Magic, Fate, and History: The Changing Ethos of the Vikings

by Rosalie H. Wax and brashly expropriated by Manny Olds.

Preface
I felt that the time had come for some anthropologist to introduce the rugged ancestors of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants into the company of our "underdeveloped" or "developing" peoples. I also wanted to check an arresting assertion made by Professor Toynbee (1934-39, II: 98-100, 427-33) that the embryonic Viking civilization had exhibited a precocious rationalism and a remarkable freedom from superstition. If the Northmen of the ninth and tenth centuries were as rationalistic and unsuperstitious as asserted, this, I thought, should be called to the attention not only of anthropologists and students of comparative religion but also of the followers of Max Weber, since, after recognizing that Western civilization was uniquely hostile to magic and traditionalism, that scholar had then traced the origin of this hostility to the rational ideology of the Hebrew prophets. Finally, I may justify my unusual choice of anthropological subject matter by confessing that the Old Scandinavians, with their preference for action even in the face of certain disaster, provided me with a refreshing change from the atmosphere of college faculty meetings. It occurred to me that most of these Old Icelandic and Old Scandinavian materials fell squarely into an area of investigation to which anthropologists and sociologists have been selectively inattentive. Anthropologists, at least the greater number, have studied the most primitive peoples they could find and sociologists the most civilized. If the former studied change, they tended to define it as an aberration from a primitive ideal; if the latter studied change they tended to look for the causes or factors that kept peoples from reaching the ideal of urbanization. Durkheim and Redfield, each in his own way, may have tried to bridge this gap, but each did so by concentration on a definition of the actual or ideal extremes. With such notable exceptions as W. I. Thomas, nobody has tried very hard to study and understand the people who are struggling in the middleon their own terms and not as deteriorating primitives or incomplete urbanites. Having come this far in my observations, I decided to learn to read the Old Icelandic and the modern Scandinavian languages and see what an exploratory study of the "gap" would reveal. At the beginning of my exploration, I had many good intentions. I hoped to throw some light on the process that Redfield called the transormation of the primitive world. I also hoped to discover and describe how the people of the late Viking age (850 to 1000) and the Icelancers of later centuries (1150-1300) looked at the world and at themselves. I intended to find out what lay behind Toynbee's impression that these people had developed "a fascinating and puzzling combination of self-confidence and pessimism, a precocious clarity and rationalism," a tremendous curiosity about the real

world as opposed to the world of the spirit, and a remarkable freedom from superstition and tradition." I further intended to check a strong personal hunch that some of the notions or conceptions that underlie western sciencenotions about the nature of matter and "scientific" evidence, the importance of the external world and of brute fact, the belief in self-determinationare rooted in the indigenous Weltanschauung of the northern Europeans and are not to be derived entirely from the gifted and long civilized peoples of the Mediterranean regions. If I had any basic premise it was the unprovable but reasonable assumption that a people cannot say or write anything without revealing a part of themselves and a part of their conception of what the world is, was, or ought to be. I did not, of course, expect that my explorations would give me a complete picture of a ninth or a twelfth century world view or Weltanschauung. But I did expect that if I studied the literature carefully, it would impress me with whatever notions, ideas, or conceptions its creators thought important. I worked away with more enthusiasm than prudence for several years, and among other things I learned that one of the hardships of entering an unexplored area is that no journal publisher knows what to do with your material. Anthropologists think an article on the Vikings belongs to Scandinavian Studies, and experts in the Scandinavian area think an article upon the Viking world view restates in strange dress what they have already perceived. Finally, in 1959 my husband suggested that we join forces in a comparative study of the ancient Hebrews and the Scandinaviansour object being to see what we could learn about the process of change from traditionalism to what Weber called rationalism. This study resulted in ourby now, somewhat notorioussequence of attacks on certain of the classic and currently popular anthropological definitions of magic, religion, and science (Wax and Wax, 1962, 1963, 1964) and developed in us a high regard for the works of de Angulo, Freuchen, Evans-Pritchard, Gluckman, Lee, Tempels, Carpenter, and others. But our attempt to set the stage for a theory that, at the least, would be rudely related to the data bearing on the process of transition, did not get my materials on the Northmen either polished or published, and when, in 1963, a research foundation refused us a grant on the grounds that we would probably do the work anyway (which they may have meant as not uncomplimentary), I became exasperated. If I am to work only for the sheer fun of it, I might as well go fishing. But like other and more noted personages, I was not to be allowed to escape my fate. At an annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association I ran into an editor who asked me reproachfully when I was planning to finish my monograph on the Vikings. I, as sometimes happens at these conventions, had been ignoring the wise precept of the Hvaml which states, "Over beer the bird of forgetfulness broods," and as a result of the forgetfulness I forthwith gave my word that I would finish the job. When the Wenner-Gren Foundation gave me the grant for which I asked, I had no recourse but to do the best I could. I have not been pedantically "scientific" in this study, mostly because I did not want to deform the phenomena I hope to understand. Perceiving an alien or different world view is very like learning the themes and patterns of alien musical compositions. If, for example, I suggest that the opening chorus of Bach's "Saint Matthew Passion" is based on

a particular chorale, the most efficient way to check my statement is to listen to both compositions. Similarly, if the reader wants to check any notion I attribute to the Old Scandinavian literature, the best way for him to find out how wrong I have been is himself to read that literature. I know that this present monograph has ignored important areas and has missed the mark in others. On the other hand, the reader may take some comfort in the fact that I make no important factual assertion about the Old Scandinavian views that has not previously been made by some expert. All I have done is to study the literature, distill something of its views of the world, and suggest some sequences of development from the most enchanted to the thoroughly disenchanted views. When I feel most satisfied with this work I am tempted to call it Hungrvaka (Appetizer), after an early Icelandic attempt to interest people in the lives of the saints. Perhaps this monograph, incomplete as it is, will arouse an appetite for more investigations into the largely unexplored territory lying between the land of the Little Community and the rarefied regions of the Great Traditions. When I feel most dissatisfied, I remind myself that Thr once tried to drink the ocean and pull Miar-Worm from the earth. And though all present, including Thr, thought that he had failed utterly, his efforts did create the tides and jerk loose one of the great serpent's feet.

