A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Popular Tales from the Norse

S >> Sir George Webbe Dasent >> Popular Tales from the Norse




'Behold two men came out of the forest, took the meat, and put it
into a hole: stop, I will go into the hole, and then thou mayst
stretch out thy tail to me, and I will tie the meat to thy tail for
thee to draw it out'. So the weasel went into the hole, the hyaena
stretched its tail out to it, but the weasel took the hyaena's
tail, fastened a stick, and tied the hyaena's tail to the stick,
and then said to the hyaena 'I have tied the meat to thy tail;
draw, and pull it out'. The hyaena was a fool, it did not know the
weasel surpassed it in subtlety; it thought the meat was tied; but
when it tried to draw out its tail, it was fast. When the weasel
said again to it 'Pull', it pulled, but could not draw it out; so
it became vexed, and on pulling with force, its tail broke. The
tail being torn out, the weasel was no more seen by the hyaena: the
weasel was hidden in the hole with its meat, and the hyaena saw it
not. [_Kanuri Proverbs_, p. 167.]

Here we have a fact in natural history accounted for, but accounted
for in such a peculiar way as shows that the races among which they
are current must have derived them from some common tradition. The
mode by which the tail is lost is different indeed; but the manner in
which the common ground-work is suited in one case to the cold of the
North, and the way in which fish are commonly caught at holes in the
ice as they rise to breathe; and in the other to Africa and her
pitfalls for wild beasts, is only another proof of the oldness of the
tradition, and that it is not merely a copy.

Take another instance. Every one knows the story in the Arabian
Nights, where the man who knows the speech of beasts laughs at
something said by an ox to an ass. His wife wants to know why he
laughs, and persists, though he tells her it will cost him his life
if he tells her. As he doubts what to do, he hears the cock say to
the house-dog 'Our master is not wise; I have fifty hens who obey me;
if he followed my advice, he'd just take a good stick, shut up his
wife in a room with him, and give her a good cudgelling.' The same
story is told in Straparola [10] with so many variations as to show
it is no copy; it is also told in a Servian popular tale, with
variations of its own; and now here we find it in Bornou, as told by
Kölle.

There was a servant of God who had one wife and one horse; but his
wife was one-eyed, and they lived in their house. Now this servant
of God understood the language of the beasts of the forest when
they spoke, and of the birds of the air when they talked as they
flew by. This servant of God also understood the cry of the hyaena
when it arose at night in the forest, and came to the houses and
cried near them; so, likewise, when his horse was hungry and
neighed, he understood why it neighed, rose up, brought the horse
grass, and then returned and sat down. It happened one day that
birds had their talk as they were flying by above and the servant
of God understood what they talked. This caused him to laugh,
whereupon his wife said to him 'What dost thou hear that thou
laughest?' He replied to his wife 'I shall not tell thee what I
hear, and why I laugh'. The woman said to her husband 'I know why
thou laughest; thou laughest at me because I am one-eyed'. The man
then said to his wife 'I saw that thou wast one-eyed before I loved
thee, and before we married and sat down in our house'. When the
woman heard her husband's word she was quiet.

But once at night, as they were lying on their bed, and it was past
midnight, it happened that a rat played with his wife on the top of
the house and that both fell to the ground. Then the wife of the
rat said to her husband 'Thy sport is bad; thou saidst to me that
thou wouldst play, but when we came together we fell to the ground,
so that I broke my back'.

When the servant of God heard the talk of the rat's wife, as he was
lying on his bed, he laughed. Now, as soon as he laughed his wife
arose, seized him, and said to him as she held him fast: 'Now this
time I will not let thee go out of this house except thou tell me
what thou hearest and why thou laughest'. The man begged the woman,
saying 'Let me go'; but the woman would not listen to her husband's
entreaty.

The husband then tells his wife that he knows the language of beasts
and birds, and she is content; but when he wakes in the morning he
finds he has lost his wonderful gift; and the moral of the tale is
added most ungallantly: 'If a man shews and tells his thoughts to a
woman, God will punish him for it'. Though, perhaps, it is better,
for the sake of the gentler sex, that the tale should be pointed with
this unfair moral, than that the African story should proceed like
all the other variations, and save the husband's gift at the cost of
the wife's skin.

