The Danish History Part 5

Whether "Tew" is meant by the Mars of the Song of the Voice is not evident. Saxo may only be imitating the repeated catch-word "war" of the original.

"Loke" appears as Utgard-Loke, Loke of the skirts of the World, as it were; is treated as a venomous giant bound in agony under a serpent-haunted cavern (no mention is made of "Sigyn" or her pious ministry).

"Hela" seems to be meant by Saxo's Proserpina.

"Nanna" is the daughter of Gewar, and Balder sees her bathing and falls in love with her, as madly as Frey with Gertha in Skirnismal.

"Freya", the mistress of Od, the patroness of Othere the homely, the sister of Frey-Frode, and daughter of Niord-Fridlaf, appears as Gunwara Eric's love and Syritha Ottar's love and the hair-clogged maiden, as Dr.

Rydberg has shown.

The G.o.ds can disguise their form, change their shape, are often met in a mist, which shrouds them save from the right person; they appear and disappear at will. For the rest they have the mental and physical characteristics of the kings and queens they protect or persecute so capriciously. They can be seen by making a magic sign and looking through a witch's arm held akimbo. They are no good comates for men or women, and to meddle with a G.o.ddess or nymph or giantess was to ensure evil or death for a man. The G.o.d's loves were apparently not always so fatal, though there seems to be some tradition to that effect. Most of the G.o.d-sprung heroes are motherless or unborn (i.e., born like Macduff by the Caesarean operation)--Sigfred, in the Eddic Lays for instance.

Besides the G.o.ds, possibly older than they are, and presumably mightier, are the "Fates" (Norns), three Ladies who are met with together, who fulfil the parts of the gift-fairies of our Sleeping Beauty tales, and bestow endowments on the new-born child, as in the beautiful "Helge Lay", a point of the story which survives in Ogier of the Chansons de Geste, wherein Eadgar (Otkerus or Otgerus) gets what belonged to Holger (Holge), the Helga of "Beowulf's Lay". The caprices of the Fates, where one corrects or spoils the others' endowments, are seen in Saxo, when beauty, bounty, and meanness are given together. They sometimes meet heroes, as they met Helgi in the Eddic Lay (Helgi and Sigrun Lay), and help or begift them; they prepare the magic broth for Balder, are charmed with Hother's lute-playing, and bestow on him a belt of victory and a girdle of splendour, and prophesy things to come.

The verse in Biarca-mal, where "Pluto weaves the dooms of the mighty and fills Phlegethon with n.o.ble shapes," recalls Darrada-liod, and points to Woden as death-doomer of the warrior.

"Giants".--These are stupid, mischievous, evil and cunning in Saxo's eyes. Oldest of beings, with chaotic force and exuberance, monstrous in extravagant vitality.

The giant nature of the older troll-kind is abhorrent to man and woman.

But a giantess is enamoured of a youth she had fostered, and giants carry off king's daughters, and a three-bodied giant captures young children.

Giants live in caves by the sea, where they keep their treasure. One giant, Unfoot (Ofoti), is a shepherd, like Polyphemus, and has a famous dog which pa.s.sed into the charge of Biorn, and won a battle; a giantess is keeping goats in the wilds. A giant's fury is so great that it takes twelve champions to control him, when the rage is on him. The troll (like our Puss-in-Boots Ogre) can take any shape.

Monstrous apparitions are mentioned, a giant hand (like that in one story of Finn) searching for its prey among the inmates of a booth in the wilds. But this Grendel-like arm is torn off by a giantess, Hardgrip, daughter of Wainhead and niece possibly of Hafle.

The voice heard at night prophesying is that of some G.o.d or monster, possibly Woden himself.

"Dwarves".--These Saxo calls Satyrs, and but rarely mentions. The dwarf Miming, who lives in the desert, has a precious sword of sharpness (Mistletoe?) that could even pierce skin-hard Balder, and a ring (Draupnir) that multiplied itself for its possessor. He is trapped by the hero and robbed of his treasures.

FUNERAL RITES AND MAN'S FUTURE STATE.

"Barrow-burials".--The obsequies of great men (such as the cla.s.sic funeral of "Beowulf's Lay", 3138-80) are much noticed by Saxo, and we might expect that he knew such a poem (one similar to Ynglingatal, but not it) which, like the Books of the Kings of Israel and Judah, recorded the deaths and burials, as well as the pedigrees and deeds, of the Danish kings.

The various stages of the "obsequy by fire" are noted; the byre sometimes formed out of a s.h.i.+p; the "sati"; the devoted bower-maidens choosing to die with their mistress, the dead man's beloved (cf. The Eddic funerals of Balder, Sigfred, and Brunhild, in the Long "Brunhild's Lay", Tregrof Gudrumar and the lost poem of Balder's death paraphrased in the prose Edda); the last message given to the corpse on the pyre (Woden's last words to Balder are famous); the riding round the pyre; the eulogium; the piling of the barrow, which sometimes took whole days, as the size of many existing gra.s.s mounds a.s.sure us; the funeral feast, where an immense vat of ale or mead is drunk in honor of the dead; the epitaph, like an ogham, set up on a stone over the barrow.

The inclusion of a live man with the dead in a barrow, with the live or fresh-slain beasts (horse and bound) of the dead man, seems to point to a time or district when burning was not used. Apparently, at one time, judging from Frode's law, only chiefs and warriors were burnt.

Not to bury was, as in h.e.l.las, an insult to the dead, reserved for the bodies of hated foes. Conquerors sometimes show their magnanimity (like Harald G.o.dwineson) by offering to bury their dead foes.

