Egil’s Saga Read Online Free Page A

rather than fight in the open in disobedience to his aged father: “I may well humour my father in this, by being burnt indoors along with him, for I am not afraid of my death” (Nj. 127); in Kiartan, sending back his company and riding with but two followers on his last ride southward towards Laxriverdale (Ld. 48); and, in our own saga, in old Kveldulf watching the fate he from the first foreboded step by step draw nearer to his son.
    Of the sense of fellowship with the Gods I have already quoted instances. The nobility of this attitude of mind is well caught by Stevenson in one of his little febles, of the priest, the virtuous person, and the old rover with his axe: “At last one came running, and told them all was lost: that the powers of darkness had besieged the Heavenly Mansions, that Odin was to die, and evil triumph.
    “‘I have been grossly deceived’, cried the virtuous person.
    “‘All is lost now’, said the priest.
    “‘I wonder if it is too late to make it up with the devil?’ said the virtuous person.
    “‘O, I hope not’, said the priest. ‘And at any rate we can but try.—But what are you doing with your axe?’ says he to the rover.
    “‘I am off to die with Odin’, said the rover.” *
    This proud pagan spirit of fatalism and fellowship with, not subservience to, the ultimate Power, is implicit throughout the saga literature. It is, in my judgement, the deep underlying rock on which the greatness of that literature, as an expression of much that is finest and noblest in the human spirit, is founded and built.
    * Ari,
Libellus Islandorum
, ch. 1. Cf. Landn.
    *
The Travel Diary of a Philosopher
, Part III, ch. 26 (Jonathan Cape).
    *
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Tales and Fantasies
, vol. IV, p. 372, Edinburgh, 1897.
    THE SAGA
    So much for the foundations. The building itself is before our eyes in one of its most characteristic elevations, in the shape of
Egil’s Saga
. Here I will not waste time on trying to say more briefly what has been said, rightly and once and for all, by the late W. P. Ker in his masterpiece of inspired criticism,
Epic and Romance
. To complete our background, however, it may be useful to note a few of the salient features of that peculiar form of prose narrative which is Iceland’s contribution to the creative literature of the world.
    A saga may be roughly defined as a prose narrative which deals dramatically with historical material, and in which the interest is concentrated upon individual persons, their characters, actions, and destinies. Rough as it is, this definition will serve to indicate distinctions between the Icelandic prose epic and the products of other countries and other ages. A glance at some of these distinctions may be the readiest way towards an appreciation of what a saga essentially is.
    The saga is like Homer in that it is heroic in matter and in spirit: it is unlike, in that it is prose, not poetry; that its interest is more purely individual (the epic opposition of Trojan and Greek has no counterpart in the sagas: how far removed are the two attitudes is seen if we contrast the treatment of that opposition by Homer with the treatment in
Egla
of the opposition of the King and the great houses); that it eschews the supernatural and the marvellous, whereas the Gods in the
Iliad
are ever present, often as protagonists in the action, and the
Odyssey
is packed with magic, monsters, portents, and supernatural beings. Moreover, swift as is the movement of Homer, the action pauses continually for the introduction of poetic ornament, simile or description. The action of the saga never pauses except for the introduction of genealogical information.
    The historical books of the Old Testament are, save in the single circumstance of their being prose and not poetry, still further removed from the saga. Their outlook is national and theocratic in a far higher degree than Homer’s. French Romance, again, is epically national (Christendom against