The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1967, Page 103

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
101
their value as literary works of art.
Each saga is, with a few exceptions,
a complete whole, in unbroken con-
tinuity from beginning to end. The
Major sagas may be said to be a pattern
in this respect. The descent of the
protagonist is traced from the days
of his first ancestor in the land, his
rearing and early adventures, his
social standing and connections, love
affairs, disagreements and slayings, and
not infrequently ends with his own
fall and the corollary vengeance exact-
ed by surviving relatives. The stages
unfold in their proper sequence, and
are all directed to illuminate the cul
minating event of the story. Fatalism,
prognostications, occult and superna-
tural things, which were generally
given credence then and down to a
comparatively recent past, have import-
ant roles in the unfolding of the plots.
The personae are unlike those found
in legends and heroic tales, where every
character may be assigned to a class
according with the role he is designed
to act—wholly good and perfect or
wholly bad, brave or cowardly, super-
wise or doltish, handsome or hideous;
the characters in each class being
drawn to a pattern to serve a purpose.
The men and women of the sagas are
living people—people of flesh and
blood. They are of all stations in life,
of varying temperements, princely and
plebian, rich and poor, good amd bad;
men of ambition and intense desires;
staid men and studious; men of low
estate and little importance. All differ
in Itheir mental makeups, and each is
so presented in his mixture of qualities
good and bad that he stands before the
reader a creature of life and blood.
Nor are they drawn in the present-day
manner, with copious descriptions and
psychological analyses of bents and
reasons, but emerge clear in their own
words, actions and reactions. The out-
ward appearance of characters is
delineated in some of the sagas, and
not in others. Natural descriptions,
properly speaking, are not met with in
the sagas; places, lay of the land and
weather are described where and to the
extent only that is necessary to a proper
understanding of events. The style is
terse, pointed and strikingly original,
yet 'nowhere forced or unnatural, and
free of superfluous words and digres-
sions. It is unmistakably molded by
oral rendition—evidence that the sagas
were told and not read.