The Scandinavian Nation held, during the Middle Ages, the first
and strongest influence over the poetry and thought of Western
Europe. The oldest and purest remains of the poets of German
Nations are contained in the Scandinavian Edda. Its mythology is
founded on Polytheism; but through it, as through the religion of
all nations of the world, there is a faint gleam of the one
Supreme God, of infinite power, knowledge and wisdom, whose
greatness and justice could not be represented in the form of
ordinary man. Such was the God of the Pagan Germans, and such was
the earliest belief of mankind.
Perhaps the poet priests of primitive times, who shaped the
imaginative mythology of the North, were conscious of the one
true God; but considered Him above the comprehension of the rude
men of the times, so they invented the deities who were more
nearly akin to the material forces that these people alone
understood. The second part of the first Edda contains the great
Icelandic poems, the first of which is the song of Voland, the
famous northern smith.
Voland, or Wayland, the Vulcan of the North, is of unknown
antiquity; and his fame, which spread all over Europe, still
lives in the traditions of all the nations of the North. These
poems, although fragmentary, still far surpass the
Nibelungen-lied, and in their powerful pathos and tragic passion
they surpass any ancient poetry except that of Greece.
The Scandinavians in general, and Icelanders in particular,
traveled over every part of the West, and penetrated into
hitherto unexplored seas, collecting in every quarter the facts
and fancies of the age. In the character of wandering Normans
they exerted a strong influence in shaping poetry, and in
developing the Crusades. They brought back with them to their
Northern homes the Christian and chivalrous poems of the South.
In many of these the likeness to the Icelanders own Northern
Sagas was remarkable, suggesting some still more remote age when
one heroic conception must have dominated all peoples.
After bringing home these poems of Southern Europe, the
Scandinavians proceeded to adapt them to their own use, giving
them a new force and beauty. The marvellous in Southern poetry
became with them something fraught with deeper meaning; and the
Northern version of the Nibelungen-lied acquired an ascendency in
its strength and poetical beauty, over the German heroic. Hence,
during the Middle Ages, the Scandinavians in general, and
Icelanders in particular, came to possess a peculiar chivalrous
poetry of their own. It was, however, destined to share the same
fate as the great poems of the rest of Europe; first to be
reduced to prose romance, and then broken up into ballads. The
chief cause of this breaking up of the old order of poetry was
due to the Reformation. The national poetry was left to be
carried on by the common people alone, and of course in their
hands was corrupted and mutilated. Scott speaks of this in his
Lay of the Last Minstrel, where he describes the old bard, who
" 'Tuned to please a peasant's ear
The harp a King had loved to hear."
These Bards, or Scalds, meaning Smoothers of Language, were
welcome guests in the early ages, at the Courts of Kings and
Princes. Up to the twelfth century, when the Monks and the art of
writing, put an end to their profession, these poets continued to
come from Iceland and travel all over the world. In return for
their songs they received rings and jewels of more or less value;
but never money. We have a list of 230 Scalds who made a name for
themselves from the time of Dagnar Lodbrok to that of Vladimir
II, or from the end of the eighth to the beginning of the
thirteenth century. When Christianity entered Scandinavia the
spirit of the old tradition still remained with the people, and
became their literature under the name of "Folk Sagas," or as we
would call them, fairy tales. These legends are found not only in
modern Scandinavia, but they have made their way into all the
literature of Europe. Jack the Giant Killer, Cinderella, Blue
Beard, the Little Old Woman Cut Shorter, and the Giant who
smelled the blood of an Englishman (the Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum of our
nursery days), were all heroes and heroines of Scandinavian
songs, later adapted in various ways to the use of different
countries. After awhile this lost art revived in the Romances of
chivalry, and in popular ballads. They describe all the changes
in life and society, and are akin to the ballads of the British
Isles. In them we find the common expression of the life and
feelings of a common race. The same stories often influenced the
bards of all countries at different periods. These ballads are
all written in the same form and express a certain poetic feeling
which is not found in the Epic Age. In all countries they had a
refrain, or chorus, which marks the migration of poetry from the
Epic to the Lyric form.
"This simple voice of song," to quote a modern author, "travelled
onward from mouth to mouth, from heart to heart, the language of
the general sorrows, hopes and memories; strange, and yet near to
every one, centuries old, yet never growing older, since the
human heart, whose history it relates in so many changing images
and notes, remains forever the same."