Take other African instances. How is it that the wandering Bechuanas
got their story of 'The Two Brothers', the ground-work of which is
the same as 'The Machandelboom' and the 'Milk-white Doo', and where
the incidents and even the words are almost the same? How is it that
in some of its traits that Bechuana story embodies those of that
earliest of all popular tales, recently published from an Egyptian
Papyrus, coeval with the abode of the Israelites in Egypt? and how is
it that that same Egyptian tale has other traits which reminds us of
the Dun Bull in 'Katie Woodencloak', as well as incidents which are
the germ of stories long since reduced to writing in Norse Sagas of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? [11] How is it that we still
find among the Negroes in the West Indies [12] a rich store of
popular tales, and the Beast Epic in full bloom, brought with them
from Africa to the islands of the West; and among those tales and
traditions, how is it that we find a 'Wishing Tree', the counter-part
of that in a German popular tale, and 'a little dirty scrub of a
child', whom his sisters despise, but who is own brother to Boots in
the Norse Tales, and like him outwits the Troll, spoils his
substance, and saves his sisters? How is it that we find the good
woman who washes the loathsome head rewarded, while the bad man who
refuses to do that dirty work is punished for his pride; the very
groundwork, nay the very words, that we meet in Bushy-bride, another
Norse Tale? How is it that we find a Mongolian tale, which came
confessedly from India, made up of two of our Norse tales, 'Rich
Peter the Pedlar' and 'The Giant that had no heart in his
body' [_The Deeds of Bogda Gesser Chan_, by I. J. Schmidt
(Petersburg and Leipzig, 1839).]? How should all these things be, and
how could they possibly be, except on that theory which day by day
becomes more and more a matter of fact; this, that the whole human
race sprung from one stock, planted in the East, which has stretched
out its boughs and branches laden with the fruit of language, and
bright with the bloom of song and story, by successive offshoots to
the utmost parts of the earth.





NORSE MYTHOLOGY

And now, in the second place, for that particular branch of the Aryan
race, in which this peculiar development of the common tradition has
arisen, which we are to consider as 'Norse Popular Tales'.

Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of other
branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race--whatever
discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that
divinity among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Goths--about the
Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt. From a variety of
circumstances, but two before all the rest--the one their settlement
in Iceland, which preserved their language and its literary treasures
incorrupt; the other their late conversion to Christianity--their
cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have
not, as elsewhere, to pick up and piece together the wretched
fragments of a faith, the articles of which its own priests had
forgotten to commit to writing, and which those of another creed had
dashed to pieces and destroyed, wherever their zealous hands could
reach. In the two Eddas, therefore, in the early Sagas, in Saxo's
stilted Latin, which barely conceals the popular songs and legends
from which the historian drew his materials, we are enabled to form a
perfect conception of the creed of the heathen Norsemen. We are
enabled to trace, as has been traced by the same hand in another
place [_Oxford Essays for_ 1898: 'The Norsemen in Iceland'.],
the natural and rational development of that creed from a simple
worship of nature and her powers, first to monotheism, and then to a
polytheistic system. The tertiary system of Polytheism is the soil
out of which the mythology of the Eddas sprang, though through it
each of the older formations crops out in huge masses which admit of
no mistake as to its origin. In the Eddas the natural powers have
been partly subdued, partly thrust on one side, for a time, by Odin
and the Aesir, by the Great Father and his children, by One Supreme
and twelve subordinate gods, who rule for an appointed time, and over
whom hangs an impending fate, which imparts a charm of melancholy to
this creed, which has clung to the race who once believed in it long
after the creed itself has vanished before the light of Christianity.
According to this creed, the Aesir and Odin had their abode in
Asgard, a lofty hill in the centre of the habitable earth, in the
midst of Midgard, that _middle earth_ which we hear of in early
English poetry, the abode of gods and men. Round that earth, which
was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and inveterate foes by a
natural fortification of hills, flowed the great sea in a ring, and
beyond that sea was Utgard, the outlying world, the abode of Frost
Giants, and Monsters, those old-natural powers who had been
dispossessed by Odin and the Aesir when the new order of the universe
arose, and between whom and the new gods a feud as inveterate as that
cherished by the Titans against Jupiter was necessarily kept alive.
It is true indeed that this feud was broken by intervals of truce
during which the Aesir and the Giants visit each other, and appear on
more or less friendly terms, but the true relation between them was
war; pretty much as the Norseman was at war with all the rest of the
world. Nor was this struggle between two rival races or powers
confined to the gods in Asgard alone. Just as their ancient foes were
the Giants of Frost and Snow, so between the race of men and the race
of Trolls was there a perpetual feud. As the gods were men magnified
and exaggerated, so were the Trolls diminished Frost Giants; far
superior to man in strength and stature, but inferior to man in wit
and invention. Like the Frost Giants, they inhabit the rough and
rugged places of the earth, and, historically speaking, in all
probability represent the old aboriginal races who retired into the
mountainous fastnesses of the land, and whose strength was
exaggerated, because the intercourse between the races was small. In
almost every respect they stand in the same relations to men as the
Frost Giants stand to the Gods.