INTRODUCTION
"The transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages is best seen as the reassertion of dominance by the native elements in each of the three chief parts of the Roman Empire. The bland cosmopolitan culture of Imperial timesitself a blend of Latin, Greek and Levantine ingredientsbegan to differentiate once more into vigorous localisms. A distinctive feature of the Islamic world, or of Byzantium, or of the West, may therefore be partly intelligible as the re-emergence of an indigenous trait." (Lynn White 1963: 280)

Culture History and Grand Theory

Generations of scholars have traced the intellectual lineages from the U.S. to England, France, and Germany, and thence through a chain whose nodal points are the Enlightenment, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Middle Ages, Imperial Rome, Hellenistic societies, and Classical Greece. The more broad-minded have digressed to include a smattering of the Arabs, some suitably ancient Hebrews, and some highly ancient Egyptians. In intellectual history, this has not been inaccurate because it is both self-confirming and self-generating. For as each successive generation of scholars penetrated more deeply into the analysis of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts, they created an intellectual culture that amalgamated the ancient literatures even more intimately with the European learned tradition. Thus, it is not incorrect to say that a good deal of European and American Kulturas expressed in the ideas and manners of the elitewas derived from other cultures. But to apply this notion in an anthropological or culturalhistorical senseas, for instance, Max Weber did when he traced the Calvinistic hostility toward magic to its origins in the denunciations of the Hebrew prophetsis plain nonsense. We today are environed by peoples who have seized upon Christianity, wrested

it from its missionaries, and reformulated it in accord with their native values and institutions. (Indeed, the argument could be advanced, and is implicit in much of the better theological history, that Christianity itself represents just such a transmutation of Judaism by members of the Hellenistic ecumene.) If this view is correctand it should at least be theoretically plausible to the anthropologically sophisticatedthen a basic source of Protestantism and its ethos must be sought in the native cultures of northern Europe, so that the use by Luther and Calvin of the Holy Scriptures should be regarded as being as much ideological (and nativistic) as causative. Knowing what was right, good, and proper from their own cultural background (which by this time was a wonderful mixture of their indigenous values, codes, and folk beliefs, plus missionaries' doctrines and reformulated Greek philosophies), and contemning the cultural peculiarities of the Latinsnot to mention the restrictions and demands of the Roman ChurchLuther, Calvin, and others sought and found justification for their reforms in the ancient Scriptures. But the argument now becomes nettlesome for the ethnohistorical anthropologist. Historycivilized historypreserves mostly the record of high culture, for, in the main, it reflects the interests of the scribe. As to the folk history of Europe, it is an aggregate of shreds and patches from various times, places, and peoples. To pretend that the Old Scandinavians represented more than one element of the folk background of Europe would be an exaggeration. To stand Weber on his head to see the genesis of Protestantism and the capitalist ethos in the existential anguish of Viking heroes would be folly. Yet, if we are to engage in the tracings of cultural genealogies, and to look for the origin of ideas and cultural themes in Hesiod and Plato, then we have an equal duty to look as best we can at the folk underpinnings of European civilization. In this book, I believe that I have demonstrated that such an examination need not be futile, and that the reader can discern, if not "the origins," then themes and ideas that are strikingly congruent with those later to be of importance in European science, religion, and art. In any case, the question of originsin the strict sense of who invented it and should get credit for itis, anthropologically speaking, immature. The communication of ideas among cultures is the stimulant to be emphasized, not the evolution of a culture in pristine isolation; and certainly this is illustrated by the outburst of literary creativity among the Old Scandinavians who came into contact with the civilized societies that had developed about the Mediterranean. On the other hand, what the Old Scandinavians chose to narratealbeit prodded by foreign influences, ideologies, and religionswas something unique among the cultures of the world and yet, in some respects, strangely familiar and moving to the modern denizen of Western civilization. My argument may be further clarified by applying the conceptual scheme that ethnological students of India, China, and Japan have begun to find so fruitful, namely the notions of the Great and Little Tradition (Redfield 1940: 40-59). The Little Tradition refers to the little community and to that which is transmitted informally (predominantly orally) from generation to generation; while the Great Tradition refers to the corps of disciples within a civilized society and to the special wisdom, preserved in scriptures, which they guard and transmit. Within the imperial societies of the ancient world, the two traditions often stood in tension with each other. The apostles of the great tradition tried to bring the true message to the proud-minded gentry and the simple-minded peasantry,

while the latter, in turn, attempted to interpret these high-faluting messages into policies meaningful within their own local round of existence. One classic set of examples is provided by traditional India, where the Brahminical custodians of the Vedic traditions have brought the true messages to the peasants of the villages. Another set of examples is provided by the Old Testament with the prophets as the representatives of the great tradition and the folk beliefs represented by the so-called cults of Baal. Applying this schema to Europe, we see Christianity (and the associated learning of the Hellenistic world) as the great tradition borne by the missionaries to the heathen of the north. There it encountered an ancient social and legal system, a code of manly excellence, a poetic and moral tradition (which, in its own fashion had faced the fact that blameless and honorable men may be visited by great evil), and, in addition, a great number of little traditions (which may have been much alike), by which each community and household maintained its relations with the gods and other supernatural beings. Vestiges and sometimes whole sections of these various indigenous traditions, both big and little, have been preserved in the riddles, spells, lays, tales, and proverbs of the eddas, in the sagas, and in the recorded laws. In any such contact between traditions, it would be an error to think of the greater tradition as simply and utterly eliminating its counterpart, and certainly in Medieval Europe, the Christian missionaries were too few and too powerless to wreak major alterations in the basic fabric of the folk cultures. In the long run, much greater changes were instituted by converted native zealots, kings and churchmen, who were able to redefine the new faith in terms that appealed to their followers, and sometimes use this new definition to their own self-interest.