The buried "barrow-ghost" was formidable; he could rise and slay and eat, vampire-like, as in the tale of Asmund and Aswit. He must in such case be mastered and prevented doing further harm by decapitation and thigh-forking, or by staking and burning. So criminals' bodies were often burnt to stop possible haunting.

Witches and wizards could raise corpses by spells to make them prophesy.

The dead also appeared in visions, usually foretelling death to the person they visited.

OTHER WORLDS.--The "Land of Undeath" is spoken of as a place reached by an exiled hero in his wanderings. We know it from Eric the traveller's S., Helge Th.o.r.eson's S., Herrand and Bose S., Herwon S., Thorstan Baearmagn S., and other Icelandic sources. But the voyage to the Other Worlds are some of the most remarkable of the narratives Saxo has preserved for us.

"Hadding's Voyage Underground".--(a) A woman bearing in her lap angelica fresh and green, though it was deep winter, appears to the hero at supper, raising her head beside the brazier. Hadding wishes to know where such plants grow.

(b) She takes him with her, under cover of her mantle, underground.

(c) They pierce a mist, get on a road worn by long use, pa.s.s n.o.bly-clad men, and reach the sunny fields that bear the angelica:--

"Through griesly shadowes by a beaten path, Into a garden goodly garnished."

--F.Q. ii. 7, 51.

(d) Next they cross, by a bridge, the "River of Blades", and see "two armies fighting", ghosts of slain soldiers.

(e) Last they came to a high wall, which surrounds the land of Life, for a c.o.c.k the woman brought with her, whose neck she wrung and tossed over this wall, came to life and crowed merrily.

Here the story breaks off. It is unfinished, we are only told that Hadfling got back. Why he was taken to this under-world? Who took him?

What followed therefrom? Saxo does not tell. It is left to us to make out.

That it is an archaic story of the kind in the Thomas of Ercildoune and so many more fairy-tales, e.g., Kate Crack-a-Nuts, is certain. The "River of Blades" and "The Fighting Warriors" are known from the Eddic Poems. The angelica is like the green birk of that superb fragment, the ballad of the Wife of Usher's Well--a little more frankly heathen, of course--

"It fell about the Martinmas, when nights are long and mirk, The carline wife's three sons cam hame, and their hats were o' the birk.

It neither grew in syke nor d.y.k.e, nor yet in ony sheugh, But at the gates o' Paradise that birk grew fair eneuch."

The mantel is that of Woden when he bears the hero over seas; the c.o.c.k is a bird of sorcery the world over; the black fowl is the proper gift to the Underground powers--a heriot really, for did not the Culture G.o.d steal all the useful beasts out of the underground world for men's use?

Dr. Rydberg has shown that the "Seven Sleepers" story is an old Northern myth, alluded to here in its early pre-Christian form, and that with this is mixed other incidents from voyages of Swipdag, the Teutonic Odusseus.

"Thorkill's Second Voyage to Outgarth-Loke to get Knowledge".--(a) Guthrum is troubled as to the immortality and fate of the soul, and the reward of piety after death. To spite Thorkill, his enviers advised the king to send him to consult Outgarth-Loke. He required of the king that his enemies should be sent with him.

(b) In one well-stored and hide-defended s.h.i.+p they set out, reached a sunless, starless land, without fuel; ate raw food and suffered. At last, after many days, a fire was seen ash.o.r.e. Thorkill, setting a jewel at the mast-head to be able to regain his vessel easily, rows ash.o.r.e to get fire.

(c) In a filthy, snake-paved, stinking cavern he sees two h.o.r.n.y-nebbed giants, (2) making a fire. One of the giants offers to direct him to Loke if he will say three true things in three phrases, and this done, tells him to row four days and then he would reach a Dark and Gra.s.sless Land. For three more true sayings he obtains fire, and gets back to his vessel.

(d) With good wind they make Gra.s.sless Land, go ash.o.r.e, find a huge, rocky cavern, strike a flint to kindle a fire at the entrance as a safeguard against demons, and a torch to light them as they explored the cavern.

(e) First appears iron seats set amid crawling snakes.

(f) Next is sluggish water flowing over sand.

(g) Last a steep, sloping cavern is reached, in a chamber of which lay Outgarth-Loke chained, huge and foul.

(h) Thorkill plucks a hair of his beard "as big as a cornel-wood spear."

The stench that arose was fearful; the demens and snakes fell upon the invaders at once; only Thorkill and five of the crew, who had sheltered themselves with hides against the virulent poison the demons and snakes cast, which would take a head off at the neck if it fell upon it, got back to their s.h.i.+p.

(i) By vow to the "G.o.d that made the world", and offerings, a good voyage was made back, and Germany reached, where Thorkill became a Christian. Only two of his men survived the effects of the poison and stench, and he himself was scarred and spoilt in the face.

(k) When he reached the king, Guthrum would not listen to his tale, because it was prophesied to him that he would die suddenly if he heard it; nay, he even sent men to smite him as he lay in bed, but, by the device of laying a log in his place, he escaped, and going to the king as he sat at meat, reproached him for his treachery.

(l) Guthrum bade him tell his story, but died of horror at hearing his G.o.d Loke foully spoken of, while the stench of the hair that Thorkill produced, as Othere did his horn for a voucher of his speech, slew many bystanders.

This is the regular myth of Loke, punished by the G.o.ds, lying bound with his own soils' entrails on three sharp stones and a sword-blade, (this latter an addition, when the myth was made stones were the only blades), with snakes' venom dripping on to him, so that when it falls on him he shakes with pain and makes earthquakes--a t.i.tan myth in answer to the question, "Why does the earth quake?" The vitriolic power of the poison is excellently expressed in the story. The plucking of the hair as a token is like the plucking of a horn off the giant or devil that occurs in some folk-tale.