There is nothing, perhaps, more characteristic of a true, as compared
with a false religion, than the restlessness of the one when brought
face to face with the quiet dignity and majesty of the other. Under
the Christian dispensation, our blessed Lord, his awful sacrifice
once performed, 'ascended up on high', having 'led captivity
captive', and expects the hour that shall make his foes 'his
footstool'; but false gods, Jupiter, Vishnu, Odin, Thor, must
constantly keep themselves, as it were, before the eyes of men, lest
they should lose respect. Such gods being invariably what the
philosophers call _subjective_, that is to say, having no
existence except in the minds of those who believe in them; having
been created by man in his own image, with his own desires and
passions, stand in constant need of being recreated. They change as
the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter; they are
ever bound to do something fresh, lest man should forget them, and
new divinities usurp their place. Hence came endless avatars in
Hindoo mythology, reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that
passive Indian mind. Hence came Jove's adventures, tinged with all
the lust and guile which the wickedness of the natural man planted on
a hot-bed of iniquity is capable of conceiving. Hence bloody Moloch,
and the foul abominations of Chemosh and Milcom. Hence, too, Odin's
countless adventures, his journeys into all parts of the world, his
constant trials of wit and strength, with his ancient foes the Frost
Giants, his hair-breadth escapes. Hence Thor's labours and toils, his
passages beyond the sea, girt with his strength-belt, wearing his
iron gloves, and grasping his hammer which split the skulls of so
many of the Giant's kith and kin. In the Norse gods, then, we see the
Norseman himself, sublimed and elevated beyond man's nature, but
bearing about with him all his bravery and endurance, all his dash
and spirit of adventure, all his fortitude and resolution to struggle
against a certainty of doom which, sooner or later, must overtake him
on that dread day, the 'twilight of the gods', when the wolf was to
break loose, when the great snake that lay coiled round the world
should lash himself into wrath, and the whole race of the Aesirs and
their antagonists were to perish in internecine strife.

Such were the gods in whom the Norseman believed--exaggerations of
himself, of all his good and all his bad qualities. Their might and
their adventures, their domestic quarrels and certain doom, were sung
in venerable lays, now collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic
Edda; simple majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the
heart through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to
mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes of
the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory, and whose
mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth. Helgi, Sigmund,
Sinfjötli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun; champions and shield-
maidens, henchmen and corse-choosers, now dead and gone, who sat
round Odin's board in Valhalla. Women whose beauty, woes, and
sufferings were beyond those of all women; men whose prowess had
never found an equal. Between these, love and hate; all that can
foster passion or beget revenge. Ill assorted marriages; the right
man to the wrong woman, and the wrong man to the right woman;
envyings, jealousies, hatred, murders, all the works of the natural
man, combine together to form that marvellous story which begins with
a curse--the curse of ill-gotten gold--and ends with a curse, a
widow's curse, which drags down all on whom it falls, and even her
own flesh and blood, to certain doom. Such was the theme of the
wondrous Volsung Tale, the far older, simpler and grander original of
that Nibelungen Need of the thirteenth century, a tale which begins
with the slaughter of Fafnir by Sigurd, and ends with Hermanaric,
'that fierce faith-breaker', as the Anglo-Saxon minstrel calls him,
when he is describing, in rapid touches, the mythic glories of the
Teutonic race.

