Sir William Alexander Craigie - The Icelandic Sagas

W. A. CRAIGIE

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PREFACE

I N this brief outline of an extensive subject I have endeavoured to explain clearly not only what the Icelandic sagas are, but how it happened that they arose in a place so remote from the rest of Europe. This is certainly one of the most surprising features of this unique literature, though in reality it is not quite so strange as it appears. The special reasons which explain it are fully stated in the first chapter, but there is also a general consideration which perhaps ought not to be overlooked. In respect of early original literature, the central Germanic area is not strongly represented; it is on the outmost borders, in Iceland, England, and southern Germany, that literary activity of a high order first manifests itself. This would appear to suggest that the Germanic race was first enabled to create original literature of a permanent character when it had come into contact with, or even had largely mixed with, other races, and had received the impulse of new experiences. Thus the more central peoples of the Germanic stock the southern Scandinavians, the Frisians, the Saxons, and the Lower Franks have either little or nothing in the way of early literature to set beside the poetry and prose of the extreme north, west, and south. However this may be, the cultivation of a great poetic and prose literature in Iceland is remarkable enough, and becomes more notable when the period to which it belongs is considered. The poetry, so far as preserved, dates from about or before 900, and is very copious for the centuries that follow. The prose literature begins about 1120, and is at its highest level in the thirteenth century, at a time when there was practically no writing of prose either in England or in Germany. The comparative isolation of Iceland enabled it to take its own course, and to preserve, in its own language and with its own literary style, the records of its own past and of other countries as well.

It is one peculiarity of this style that it makes little or no distinction between fact and fiction; in either case there is the same minuteness of detail and the same apparent good faith or implicit belief on the part of the narrator. This feature is apt to be misunderstood, especially in the earlier stages of saga-reading, and I have specially endeavoured to show clearly the real facts of the matter.

With regard to the Icelandic names of persons and titles of sagas occurring throughout the book, the only points to be noted are that vowels marked with an acute accent are long, that j has the value of the semi-vowel y, and that the letter represents the soft or voiced th, as in bathe. In translations of the sagas and other works it is commonly expressed by a simple d, as in Odin, Sigurd.

W. A. CRAIGIE

O XFORD ,

November 1912.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP

CHAPTER I

THE ORIGIN OF THE SAGAS

T HE general title of Icelandic Sagas is used to denote a very extensive body of prose literature written in Iceland, and in the language of that country, at various dates between the middle of the twelfth century and the beginning of the fifteenth; the end of the period, however, is less clearly marked than the beginning. The common feature of the works classed under this name, which vary greatly in length, value, and interest, is that they have the outward form of historical or biographical narratives; but the matter is often purely fictitious, and in many cases fact and fiction are inseparably blended. Both in the form and in the matter there is much that is conventional, and many features of style and content are quite peculiar to the special Icelandic mode of story-telling.

The word saga (of which the plural is sgur) literally means something said, and was in use long before there was any written literature in Iceland. From an early period it had been a custom, which in course of time became an accomplishment and an art, to put together in a connected form the exploits of some notable man or the record of some memorable event, and to relate the story thus composed as a means of entertainment and instruction. It was out of these oral narratives, augmented and elaborated during the course of several centuries, that the written saga finally arose; but before entering into any account of how this came to pass it will be well to explain why Iceland, of all the Scandinavian countries, became the home of this form of literature. For this purpose it is necessary to take a brief survey of the history of that island, and of its relations with the lands lying nearest to it.

Iceland was colonized, mainly from Norway, and almost entirely by settlers of Norwegian origin, during the half-century or so following upon the year 874 A.D. As late as the middle of the ninth century, Norway was still a country of small kingdoms, each independent of the other, and having distinctive names. Even within these petty kingdoms the power of the kings was far from absolute, and many earls and chiefs were men of as much importance and influence as some of those who bore the royal name. The Viking period, with its constant expeditions to foreign lands in search of plunder, fostered the spirit of independence by enriching the bolder spirits of the community, and made them less inclined than ever to brook interference from those of higher rank. With the second half of the century an important change took place. Harald the Fairhaired, whose paternal kingdom was limited to a small district in the east of Norway, began at an early age to extend his domain by conquest. According to the story given in the saga of Harald, his desire of dominion was mainly due to the words of a girl, who refused to consider his wooing of her so long as he was only king over a few small districts; and I think it strange, she said, that there is no king who will try to make Norway his own, as Gorm has done in Denmark, and Eirk at Uppsala. When these words were reported to Harald, he declared himself grateful for them, and made a vow never to cut or comb his hair, until he had made himself master of the whole of Norway. The following years, from 865 onwards, witnessed the rapid fulfilment of this resolve, culminating in the great sea-fight at Hafrsfirth on the west coast of Norway, in the year 872. After this battle, says his saga, King Harald met with no further resistance. His greatest opponents had either fallen, or fled from the country; and the latter were sufficiently numerous to colonize several new districts, such as Jamtaland and Helsingland (in modern Sweden), and even new-found lands like the Faeres and Iceland. There was also much emigration to Shetland; and many powerful men who were outlawed by Harald took to western viking. They lived in the Orkneys or the Hebrides in the winter, while in the summer they plundered in Norway, and did much damage there.

The tendency to make the British Isles their chief resort, on the part of those who could not or would not remain in Norway after Haralds triumph, was greatly checked by the discovery of Iceland. As soon as the existence of this extensive island (larger even than Ireland) became generally known, and some idea had been gained of what it could offer to the settler, one or two of the bolder spirits were not long in seizing the opportunity which thus presented itself. The land was to be had for the taking, for the only inhabitants were a few Celtic monks who had wandered there in quest of solitude and who left again when the new settlers came; and the long sea-voyage did not deter men to whom the sea had become almost a second home. The first settlement, that of Inglf, appears to have taken place in 874, and for the nest fifty or sixty years a steady stream of colonists, coming either directly from Norway or from the Norwegian settlements in Britain, poured into the island, until every valley round its deeply indented coast had been occupied. So great was the emigration from Norway that King Harald became alarmed, and tried to lessen it by imposing a tax on every one who went out to Iceland. Thanks to the deep and unbroken interest in genealogy and history among subsequent generations of Icelanders, a very full record of the details of the colonization has been preserved, and is to be found in the compilation known as