The Organization of the Investigation

The Search for the Primitive
Very early in my investigation I discovered that the Old Scandinavian literature is not nearly so primitive, unsophisticated, or "little traditional" as an anthropologist might wish. Most of it was recorded or composed during the late twelfth and the thirteenth century by men who defined themselves as Christians and knew the fearsome Vikings of heathen times only as their old-fashioned great or great-great grandparents. Still, for men in this situation, the newly-literate Icelanders and other Scandinavian peoples did a unique job of what we today would call collecting and recording data. They set down the Elder Edda, an entire volume of miscellaneous heathen or heathen oriented poems, without, apparently, trying to alter or censor them. They preserved an even larger body of Skaldic poemsthe Vikings' favorite verse formby incorporating them into prose sagas. At the same time the Icelanders themselves wrote some remarkably accurate prose histories and less accurate "historical novels" relating the doings and deeds of their ancestors. In still other histories some of them recorded contemporary or near contemporary events.

It should be emphasized at the outset that the heathen works thus transmitted are often fragmentary, difficult to understand, and by no means easy to date. A few sound as if they came directly from the mouths of what Lvi-Strauss forthrightly calls savages, but most sound as if they were the works of reflective or quasi-sophisticated barbarians trying to make ethical or artistic sense out of changing times and values. Still others show Christian influence. Nevertheless, it may fairly be said that no other people undergoing the throes of extreme cultural and religious change, managed to preserve so much of the genuine or near genuine poetry of their "preliterate"[1] ancestors. While the Hebrews did preserve a great volume of ancient materials, they also censored a very great deal of that which was Little Traditional, excluding it from their canon as Canaanitish and impious. And the Hellenic literature retains but little of the very words of the men who had themselves sacked Troy. If we repress our anthropological fascination with the earliest, oldest, "before the Christians or the White Men came" aspects of a culture, and turn to the literature written down and composed in the late twelfth and the thirteenth century, we have something else again. There is here volume upon volume of a spontaneously recorded cultural diary of what happened and was happening to these people during the two or three centuries in which they were transformed and did transform themselves from members of a folk society to members of the civilized ecumene of their time. Indeed, I do not believe that there is any other record of comparable richness, volume, and interest in the world.

Further Search for the Primitive

There are many ways of studying world views in literature. One is to disregard precise questions of date and provenience, read widely, and see what basic patterns or ideas emerge. There is much to be said for this carefree and hedonistic approach: it is interesting and exciting, and one is likely to perceive important phenomena which might escape the attention of an investigator who stays too closely within the protective walls of a preconceived hypothesis or an arbitrarily defined period of time. Indeed, it was by this approach that I first became aware of some of the most important general characteristics of the Old Scandinavian literature: its extraordinary tough-mindedness and dislike for fantasy and gross exaggeration, its obsession with motion or action, its focus on the individual, and its existential resolution of the conflict between the individual and his fate. But to build such impressions and insights into a satisfactory picture of cultural transformation and the process of becoming civilized is another matter. One obvious way of proceeding would be to divide the data into three categories: (1) the most primitive or unsophisticated works; (2) the body of works which are neither primitive nor sophisticated, and for which we have no other word but barbarian [2] (3) the most sophisticated or civilized works. With such categories one might emerge with a characterization of three world viewsa very early or magical world view (shreds and patches of which are still embedded in some of the Eddic poems and the myths), a barbarian or partially sophisticated view (exemplified in most of the literature), and a very sophisticated view (exemplified in the works of Snorri Sturluson, the great Icelandic

historian (1179-1241), and some of his contemporaries. If, to these three characteristic views one added a knowledge of the peoples' history and their experiences, one might be able to say something significant about the process by which one world view was mixed with or exchanged for another. This plan of procedure, however, had a fatal flaw: there are very few works in the Old Scandinavian literature which are genuinely primitive. What we have are a great many collected poems and mythological stories which may but probably do not reflect the authentic view of the ancient heathen. The odds are all in favor of their reflecting a late or an elite heathen point of view or the view of a sophisticated litterateur like Snorri who retold certain of the myths in his own words so that the young men of his time might be able to compose skaldic verse properly. At first, I tried to deceive myself about this situation and boldly wrote an impressionistic description of what the "earliest" mythological view had been like. But I was never happy with this description, for though it might be fairly correct in detail, it left too many important questions unanswered. Besides, I felt foolish talking about change or transition when I could not be sure how things had been at the beginning. It was at this time that my husband and I enlarged the scope of our investigations and began the comparative study of world views in transition referred to above. From this study, we emerged with, among other things, a fairly clear and satisfying ideal typical picture of how many genuinely primitive people see the world. We called this picture, which, in large part, was based on the works of Redfield, Evans-Pritchard, Hallowell, and de Angulo, the magical or the enchanted world view. (See chapter 4). Using this model, I now perceived that some of the early poemsand especially some of the sagaswere even less primitive or enchanted than I had thought. Conversely, I was now able to identify what probably are some of the most ancient notions in the literature, and give the reader a fairly reliable, if rather skeletal picture of what the truly enchanted Scandinavian world view once was like.

