Icelander of average intelligence
and education, who does not have some knowledge
of the Edda or the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson.
Furthermore, there is not an educated Scandinavian
who has not made himself acquainted with his writings,
nor a historical scholar in all Europe who has not felt the
need of familiarizing himself with his books.
This is partly due to the fact that he furnishes a source
of information nowhere else to be found. At first sight
some of his deductions may seem purely imaginary or
even fantastic. Yet after a more thorough investigation
they prove to be generally sound. Such, for instance,
is his account of Woden, the supreme god of the early
Scandinavian tribes. Snorri affirms that he was originally
a warrior king who led his people out of Asia through
Europe to Scandinavia. Historians now assert that the
infant home of the Teutons was in some of the eastern
countries, near the Black Sea. In support of this theory
they point to similarities of Sanskrit and Old Norse. To cite
some examples: the Sanskrit word for deity is devas and
Snorri uses practically the same name for the councillors
at the court of Woden, and tells us that those diars later
became the guardian gods of the Norsemen, then again
the word daughter is taughter in Sanskrit and apparently
related to the old Icelandic verb toga and was applied to
the daughter because she was the milkmaid of the family.
Significant too is the word samsora in Sanskrit; it means
“to join together” and is used in old Hindu sacred books
to signify the joining of the body and soul. The Icelandic
form of the same verb is sameina or samsama.
How Snorri Sturluson, writing in distant Iceland
in the early thirteenth century, came to this knowledge
long before modern historical research shed light on the
dusky pathways of bygone centuries will forever remain
a deep mystery. Since Snorri has been thus corroborated,
men instinctively feel added confidence in his historical
insight and knowledge.
As has been said before, for historians wishing
to investigate the early history of the Nordic nations,
particularly that of Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
Ireland, England, Germany, and to a lesser extent, of
the Baltic states, and France and Russia, his writings
are an important and sometimes the main sources of
knowledge about their ancient lore.
Where else can one find, for example, as accurate
a description of the pagan temple worship of the early
Teutons? Where else, for that matter, can their descendants
be enlightened as to the religion of the forefathers? Tacitus,
the Roman historian, affords, it is true, a few sketches of
the lives of the south-Germanic tribes. Caesar’s De Bello
Gallico also gives a few glimpses; the venerable Bede
left valuable though fragmentary accounts from the early
centuries in the British Isles; Adam of Bremen wrote
quite extensively about the Saxons, and Saxo the Dane
composed some tales, in Latin, from the lives of the old
Danish kings. While the writings of these famous authors
are of the greatest consequence, none of them depict the
Heroic Age as accurately and colorfully as the author of
the Younger Edda and the Heimskringla.
The Younger Edda, sometimes called Snorri’s Edda,
contains the author’s brilliant exposition of Nordic
mythology. It commences with a preface in which Snorri
rationalizes the old Teutonic religion in two analytical
sections of unusual clarity. In the former of these Snorri
says this in effect:
“God grants to all nations and races reasoning power
so they could understand the things they see on the earth
and in the heavens. They observed and wondered that the
earth, the animals and the birds have the same attributes
though dissimilar in many ways. They noticed that if,
in the high hills, the ground was dug, water would be
as easily reached there as in the deep dales. Similarly it
is true of animals and the birds that their blood flows as
readily from their heads as from their feet. It is also the
nature of the earth to produce each year grass and flowers
and the same year they wither and fall. So too, the birds
and the animals grow every year a new coat of hair and
feathers and in the same year shed them again. From this
they reasoned that the earth was not merely alive itself but
the mother of all life. Every form of life springs from the
generative lap of this mother earth, and this living earth
they personified in the dual-sexed giant Ymir, to whom
they traced their genealogy.”
Another instance of this rationalization is found in
the same paragraph; it is equally logical and lucid. To
paraphrase Snorri again: “Our forebears had it from their
forefathers that the course of the heavenly bodies had
always been the same, yet uneven in length, inasmuch
as some had a shorter path to run than others. From this
they reasoned that someone would be the ruler of the
world, who designed the courses of the stars, the sun and
the moon; and since he laid the path for the heavenly
bodies he had been before the world was made, and since
he ruled the distant stars he would also be the ruler of
this earth and the giver of winter and summer, rain and
sunshine, and life. They knew that he is mighty, but
where his throne might stand they did not know.”
The origin of the worship of Woden he explains in
Heimskringla as follows: “Woden was a wise ruler and
a mighty warrior. It was his custom when sending his
warriors into battle to place his hands upon their heads
and give them his benediction. It became the habit of
Woden’s men to utter his name whenever they met with
exceptional danger or difficulties.”
Snorri Sturluson was a Christian, but it did not
hinder him from writing objectively and rationally
about the religion of his forefathers; and to explain with
clear logic and unbiased judgment the origin of their
beliefs. This he was able to do because he was cold and
calculating and devoid of deep religious fervour, but
above all because he was a keen and a clear thinker,
endowed with a penetrating insight into the sequence
and gradual development of events.