This was the story of the Volsungs. They traced themselves back, like
all heroes, to Odin, the great father of gods and men. From him
sprung Sigi, from him Rerir, from him Volsung, ripped from his
mother's womb after a six years' bearing, to become the Eponymus of
that famous race. In the centre of his hall grew an oak, the tall
trunk of which passed through the roof, and its boughs spread far and
wide in upper air. Into that hall, on a high feast day, when Signy,
Volsung's daughter, was to be given away to Siggeir, King of
Gothland, strode an old one-eyed guest. His feet were bare, his hose
were of knitted linen, he wore a great striped cloak, and a broad
flapping hat. In his hand he bore a sword, which, at one stroke, he
drove up to the hilt in the oak trunk. 'There', said he, 'let him of
all this company bear this sword who is man enough to pull it out. I
give it him, and none shall say he ever bore a better blade.' With
these words he passed out of the hall, and was seen no more. Many
tried, for that sword was plainly a thing of price, but none could
stir it, till Sigmund, the best and bravest of Volsung's sons, tried
his hand, and, lo! the weapon yielded itself at once. This was that
famous blade _Gram_, of which we shall hear again. Sigmund bore
it in battle against his brother-in-law, who quarrelled with him
about this very sword, when Volsung fell, and Sigmund and his ten
brothers were taken and bound. All perished but Sigmund, who was
saved by his sister Signy, and hidden in a wood till he could revenge
his father and brethren. Here with Sinfjötli, who was at once his son
and nephew, he ran as a werewolf through the forest, and wrought many
wild deeds. When Sinfjötli was of age to help him, they proceed to
vengeance, and burn the treacherous brother-in-law alive, with all
his followers. Sigmund then regains his father's kingdom, and in
extreme old age dies in battle against the sons of King Hunding. Just
as he was about to turn the fight, a warrior of more than mortal
might, a one-eyed man in a blue cloak, with a flapping hat, rose up
against him spear in hand. At that outstretched spear Sigmund smites
with his trusty sword. It snaps in twain. Then he knows that his luck
is gone; he sees in his foe Odin the giver of the sword, sinks down
on the gory battle-field, and dies in the arms of Hjordis, his young
wife, refusing all leechcraft, and bowing his head to Odin's will. By
the fortune of war, Hjordis, bearing a babe under her girdle, came
into the hands of King Hialprek of Denmark, there she bore a son to
Sigmund, Sigurd, the darling of Teutonic song and story. Regin, the
king's smith, was his foster-father, and as the boy grew up the
fairest and stoutest of all the Volsungs, Regin, who was of the dwarf
race, urged him day by day to do a doughty deed, and slay Fafnir the
Dragon. For Fafnir, Regin, and Otter had been brothers, sons of
Reidmar. In one of their many wanderings, Odin, Loki, and Haenir came
to a river and a forge. There, on the bank under the forge, they saw
an otter with a salmon in its mouth, which it ate greedily with its
eyes shut. Loki took a stone, threw it, and killed the beast, and
boasted how he had got both fish and flesh at one throw. Then the
Aesir passed on and came at night to Reidmar's house, asked a
lodging, got it, and showed their spoil. 'Seize and bind them lads',
cried Reidmar; 'for they have slain your brother Otter'. So they were
seized and bound by Regin and Fafnir, and offered an atonement to buy
off the feud, and Reidmar was to name the sum. Then Otter was flayed,
and the Aesir were to fill the skin with red gold, and cover it
without, that not a hair could be seen. To fetch the gold Odin sent
Loki down to the abodes of the Black Elves; there in a stream he
caught Andvari the Dwarf, and made him give up all the gold which he
had hoarded up in the stony rock. In vain the Dwarf begged and prayed
that he might keep one ring, for it was the source of all his wealth,
and ring after ring dropped from it. 'No; not a penny should he have'
said Loki. Then the dwarf laid a curse on the ring, and said it
should be every man's bane who owned it. 'So much the better' said
Loki; and when he got back, Odin saw the ring how fair it was, and
kept it to himself, but gave the gold to Reidmar. So Reidmar filled
the skin with gold as full as he could, and set it up on end, and
Odin poured gold over it, and covered it up. But when Reidmar looked
at it he saw still one grey hair, and bade them cover that too, else
the atonement was at an end. Then Odin drew forth the ring and laid
it over the grey hair. So the Aesir was set free, but before they
went, Loki repeated the curse which Andvari had laid upon the ring
and gold. It soon began to work. First, Regin asked for some of the
gold, but not a penny would Reidmar give. So the two brothers laid
their heads together and slew their sire. Then Regin begged Fafnir to
share the gold with him. But 'no', Fafnir was stronger, and said he
should keep it all himself, and Regin had best be off, unless he
wished to fare the same way as Reidmar. So Regin had to fly, but
Fafnir took a dragon's shape; 'and there', said Regin, 'he lies on
the "Glistening Heath", coiled round his store of gold and precious
things, and that's why I wish you to kill him.' Sigurd, told Regin
who was the best of smiths, to forge him a sword. Two are made, but
both snap asunder at the first stroke. 'Untrue are they like you and
all your race' cries Sigurd. Then he went to his mother and begged
the broken bits of _Gram_, and out of them Regin forged a new
blade, that clove the anvil in the smithy, and cut a lock of wool
borne down upon it by a running stream. 'Now, slay me Fafnir', said
Regin; but Sigurd must first find out King Hunding's sons, and avenge
his father Sigmund's death. King Hialprek lends him force; by Odin's
guidance he finds them out, routs their army, and slays all those
brothers. On his return, his foster-father still eggs him on to slay
the Dragon, and thus to shew that there was still a Volsung left. So,
armed with Gram, and mounted on Gran, his good steed, whom Odin had
taught him how to choose, Sigurd rode to the 'Glistening Heath', dug
a pit in the Dragon's path, and slew him as he passed over him down
to drink at the river. Then Regin came up, and the old feeling of
vengeance for a brother's blood grew strong, and as an atonement,
Sigurd was to roast Fafnir's heart, and carry it to Regin, who
swilled his fill of the Dragon's blood, and lay down to sleep. But as
Sigurd roasted the heart, and wondered if it would soon be done, he
tried it with his finger to see if it were soft. The hot roast burned
his finger, and he put it into his mouth, and tasted the life-blood
of the Dragon. Then in a moment he understood the song of birds, and
heard how the swallows over his head said one to the other, 'There
thou sittest, Sigurd, roasting Fafnir's heart. Eat it thyself and
become the wisest of men.' Then another said 'There lies Regin, and
means to cheat him who trusts him.' Then a third said 'Let Sigurd cut
off his head then, and so own all the gold himself.' Then Sigurd went
to Regin and slew him, and ate the heart, and rode on Gran to
Fafnir's lair, and took the spoil and loaded his good steed with it,
and rode away.