A Guide to the Contents

The work as it now stands consists of a series of essays, each of which is focussed on a particular genre. I began with the literary genres, rather than with general discussions of such notions as impersonalization, scepticism, or rationality, because I wished first to try to understand each variety of literature in its own right, and second, because I wanted to see whether any particular kind of enchantment or disenchantment was specifically related to a particular genre. In chapter 2, I present a brief sketch of what is generally known about the culture and history of the Vikings and the Icelanders. In chapter 3, I present my impressionistic observations on the general Old Scandinavian notions about motion, matter, and space. I then discuss the ideal typical enchanted world view, using the Old Scandinavian myths as exemplificatory material. In chapter 5, 1 describe something of what the Old Scandinavians meant by law, comparing their views with those of certain African peoples, and discussing the degree to which these various legal systems diverge from the enchanted world view. There follows a chapter on the skaldic

verse, which, though it is the most authentic and unchanged of all the Vikings' literature, is also the hardest to understand. In chapter 7, 1 come to grips with the phenomenon of disenchantment. I present the evidence which leads me to conclude that certain of the heroic lays of the ninth and tenth centuries reflect an ethic or code which defined the relationship between man and his fate in a relatively new and unmagical fashion. I further suggest that this heroic ethic may mark the beginning of a profound change in moral perspective, a change which culminated in the astonishingly disenchanted and sophisticated world view of certain of the Icelandic saga writers. In chapter 8, I discuss the Vikings' tough-minded proverbs and touch on the possibility of disenchantment among the common folk. Next I focus on the sagas and discuss the most civilized of the elite Icelanders' literary achievements. In the concluding chapter I suggest that the heroic ethic (or ethic of manly excellence as some authors call it) is the most explicitly antimagical of the themes appearing in this literature. I further suggest that the Reformation may usefully be viewed as an eruption of accumulated tensions between the political and moral notions of the native north European populations and the political and moral notions of the Roman ecclesiastical establishment, and I discuss the extent to which north European empiricism may have influenced western science. Finally, I present my reasons for concluding (contrary to Toynbee) that the Northmen were not more rational or "precociously scientific" than any other peoples of their time.

The Literature as Data

In simplest terms, the Old Scandinavian literature may be divided into Skaldic verse, Eddic verse, the sagas and histories, and the recorded laws. The Skaldic and Eddic verse are universally recognized as heathen inventions. The sagas and histories are prose accounts by Christian scholars of events (real and imaginary), which, for the most part, occurred in late heathen timesor during the century and a half in which some people were heathen, some Christian, and some followed the creed that was most convenient. Specialists still debate the degree to which the men who wrote the sagas used oral sagas as their source material. Laws, of course, are usually not classified as a type of literature, but as an anthropologist I have found them extremely useful, if not indispensable.

Skaldic Verse
The greater part of the verse composed by the Vikings was called skaldic. Though it was probably invented in Norway [3], it reached a pinnacle of artistic development among the Icelanders in the ninth and tenth centuries. A genre of an almost incredible complexity, it is marked by an extravagant use of the implied simile, internal assonance and rhyme, freedom of work position, sentence separation and, in addition, multiple meaning or interpretations. Many verses could not be composed, appreciated, or understood without an arduous and consciously acquired technical education. Though the composition of skaldic verse declined immediately after the Christian conversion, the verses of the great (and even of the inferior) skalds and the rules of composition were remembered, and in the thirteenth century Snorri Sturluson wrote a text to aid young men in re-learning the art. (It is this work which we today call Snorri's Edda or The Younger Edda.) Specialists agree that some of the skaldic verses are the exact words uttered by the poetbe he

Viking or farmer of early days, or dilettante of later timesfor the original form is so complicated, not to say distorted, that a stanza could not easily be reshaped. Moreover, a great deal of the skaldic verse was inserted into or perhaps used as a framework for prose sagas about notable skalds, so we frequently know who wrote a particular poem, when he wrote it, and a great deal about the circumstances under which it was supposed to have been composed. Beyond doubt then, the skaldic verse is our most valid and genuine literary data on the heathen or Viking age. On the other hand, much of it is so complicated and abstruse that it cannot be understood today, even by experts. Indeed, it is doubtful if some of the verses were completely understood by the poet's contemporaries.[4] For the English reader, the most helpful sources on the skaldic verse are Hollander (1945), Turville-Petre (1953), and Einarsson (1957:44-68).

Eddic Verse
Eddic verse is a repository of the mythology and much of the heroic lore of the Teutonic race. It reflects both the ethical views and the culture of the North during heathen and early Christian times (Hollander 1962: ix). Most of the surviving Eddic poems were collected and recorded sometime in the latter part of the thirteenth century by an anonymous Icelander. Others were preserved because they were incorporated in sagas or recorded in a Latin synopsis by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish scholar of the twelfth century. Eddic verse is relatively simple and straightforward in form, though the poems are very diverse in subject and content. They comprise the famous cosmic prophecy, Vlusp; didactic poems crammed with mythological lore; collections of wise saws, spells, oaths, dialogues that sound like the remnants of ancient dramatic rituals; lays about wonderful heroes like Helgi or Sigurth; lays based on the Nibelungen story; the laments of tragic heroines, and verbal contests of insult. Though based in a rich and thoroughly magical, ancient folk tradition and set in ancient forms, many of the Eddic poems were composed or recomposed by relatively sophisticated heathens who were aware that they were living in a rapidly changing society. Thus, one can never be absolutely sure whether a particularly interesting theme or point of view is Uralt, whether it represents a late heathen little tradition, a late heathen sophisticated tradition, or a notion tacked on by a literate scholar familiar with thirteenth century medieval thought. On the other hand, scholars have been able to assign rough dates to a fair number of the poems. There is, for example, general agreement that the lays of Vlund, Atli (Atlakvia), and Hamir are relatively old even as they stand (ninth century? ), that the lays of Grimnir, Skirnir, Hirbara, and the Flyting of Loki date from about the tenth century, that Baldr's Dream, the Short Seeress' Prophecy, and the lay of Svipdag date from the twelfth, and that the lay of Alvis and the prophecy of Gripir were not composed until the thirteenth. This dating can be of considerable help, especially when, as happened in this investigation, a particularly sophisticated phenomenon (the opposition of man and fate) manifests itself as emphatically in the fragmentary lays of the ninth century as in the better preserved poems of the twelfth and thirteenth. One of the Eddic poems, the Hvaml (The Sayings of in) contains material which sounds as if it comes directly from the mouths of hard-headed, close-fisted, practical "fighting-farmers," rather than from the mouths of poets praising proud, reckless, lavish

