The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1982, Síða 14

12
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SUMMER, 1982
that there are no true barriers between men.
The only discipline to which they respond-
ed was the highest form of discipline —
that which man imposes upon himself.
They lived and they died, when the occa-
sion required it, in obedience to their self-
made rules. What they did, kept faith with
what they thought. Their great desire was
to live on good terms with themselves. To
maintain their self-respect was the law of
their being, the very breath of their nostrils.
They were men of the sea and the sea
breeds only one sort — the virile sort, who
have power in their arms and wit in their
heads. They were not lotus eaters, but men
of vigour, of decision and initiative, of
character and intelligence, of resourceful-
ness and self-reliance. “Certain defects are
necessary,” said Goethe, “for the exist-
ence of individuality.” The Vikings had a
grave defect which led to the spilling of a
lot of blood. They were overly sensitive.
Their skins were as thin as a sheet of
onionskin paper if their pride was chal-
lenged. As Magnus Magnusson puts the
point, in the introduction to the Penguin
edition (in translation) of Njal’s Saga: “It
is a little pathetic, now, to read how vul-
nerable these men were to calls on their
honour; it was fatally easy to goad them
into action to avenge some suspicion of an
insult.”
In the days when covered wagons trekked
across this continent of ours, it used to be
said that the cowards never started on the
journey and the weak died by the way.
There were no cowards and no weaklings
among the men and women who crossed
the cruel Arctic seas to the small island of
ice and fire in the North Atlantic. They did
not find an easy life. Nature was most
unkind. It gave them nothing that was not
paid for by strenuous effort. But because of
their exceptional qualities of mind and
body, they were able to adjust to the hostile
environment of Iceland.
The Vikings were said to love “war and
women, wassail and song, pillage and
slaughter.” In the history books, they have
been called many names, most of them
uncomplimentary. Here are two of them, as
a sample — ‘heathen wizards,’ ‘warlike
ruthless pagans’. The fact is that they were
no better and no worse than their con-
temporaries. They should not be judged by
modem standards but in the framework of
the time and the temper in which they
lived. But if we do judge them by modem
standards, do they come off too badly?
Were they not, in fact, amateurs in the
black arts of pillage and slaughter, in
comparison with modem man. They had no
scientifically designed ovens for burning
their fellowmen by the millions; no slave
camps in which men’s bodies are crippled,
their minds warped and their souls stunted;
no bombs, which when dropped from the
sky, fall, like the gentle rain from heaven,
upon all beneath; no means of overkilling
every man, woman and child who now
walks the good earth.
In Armistice, the powerful poem in which
he tore off the veil that hides the ugly face
of war, Stephan G. Stephansson contrasts
the way war was waged in the brave old
days with the way it is waged in this de-
generate age (the translation is Paul
Bjamason’s):
‘ ‘In former ages gallantry and courage
Were personal and sacred to the hero,
A trait by friend and foe alike admitted.
The fame he earned, attacking or
defending
Was his by right, to relish and
remember.
The fighters met each other in the
open,
Both wild and free, and strength and
skill were noted.
The killers now are unseen lethal
agents,
Like epidemics sweeping through the
natives.”