And now Sigurd was the most famous of men. All the songs and stories
of the North made him the darling of that age. They dwell on his soft
hair, which fell in great locks of golden brown, on his bushy beard
of auburn hue, his straight features, his ruddy cheeks, his broad
brow, his bright and piercing eye, of which few dared to meet the
gaze, his taper limbs and well knit joints, his broad shoulders, and
towering height. 'So tall he was, that as he strode through the full-
grown rye, girt with Gram, the tip of the scabbard just touched the
ears of corn.' Ready of tongue too, and full of forethought. His
great pleasure was to help other men, and to do daring deeds; to
spoil his foes, and give largely to his friends. The bravest man
alive, and one that never knew fear. On and on he rode, till on a
lone fell he saw a flickering flame, and when he reached it, there it
flamed and blazed all round a house. No horse but Gran could ride
that flame; no man alive but Sigurd sit him while he leaped through
it. Inside the house lay a fair maiden, armed from head to foot, in a
deep sleep. Brynhildr, Atli's sister, was her name, a Valkyrie, a
corse-chooser; but out of wilfulness she had given the victory to the
wrong side, and Odin in his wrath had thrust the horn of sleep into
her cloak, and laid her under a curse to slumber there till a man
bold enough to ride through that flame came to set her free, and win
her for his bride. So then she woke up, and taught him all runes and
wisdom, and they swore to love each other with a mighty oath, and
then Sigurd left her and rode on.

