<* 1 < ' (A D 1 a A I! JL 5781 A743271 STORIES AND BALLADS OF THE FAR PAST CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON I FETTER LANE, E.G. 4 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY ] CALCUTTA > MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. MADRAS j TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED STORIES AND BALLADS OF THE FAR PAST TRANSLATED FROM THE NORSE (ICELANDIC AND FAROESE) WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES BY N. KERSHAW ' > . , I . ' ' , . , > > > . , 1 > I J J >> I. CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1921 1 Preface few of the Fornaldar Sogur Northrlanda VERYhave hitherto been translated into English. The Volsungasaga is of course well known, but with this * exception the Stories of Icelanders,' and the 'Stories of the Kings of Norway' are probably the only sagas familiar to the majority of English readers. Of the four sagas contained in this volume only one the Thdttr of Sorli has appeared in English before, though the poetry which they contain has frequently been translated, from the time of Hickes's Thesaurus (1705). So far as I am' aware "no version of any of the Faroese ballads has appeared in English. Out of the great number which were collected during the i8th and rothS centuries L'-have chosen a few which deal with the same stories as the sagas translated here; and for purposes of comparison I have added a short extract from one of the Icelandic Rimur, as well as a Danish ballad and part of the Shetland Hildina. In accordance with general custom in works of this kind I have discarded the use of accents, un- familiar symbols, etc., except in a few Norse words which can hardly be anglicised. My thanks are due to the Syndics of the Cam- bridge University Press for undertaking the publi- VI PREFACE cation of this book, and to the staff for their unfailing courtesy. To Professor Thuren of Christiania I am indebted for kindly allowing me to print the melodies from his son's Folkesangen paa F^er^erne. I have also to thank many friends in St Andrews and Cambridge for help which they have kindly given to me in various ways, including Professor Lawson, Dr Mait- land Anderson and the staffs of the two University Libraries, and Mr B. Dickins. Especially I wish to thank Professor Chadwick to whom I am indebted for constant help and advice throughout the book. N. K. 2 November, 1920. 1 . .... * . r ' . j i *-^ J \ Table of Contents PART I SAGAS PAGE General Introduction .... 3 The Thattr of . Nornagest . 1 1 The Thattr of Sorli . 38 of The Saga Hromund Greipsson . 58 of . The Saga Hervor and Heithrek . 79 Appendix to Part I (The Combat at Sams0 and Hjalmar's Death Song) . 144 PART II BALLADS General Introduction . .153 Griplur I . .171 The Faroese Ballad of Nornagest . 176 The Faroese Ballad of Hjalmar and Angantyr 182 The Danish Ballad of Angelfyr and Helmer 186 The Faroese Ballad of Arngrim's Sons . 193 The Faroese Riddle Ballad (Gatu Rima) . 212 The Shetland Ballad of Hildina . 217 Notes . .220 List of editions and translations . 254 TO MY SISTER PART I SAGAS K. THE SAGAS GENERAL INTRODUCTION The following stories are taken from the Fornaldar- or ' Stories s'ogur Northrlanda, of Ancient Times relating to the countries of the North' a collection of Sagas edited by Rafn in 1 829 30 and re-edited by Valdimar Asmundarson in 1886-1891. The stories contained in this collection deal almost exclusively with times anterior to Harold the Fairhaired and the colonisation of (c. 860930) Iceland, and stop therefore where the better known stories relating to Iceland and the historical kings of Norway begin. Some of them relate to persons and events of the ninth century, while others are con- cerned with times as remote as the fourth or fifth centuries. Their historical value is naturally far c inferior to that of the Islendinga Sogur, or Stories of Icelanders' and the Konunga Sogur, or 'Stories of the Kings.' ' From the literary point of view also the Stories of Ancient Times' are generally much inferior to the others. The ' Stories of Icelanders' are derived from oral tradition, which generally goes back in more or less fixed form to the time at which the characters in the stories lived, and they give us a vivid picture of the persons themselves and of the ' conditions of life in their time. In the Stories of Ancient Times,' on the other hand, though there I 2 4 THE SAGAS [PT. is some element derived from tradition, often apparently of a local character, it is generally very meagre. More often perhaps the source of the stories is to be found in poems, notable instances of which will be found in Hervarar Saga and in V'ohunga Saga. In many cases, however, the stories without doubt contain a large proportion of purely fictitious matter. The texts of the 'Stories of Ancient Times' which have come down to us date as a rule from the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, though the actual MSS. themselves are generally later. Most of the stories, however, were probably in existence before this time. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200) was familiar with many of them, including the story of Hethin and Hogni 1 and one of the scenes recorded in 2 Hervarar Saga . And we are told that a story which seems to have corresponded, in its main outlines at least, to the story of Hromund Greipsson was com- 3 a in 1 1 posed and recited at wedding Iceland in 19 . But in many cases the materials of our stories were far earlier than this, though they no doubt underwent considerable changes before they assumed their present form. Indeed many stages in the literary history of the North are represented in the following translations. Of these probably the oldest is that section of the Hervarar Saga which deals with the battle between 1 Cf. Saxo Grammaticus, Dan. Hist., Book v, p. 160 (Elton's translation, pp. 197, 198). 2 Cf. cit. Book 166 Saxo, op. } v, p. (Elton's translation, p. 205). 3 Cf. Introduction to the Saga of Hromund Greipsson, p. 58 below. i] GENERAL INTRODUCTION 5 " the Goths and the Huns at Dylgia and on Dunheith and upon all the heights of Josur." The poetry here included in the saga dates even in its present form probably from the Viking Age, perhaps from the tenth century. But the verses themselves do not appear to be all of the same date. Some of them show a certain elaboration and a sense of conscious art, while others are comparatively bare and primitive in and contain features1 and there type very early ; is every probability that such poetry was ultimately derived from poetry composed at a time when the Goths were still remembered. This is not surprising in view of the fact that stories relating to the Goths were popular in English and German heroic poetry, as well as in the heroic lays of the North. Indeed we 2 know from Jordanes and elsewhere that heroic poetry was common among the Goths themselves and that they were wont to celebrate the deeds of their ancestors in verse sung to the accompaniment of the harp. This poem is no doubt much older than the saga. Originally it would seem to have been complete in itself; but many verses have probably been lost. Thus there can be little doubt that the prose passages in chs. xii xv are often merely a paraphrase of lost verses, though it must not be assumed that all the prose in this portion of the saga originated in such 3 a way . "It is difficult to tell... where the prose of 1 Cf. Heusler and Ranisch, Eddiea Minora (Dortmund, 1903), p. xii. 2 De Origine Actibusque Getarum (transl. C. C. Mierow, Princeton, 1915), cap. 5. 3 Cf. Heusler and Ranisch, op. cit., p. x ff. 6 THE SAGAS [PT. the manuscripts is to be taken as standing in the place of lost narrative verses, and where it fills a gap that was never intended to be filled with verse, but was always left to the reciter to be supplied in 1 his own way ." The difficulty, however, is greater in in others. some cases than The following pic- turesque passage from the opening of ch. 14 of the Hervarar Saga is a very probable instance of a paraphrase of lost verses : It happened one morning at sunrise that as Hervor was standing on the summit of a tower over the gate of the fortress, she looked southwards towards the forest and saw clouds of dust, arising from a great body of horse, by which the sun was hidden for a long time. Next she saw a gleam beneath the dust, as though she were gazing on a mass of gold fair shields overlaid with gold, gilded helmets and white corslets. The motif of a chief or his lady standing on the pinnacle of a tower of the fort and looking out over the surrounding country for an approaching army is a very common one in ballads. The motif of the above passage from Hervarar Saga, including the armour of the foe and the shining shields, occurs in the opening stanzas of the Danish Ballad De vare 1 which dates from the syv og syvsindstyve** ) probably 3 fourteenth it be later century (though may possibly ) and which derives its material ultimately from old 4 heroic lays . 1 Ker, Epic and Romance (London, 1908, 2nd ed.), p.