The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1956, Blaðsíða 25

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
23
him—which is all the more ill luck.
He is poor and has powerful enemies.
His heroism does not mean success: it
means loneliness and defeat; but it
ends in glory. The tale is filled with
daring and uncanny adventures. Below
is a Wagnerian moment from its very
end, the night before Eric’s last battle,
when he sits with his only friend wait-
ing for the dawn. The two men see
the aurora borealis, the northern
lights, above the peak of Mount Hecla:
but this is what appears to them.
“In the rosy glow there sat three
giant forms of fire, and their shapes
were the shapes of women. Before them
was a loom of blackness that stretched
from earth to sky, and they wove at it
with threads of flame. They were
splendid and terrible 'to see. Their
hair streamed behind them like meteor
flames, their eyes shone like lightning,
and their breasts gleamed like the
polished bucklers of the gods. They
wove fiercely at the loom of blackness,
and as they wove they sang. The voice
of the one was as the wind whistling
through the pines; the voice of the
other was as the sound of rain hissing
on deep waters; and the voice of the
third was as the moan of the sea. They
wove fearfully and they sang loudly,
but what they sang might not be
known. Now the web grew and the
woof grew, and a picture came upon
the loom—a great picture written in
fire. Behold! it was the semblance of
a storm-awakened sea, and a giant ship
fled before the gale—a dragon of war,
and in the ship were piled the corses
of men, and on these lay another corse,
as one lies upon a bed. They looked
and the face of the corse grew bright.
It was the face of Eric, and his head
rested upon the dead heart of [his
friend] Skallagrim.”
Eric Brighteyes is a fine book. It
does not, of course, supersede the
ancient sagas: it is to them as Scott’s
novels are to the ballads and chron-
icles, more detailed and less primitive,
more artistic and better balanced but
less original, still a modern assertion
of trust in permanent ideals of courage
and nobility: it is a bridge between
our own fugitive present and bold un-
known moments of the past, a rainbow
path along which heroes can come to
challenge us, and beautiful women, to
make our youths aspire to that love
which is won only through suffering
and resolution.
The Story of Burnt Nial (tr. G. W. Dasent,
Everyman’s Library 558)
The Saga of Grettir the Strong (tr. G. A.
Hight, Everyman’s Library 699).
Four Icelandic Sagas (tr. Gwyn Jones. Amer-
ican-Scandinavian Foundation, 1935).
Three Icelandic Sagas (tr. M. H. Scargill and
M. Schlauch, American-Scandinavian Found-
ation, 1950).
Laxdaela Saga (tr. Thorstein Veblen, Huebsch,
1925).
The Saga of the Volsungs (tr. M. Schlauch,
Norton, 1930).
H. R. Haggard, Eric Brighteyes (in Lost Civi-
lizations, Dover, 1953).
Selma Lagerlof, Gosta Berling’s Story (tr. P.
B. Flach, Doubleday, Post, 1917).
E. Linklater, The Men of Ness (British Book
Center, 1951).
Sigrid Undset, The Master of Hestviken, (tr.
A. G. Chater, Knopf, 1934).
Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter (tr. C.
Archer and J. S. Scott, Knopf, 1934).