So on he rode to King Giuki's hall, Giuki the Niflung, King of
Frankland, whose wife was Grimhildr, whose sons were Gunnar and
Hogni, whose stepson was Guttorm, and whose daughter was the fair
Gudrun. Here at first he was full of Brynhildr, and all for going
back to fetch his lovely bride from the lone fell. But Grimhildr was
given to dark arts; she longed for the brave Volsung for her own
daughter, she brewed him the philtre of forgetfulness, he drained it
off, forgot Brynhildr, swore a brother's friendship with Gunnar and
Hogni, and wedded the fair Gudrun. But now Giuki wanted a wife for
Gunnar, and so off set the brothers and their bosom friend to woo,
but whom should they choose but Brynhildr, Atli's sister, who sat
there still upon the fell, waiting for the man who was bold enough to
ride through the flickering flame. She knew but one could do it, and
waited for that one to come back. So she had given out whoever could
ride that flame should have her to wife. So when Gunnar and Hogni
reached it, Gunnar rode at it, but his horse, good though it was,
swerved from the fierce flame. Then by Grimhild's magic arts, Sigurd
and Gunnar changed shapes and arms, and Sigurd leapt up on Gran's
back, and the good steed bore him bravely through the flame. So
Brynhildr the proud maiden was won and forced to yield. That evening
was their wedding; but when they lay down to rest, Sigurd unsheathed
his keen sword _Gram_, and laid it naked between them. Next
morning when he arose, he took the ring which Andvari had laid under
the curse, and which was among Fafnir's treasures, and gave it to
Brynhildr as a 'morning gift', and she gave him another ring as a
pledge. Then Sigurd rode back to his companions and took his own
shape again, and then Gunnar went and claimed Brynhildr, and carried
her home as his bride. But no sooner was Gunnar wedded, than Sigurd's
eyes were opened, and the power of the philtre passed away, he
remembered all that had passed, and the oath he had sworn to
Brynhildr. All this came back upon him when it was too late, but he
was wise and said nothing about it. Well, so things went on, till one
day Brynhildr and Gudrun went down to the river to wash their hair.
Then Brynhildr waded out into the stream as far as she could, and
said she wouldn't have on her head the water that streamed from
Gudrun's; for hers was the braver husband. So Gudrun waded out after
her, and said the water ought to come on her hair first, because her
husband bore away the palm from Gunnar, and every other man alive,
for he slew Fafnir and Regin and took their inheritance. 'Aye', said
Brynhildr, 'but it was a worthier deed when Gunnar rode through the
flame, but Sigurd dared not try!' Then Gudrun laughed, and said
'Thinkst thou that Gunnar really rode the flame? I trow _he_
went to bed with thee that night, who gave me this gold ring. And as
for that ring yonder which you have on your finger, and which you got
as your "morning-gift"; its name is Andvari's-spoil, and _that_
I don't think Gunnar sought on the "Glistening Heath"'. Then
Brynhildr held her peace and went home, and her love for Sigurd came
back, but it was turned to hate, for she felt herself betrayed. Then
she egged on Gunnar to revenge her wrong. At last the brothers
yielded to her entreaties, but they were sworn brothers to Sigurd,
and to break that oath by deed was a thing unheard of. Still they
broke it in spirit; by charms and prayers they set on Guttorm their
half-brother, and so at dead of night, while Gudrun held the bravest
man alive fast locked in her white arms, the murderer stole to the
bedside and drove a sword through the hero. Then Sigurd turned and
writhed, and as Guttorm fled he hurled Gram after him, and the keen
blade took him asunder at the waist, and his head fell out of the
room and his heels in, and that was the end of Guttorm. But with
revenge Brynhildr's love returned, and when Sigurd was laid upon the
pile her heart broke; she burst forth into a prophetic song of the
woes that were still to come, made them lay her by his side with Gram
between them, and so went to Valhalla with her old lover. Thus
Andvari's curse was fulfilled.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.