and high-minded chieftains. Unfortunately, the Hvaml is a conglomeration, the parts of which cannot be accurately dated, though we know, from other sources, that men were quoting some of the verses in the tenth century. I have given this poem a chapter to itself, not only because it gives us a picture of what the common man was like, but because it provides an interesting contrast to the elegant and uncompromising ideals of the gentry. (Hollander's translation of the Edda [1962] contains especially balanced and helpful information about dating and provenience. See also Einarsson [1957:14-431 for cogent discussions.)

The Laws
If one defines law in its broadest senseas the fundamental structure of social order and moralityone may find data about the law in many of the poems and virtually all of the sagas. In addition, there are the codes of Iceland and Norway [5] drawn up in the tenth but written down in the late 12th and 13th centuries, and several discussions in English of the Icelandic or Norwegian laws (Larson 1935; Jones 1935; Sveinsson 1953:8-34). In this work I have used law primarily as a means of familiarizing the reader with the notions of social order, for it is very difficult to understand much of the literature proper without a fair notion of what these people meant by law. The reader may feel that I am too casual about using Norwegian codes to explain the behavior of Icelanders, and perhaps I am. On the other hand, most of the early settlers of Iceland came from Norway and their descendants returned for frequent visits. So far as I have been able to determine, the fundamental notions of right and social order remained much the same.

The SagasThe Icelandic Literary Efflorescence

As the Northmen became Christians, those who had the opportunity and the desire acquired Latin and Latin literacy. The notion of the native script on the Roman model occurred first to the Icelanders. The script devised, they seem to have taken to writing with the energy and passion that their ancestors devoted to the search for wealth and renown. The sheer volume of pages derived from about 1100 to 1550 is almost unbelievable. There remain today about seven hundred skin manuscripts, and experts believe that these represent less than one tenth of the original (Hallberg 1962: 47). During the twelfth century, when the powerful families were having their young men ordained and trained in continental learning, the Icelanders produced sober, utilitarian, and highly factual works: native traditions, genealogies, brief but scrupulously accurate histories, and lists of laws. Simultaneously they translated the lives of saints and sermons into their own language, employing (Sveinsson 1953: 108) "a manly and forceful language, charmingly awkward and unadapted to book learning." Native and foreign matters were sometimes combined, Latin grammar with native poetic theory, and there was a remarkable interest in what we today would consider the exact sciences, mathematics, calendrical computations, and phonetics. Most notable of the authors of this

period was Ari Thorgilsson the Learned (1067/8-1148), the author of a remarkable history, the Book of the Icelanders (slendingabk), which follows the rule of "nothing but the truth" (Einarsson 1957: 106-109). The separation of the chieftainship from churchly office and the subsequent divergence of interest between churchmen and chieftains was accompanied by a divergence in literary form and style. Churchmen began to follow the more parochial continental models, producing increasingly fantastic miracle tales. Thus, in the now distinct area of "religion," a new variety of other-worldly Christianity rapidly swallowed up the matter-of-fact, "materialist" view that had characterized much of the late heathen literature.The chieftains, on the other hand, turned their literary energies to writing the Icelandic sagas and they produced what has been designated (Hallberg 1962: 1) "collectively as the sole original contribution of Scandinavia to world literature." The most notable writer of this period was the lawspeaker and historian, Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), the author of Heimskringla (History of the Kings of Norway), the Younger Edda, and, probably, Egils saga (Einarsson 1957: 115-120). Broadly speaking, one might say that the Icelandic literary efflorescence began with the acquisition of a native script and took the form of a naive but vital interest in sober scholarship and elementary science. With the division of labor between church and chieftain, part of this energy was turned into a kind of religious propaganda which differed considerably from the Great Traditional thought of the church. Another part was turned into the development of a literary style which, though based on the heathen tradition, was transformed into something both new and unique. Though modern specialists distinguish between family sagas, biographical sagas, and historical sagas, and also between such works as Snorri Sturluson's sagas about the kings of Norway and the Sturlunga saga (a contemporary account of the family conflicts of the late twelfth and thirteenth century), there is no evidence that the creators of these works made these distinctions. However they considered them, they were all thought of as belonging to the same genre. On the other hand, Icelanders and Norwegians made a clear distinction between sagas in which an author had written about events in an objective, restrained and matter-of-fact style, and sagas in which a hero would be credited with all manner of fantastic feats. The latter were based either on old Scandinavian legends, in which case they were called fornaldar sgur (sagas of ancient times), or on imported continental romances, in which case they were called lygi sgur (lying sagas). By the end of the twelfth century Norwegians also were writing in the vernacular, specializing in prose translations of the Anglo-Norman metrical romanceslike Tristan and Percivalby which means the Norwegian kings hoped to introduce cosmopolitan chivalry into their courts. Norwegian writers also produced a vernacular resume of the Kings' Sagas, recorded the ancient and contemporary legal codes, and produced an interesting work on courtly etiquette, Konungsskuggsj (The King's Mirror). A more detailed description of the saga literature appears at the beginning of chapter 8.