This trait of Snorri’s is even more evident in his
second great work entitled Heimskringla, which literally
means the Round Earth or the Globe. It is the most
frequently translated book in the language. It tells the
story of the Norwegians and all their wars and their many
Viking expeditions to foreign lands. As nearly all ancient
literature is a mixture of facts and fables, Snorri could
not altogether escape this fault inasmuch as he retells the
tales as he received them. But he, more than any other
ancient author, subordinates the fables and tries to find
for them, whenever possible, a rational explanation. He
is primarily the well-balanced rationalist. Traditions he
has to use, but out of them he weaves a unified pattern
of history, made continuous by the principle of cause
and effect. This enhances immensely the value of his
historical work. His presentation is always calm, clear
and unbiased. He does not glorify the heroes unduly,
nor does he make demigods of them, they are always
intensely human, even in the moments of their greatest
triumphs. Even the scoundrels in his writings have almost
always some redeeming features; they too are human,
being neither imps nor half-devils. His characters are
consistently true to life and his stories plausible.
It could perhaps be said that Snorri, and the other
authors of Icelandic sagas, were the first medieval
writers to emphasize individuality in the unfolding
drama of human history. That is why Snorri’s books
read like thrilling modern fiction.
A great man is never self-made; he is the best and the
finest product of his breeding and his cultural heritage.
He is the one who has the diligence, the ambition and
ability to use his inheritance to the greatest advantage;
he is like a prism that breaks the composite of his ethnic
culture into the splendor of the spectrum.
But who enriched Snorri with superior knowledge
and endowed him with artistic skill? His people; the
scholars that lived with him and anterior to him; the
bards who sang the themes of the sagas into the soul of
the nation; and the storytellers who dramatized tales for
oral entertainment at every Icelandic public gathering
down through all the bookless years. Moreover, there
were men before him who wrote historical works of
great intrinsic value.
As has been noted before, Snorri was the foster-son
of Jón Loftsson of Oddi, and he was the grandson of
Sæmundur the Learned, who had in his youth studied at
the Sorbonne, the famous university of Paris. Sæmundur
wrote his historical books in Latin; though these are now
all lost, they are frequently referred to by ancient scholars.
To these books Snorri had easy access; indeed, long after
the days of Sæmundur, the manor house of Oddi was the
most renowned site of book-lore in the land.
Other monks and priests wrote also, in Latin, books
of merit in those days. In these literary productions
two ethnic cultures, the Roman and the Norse, blended
to bring forth a national literature that forever will
be the glory of Iceland. One feels that in general the
Latin influence in the old saga literature is greatly
underestimated. From classical authors Snorri may have
acquired his marvellous economy of diction, though it
must be confessed that such stylistic excellence is to be
found in many writers of medieval times, among whom
the compiler of Sæmundar Edda must be named.
Back of these established writers stood a host of
unlettered bards and storytellers. The poets rhymed the
ancient folktales so they would not be forgotten but be
carried from generation to generation in the original form.
Most of all, perhaps, Snorri owes a debt to the storytellers
who recited, at Alþingi and at the district courts, the
stories of heroes and their exploits in strange and distant
lands. The truly marvellous geographical knowledge of
Snorri Sturluson was, no doubt, derived from this source.
He may likewise have learned from the old
storytellers to make his narratives vivid, colorful, and
realistic. These qualities of his art Snorri manifests
abundantly in his books.
With these writings Snorri established the norm for
Icelandic prose. From no other literary man of any era
could an Icelander, aspiring to authorship, learn more
even now. Snorri’s guiding hand still directs the most
facile pens in Iceland and wherever our native tongue
is used with any degree of skill. It is not that modern
Icelandic authors imitate him slavishly. That would
indeed be impossible, for the language, like every other
thing, has been modified too much for that. It would
furthermore lead to a stereotyped imitation and would
put present-day writers into an intellectual straightjacket
and crush every spark of individualistic inspiration
within them. He was their mentor, not their jailer.
Snorri was also a great student of Old Icelandic
poetry. Moreover he composed poetry with skill. Yet
he will never be ranked among the greatest Icelandic
bards. He was perhaps too much preoccupied with the
outward forms of poetry to allow his imagination to soar
in poetic frenzy, which often arouses in human hearts
the deepest emotions. His sense of rhythm, however,
influenced his prose. He is never the toneless teller of
tales; there is an undertone of rhythmic cadence, which
lends a peculiar charm to his diction in almost every
sentence that he wrote.
Without Snorri as its inspiration and example, the
early Icelandic literature could hardly have come to
its full fruitage and, without that literature, it is well
to remember, Iceland would be culturally a country
insignificant indeed.
Rev. Halldór E. Johnson was born in 1884 at Sólheimar
in Blönduhlíð in the Skagafjörður region of Iceland. After
completing his secondary education at Möðruvallaskóli,
he attended Valparaiso University in Indiana and the
Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary in Maywood,
Illinois. He served as a Lutheran pastor for ten years
before leaving the Lutheran ministry to found the Free
Church Unitarian in Blaine, Washington, in 1928. He
subsequently served other Unitarian congregations, most
notably the one in Lundar, Manitoba, where he was also
chairman of the Lundar Jubilee Committee. In the 1940s,
he was the secretary of the Icelandic National League of
North America and editor of the periodical Brautin. He
drowned in 1950, along with nine other people, when the
vessel Helgi sank off of Vestmannaeyjar in a storm.
Halldór delivered this lecture to the Icelandic
Canadian Club in 1945 and it was then published as
an essay in Iceland’s Thousand Years.
Snorri Sturlusson ... from page 11