Chapter 2. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND [1]

The Vikings (ca. 793-1 000)
Ibn Fadln [2] a sophisticated Moslem who had encountered a group of Swedish Vikings in Russia in the tenth century, opined that they were the filthiest people he had ever seen: they all washed themselves in the same tub of water, and they made no attempt to seek privacy when they lay with their female slaves. The Anglo-Saxon chroniclers denounced the Danes for their cleanliness:. the Northmen bathed every day, combed their hair, put on fine raiment, and then tried to seduce the maids and matrons of England. Movies today portray the Vikings as piratical barbarians who spent most of their time harrying and looting the "settled" and "peaceful" Christian peoples of Europe. And popular history books describe the Northmen as one of the several barbarian peoples who "delayed" the cultural development of western Europe by their attacks and depredations. But though the Old Scandinavians of the Viking Age idealized their ferocious warriors and saw fighting as an enjoyable way of gaining fame and fortune, each man probably defined himself not as dirty or clean, warlike or anti-Christian, nor even as a Viking, farmer, or trader, but as an individual member of a particular, property-owning, bilateral family. The family might be influential and own a great deal of land, or it might be poor and ordinary and own but a hut and a few sheep. In any case, the family and its land were managed and defended by the most competent male member, with the aid and assistance of the kin and dependents who resided with him. Younger brothers and sons strove to increase their personal wealth through trading, fishing, raiding, or taking service with kings who needed fighting men. Poor families or those of modest means attached themselves to, or took sides with, the influential man who gave them the best deal. Indeed, a major criterion of the status of a landed man was the number of free men whom he could get to follow and support him in defense of his property, in a legal dispute at the general assembly, or on a raiding expedition. Defending one's rights, one's property, and the good repute of one's kinfolk was an essential part of being a man, and in this sense every free man was a potential fighter. Raiding or harrying nearby farms or districts was a common way of paying back a grudge or insult, and this meant, of course, that every farm or estate had to be manned. Raiding was seen as an honorable, exciting, and profitable adventure undertaken during the summer by a spontaneously formed group of men from the same community. If they could perpetrate a successful raid on the folk of a nearby district, so much the better. But if they could get more loot with less risk by venturing farther, they would make a longer expedition. The life of the professional warrior had a special glamour, and a young man who particularly liked to fight might spend his youth in the service of a king or earl and participate in the forays, raids, and occasional battles by which the kings sought to defend or expand their lands and power. If he were lucky such a young man would return with wealth and renown, settle down with or near his kin, and marry. All men did not have the

skill or the inclination to go a-Viking or become professional warriors and a young man might prefer to stay at home and help his father or uncle defend and run the family property. But in this case he still had to be willing and able to fight, both to keep what he had and to be regarded as a man. Recent archaeological investigations suggest that just prior to the first Viking raids on Christian Europe the inhabitants of Scandinavia were increasing not only in numbers but in general prosperity and cultural complexity. For several centuries the Vikings-to-be had followed a diversified economy, supplementing cattle raising with agriculture, hunting, fishing, and energetic and enterprising trading. Along with these pursuits they had also become competent iron workers and had developed a hitherto unparalleled skill in ship building and navigation. It appears likely, therefore, that they took to raiding the outlanders not out of dire need but because they tried it and found it very profitable. Besides, they were feeling their oats. When climatic conditions permitted, they grew not one but many cereals, and, where possible, they raised cows, dairy cattle, horses, oxen, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs, and cats. Some even caught and trained polar bear cubs. They constructed different types of ships and buried their dead in many different ways. This flexibility is especially striking when, as a conscientious anthropologist, one tries to describe their dwellings. In the Scandinavian homeland they built great rectangular "long houses" with central fireplace and roof supported by freestanding inner posts. These long houses appear before and during the Viking age and they were, very probably, the imposing farmhouses of chieftains. On the British Isles, Iceland, and in Greenland they built houses of whatever material was availablegrass-sod, turf, or even lava. In Greenland they changed the form of their dwelling many times, from a long hall to a hall with various annexes to a kind of passage house and finally to large central houses. In general, the common form of settlement was the isolated farm or homestead, though villages, trading towns, and finally, large military camps or barracks appeared in Scandinavia proper during the late Viking Age. In some respects the early Vikings seem more like certain of the frontiersmen who settled the Appalachian sections of what is now the United States than they were like their contemporaries in Medieval Europe. Most men lived on their own land, farmed it as they chose, raised some livestock, hunted, and fished. In the spring they might organize or join a trading or raiding expedition. Heavy work, like peat digging, fence laying, and manuring the fields, was done by thralls or bondmen. The holdings of a free man might be modest, but he saw himself as his own master and took his rights for granted. Men of humble origin could and did gain wealth, prestige, and power, although the fact that they were not of high birth would not be forgotten by their neighbors. Those of high birth were expected by nature to be brave, proud, ambitious, and generous toward followers or dependents; if they did not live up to these expectations, they might end by having no followers at all. A free man had social obligations to his kin, his king (if he had one), his local community, his district chieftain, and his friends, whether human or divine. He was, of

course, expected to support and protect his dependents. The kinship system was bilateral, and though poems and sagas speak of cases of warm love and loyalty between husband and wife, law and custom indicate that the individual's fundamental loyalty was first to his father's and then to his mother's kin. Ill feeling or violence between groups of kindred was controlled by the blood feud and by an elaborate system of fines or wergeld, so that the man who killed or injured the member of another kindred might in turn be killed or, alternatively, find himself and his kin out of pocket. This system of keeping the peace seems to have been somewhat disrupted by immigration and expansion, for a powerful chieftain, with many hired followers, could risk killing a man who had no relatives or friends nearby to avenge him. A free man's relationship to his local chieftain or to the head of an expedition was regulated by contract rather than by inherited status. Whether of high or modest family, he was, theoretically at least, expected to select the leader under whose protection he wished to live. If he did not get on with a local chieftain he might shift allegiance or move to another area.[3] The same principle applied to trading or raiding voyages. Such contracts might be entered into for the duration of an expedition, or, in the case of a landowner or hired warrior, for many years. They could be terminated without rancor by either party and ambitious or restless young men might serve under several leaders. The relationship between a king, earl, or war chief and his housecarls or "hired men" was likewise personal and not familial or tribal. A young man would enter the services of a war lord with the understanding (ceremonially recognized in an elaborate oath) that he would repay the generosity of the lord by fighting for him to the death. Celebrated instances of these fighting corps standing and dying to the last man are too numerous to mention. (This system of obligations between chieftain and warrior is one of the most enduring in north Europe. It is described by Tacitus in the first century and it continued in much the same basic form until long after the conversion to Christianity. After the conversion, however, the idea appeared that the claims of a lord were superior to those of the kinWhitelock 1952: 29-47.) However, the hierarchical system of lord and servant was not the essential feature, for during the late Viking Age, a group of well-born freebooters set up a self-governing warrior society in Wendland (modern Prussia) calling themselves the Jmsvkings (Hollander 1965). Indeed, the deep and enduring friendships between men who were partners in war or peace were very important, and such friendships are often celebrated in the literature of the time. Cases at law, new legislation, the selection of kings, and other weighty matters, were taken up at the district meeting or Thing. This peculiarly vigorous institution, which in its primitive form impressed Tacitus in 100 B.C., still flourishes today in Iceland. In altered and elaborated form it persists in the procedures followed by the Parliaments of Britain, the Congress of the United States, the United Nations, and other governmental bodies. But during the pre-Viking and Viking Age the Thing also functioned as a district meeting at which all manner of social activitiestrade, gossip, marriage contractsmight be carried on in addition to the legal settlement of disputes. In early Viking times, when the Northern lands were divided into many districts inhabited by loosely associated extended families, a king was nominated by the most powerful and influential men. But the king's powers were drastically limited by the Thing, and, as Brnsted (1956:241) remarks: "it

was difficult, virtually impossible, for the king to take a decision in opposition to the Thing or chieftains, who were his equal in all but name." But though the Things limited the powers of the kings, they were parliaments rather than open meetings. Real power lay in the hands of the district leaders or representatives, accompanied and supported by their tenants or hired men. A poor person of little influence could not get a case heard unless he obtained the support of a chieftain. The status of women in Old Scandinavia seems to have been extraordinarily high. This is suggested by the laws, which took women's rights as a matter of course. For example, "If a man slays a woman he shall be outlawed just as if he has slain a man. If a woman slays a man, she shall be outlawed, and her kinsmen shall remove her from the land" (Larson 1935:132). While one suspects that women's status and influence in any society is never easily assessed by an outsider, one is impressed by the fact that the Old Scandinavian poets and prose writers consistently treat their female characters like persons and not like clay figures. Sexual distinctions are accepted as part of the order of the universe, but admirable qualities like loyalty, courage, competence, or integrity, or vices like cowardice, stinginess, or stupidity, are not consigned to either sex. Harassed male characters of the sagas sometimes remark that "Women's counsel is cruel," but this is probably a statement of blunt fact rather than an expression of denigration. On the other hand, men seem to have had more sexual freedom than women. Kings and jarls (earls) might have several wives and concubinage was common. Bondwomen were at the services of their masters, though decent men were expected to acknowledge and rear their offspring. (For an interesting discussion of women of Viking times see Oxenstierna 1955:190-213.)

The Expansion of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries

Most people envisage the Old Scandinavians as reckless warriors who raided Europe and the British Isles sometime in the Middle Ages and reached the New World before Columbus. Their less publicized activities are even more impressive. Northmen from what is now Norway established colonies in the British Islesin the Orkneys, Hebrides, Shetlands, and Man. From Norway and the islands they proceeded to Iceland and Greenland, where they established a sizeable colony and reached the coast of North America. [4] In Ireland they set up raiding bases. From what is now Sweden they established themselves in Novgorod and Kiev and, via the great rivers, traded and raided as far as Byzantium, Baghdad, and Baku. In the eight-forties, Vikings raided the coastal towns of Spain and, when the Moors proved to be able fighters, they went on to assault cities on the coast of North Africa and Italy. Above all else, the Vikings (Bloch 1964: 1, 17) excelled in the navigation of rivers, being experts not only with sail and oar, but in towing and portaging. Though no one doubts that the Northmen were brave and formidable warriors, it is a historical fact that they raided and traded in a hardheaded and calculating fashion. If a town or district put up a strong resistance or was difficult to reach, it was passed by for richer or more convenient areas. Thus, for a long time, the Franks and the Saxons, being

closest and richest, bore the brunt of the raids. The Frankish nobles conceived the convenient device of king the peasantry to raise the Danegeld. If the Vikings appeared, they were bribed to go away; if not, the nobles kept the tax. The sums paid were very large. Thirteen Danegelds were levied on the Franks between 845 and 926; the seven whose figures are known total 39,700 pounds of silver. This does not include the foodstuffs, wine or slaves, that might be demanded or appropriated in addition to the Danegeld. The Anglo-Saxons, led by Alfred, put up a shrewd and exasperating resistance. Nonetheless, many of the invaders settled in England, and left an indelible impression on the English language (Jesperson 1905: 61-86). Others settled along the coastal regions of France, and in 911 Charles the Simple gave Normandy to a Norse chieftain called Ranulf (Rollo). By the end of the tenth century raiding took on a grander and more broadly organized aspect, with the kings and jarls of Norway and Denmark organizing large expeditions. In 991 1afr Tryggvason raided England with ninety-three ships. The English, too, paid Danegeld: 10,000 pounds in 991; 16,000 pounds in 994; 24,000 pounds in 1002; 36,000 pounds in 1007; and 48,000 pounds in 1012. In 1013 King Svein of Denmark put a stop to this piratical inflation by invading England and settling there. In 1016, Canute, Svein's son, was chosen king by the English. Sixty years later, in 1066, England was again invaded by a Norwegian army under King Harald Hardruler. The English defeated King Harald, but within a few weeks, were forced to face Duke William of Normandy at Hastings.

Developments in Iceland
Iceland was settled during the period 870 to 930 by independent Norwegian farmers who, according to tradition, were unwilling to submit to the demands of King Harald Fairhair. The story is that Harald, who "unified" Norway by forcing neighboring kings to recognize him as their superior, attempted to deprive the independent farmers or tract owners of rights to their hereditary lands (Gaythorne-Hardy 1925). Rather than submit, some organized expeditions of kinfolk and followers, and emigratedfirst to the Shetlands, Orkneys, or Hebrides, from where they went a-viking, and later to Iceland, where they occupied extensive sections of land and apportioned them among their dependents. While the settlers had other important motivations, the fact that they and their descendants chose to emphasize their traditional independence from any central authority is significant. Also significant is the fact that from the time of the settlement until their submission to Norway in 1261-64, these settlers levied no tax on themselves except for small contributions to maintain the temples. For some two hundred years, the energies of the Icelanders seem to have been expended largely in the labors of settlement. They raised stock, exploited their rich fishing grounds, traded, and, on occasion, fought as mercenaries abroad. Egils saga (Eddison 56-60) gives us an excellent description of how Skallagim, on emigrating to Iceland. cared for his cattle and sheep, built ships, set men to fishing, sealing, and egg-taking, and even built a forge; thus, as the saga puts it, he "set his estate on many feet." Enterprising young men became the greatest globetrotters of their time, visiting the British Isles and the

Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Irish, and English courts. They went to Russia and Byzantium, and some Icelanders even served as Varangians, bodyguards to the emperor (Einersson 1957:12). If they were lucky, they returned to Iceland wealthy men. In 982 Eric the Red was outlawed for three years and used his period of banishment to organize an expedition and explore Greenland. The fact that the Icelanders established a Parliament in the year 930 A.D. is sometimes taken as evidence that they were the first folk to develop a popular form of government. But anyone familiar with the political and legal systems of the relatively sophisticated tribal peoples, Africans, Asians, or North American Indians, is more likely to see the Icelandic Parliament or Althing as an attempt to maintain and formalize an ancient and traditional form of legal control in a new situation. One might say that the Icelanders brought the idea of a general assembly to Iceland, clung to it through the stress of changing situations, refined it, and gave it a formal expression. The Icelanders were, moreover, the first people in Northern Europe to leave us a detailed record of their energetic attempts to maintain their indigenous political system, both against the trend for centralization of power under a king and against the bureaucratic demands of the Christian church. Since the problems of keeping the peace are basic to any world view, and since many of the noted Icelandic sagas are as much legal case histories as they are anything else, we will here give a brief description of the Icelandic system. The only genuine administrative unit of Iceland was the goor, the office and domain of a goi, the man who was both the ceremonial leader and the chieftain of the goor. [5] The power of a goi depended on the number and quality of men he could attract as followers or thingmen. Thingmen were expected to stand with and support their goi in matters affecting the goor, and the goi, on his part, was expected to aid and protect his thingmen. At the time of the settlement, a prominent man who wished to be recognized as goi customarily built a temple on his land where, thereafter, he functioned as a ceremonial leader. He and the subsequent goar maintained the temple at their own expense, though all thingmen were supposed to pay a small temple tax. The relationship between goi and thingmen rested on the consent of both parties. A goi could accept whomever he wished into his Thing, and a thingman could sever his relationship with one goi and enter the Thing of another. Though the goorwas hereditary, it could be sold, temporarily transferred, or divided and held in partnership (Hallberg 1962:9-10). A goi did not have much opportunity to exploit his thingmen. As Einarsson (1957:10) puts it: "he had to be content to be primus inter pares, working or living off his own land like everyone else." Instead of the old "peace-family" of their ancestors, the small farmers of Iceland organized hreppar, roughly corresponding to American "townships," which held pasture and fishing rights in common, took care of the poor and infirm, and gave some mutual insurance against losses by fire.

The Althing, the Icelandic General Assembly, was established in June of 930. It seems to have been a great annual get-together, during which the participants camped in canvasroofed shelters and transacted all manner of social and economic business, settling debts, arranging marriages or voyages, relating news and stories, playing games, and giving beer parties for friends. The most serious, and perhaps the most exciting and entertaining function of the Althing was the settling of legal disputes and the making of laws. Legislative powers were vested in the lgrtta, which consisted of thirty-six and later forty-eight goar. Judicial powers were vested in a court of thirty-six members. In time this court became too cumbersome and it was divided into four district courts. The presiding officer of the lgrtta was called the Law Speaker. Elected for a term of three years, he was required to know the body of the law from memory and recite all of it before the Althing during his term of office. There was no executive body, because a successful litigant was himself responsible for carrying out a judgment on the unsuccessful party. This was not as inefficient as it first sounds, because a man (or woman) who wished to begin a suit first attempted to get the support of as many relatives and friends as he could. If he were poor and powerless, he would try to get the support of his goi or other men of influence. If a man did not get sufficient backing, he would usually not begin his suit. But if, on the other hand, he went to the Thing with a large following and won his case, his backers would help him carry out the judgment. Skill in sharp legal practice was greatly admired. Cumbersome or inefficient practices might be changed. For example, the decisions of the District Courts were supposed to be unanimous but since this left many cases unsettled, a Fifth or High Court was set up which, on appeal, could decide a case by a majority ruling. The first settlers followed various and mixed religious traditions. [6] Some were heathen when they arrived; others had become Christians during their sojourn on the British islands. Some were nominally Christians but called on heathen deities in specific or difficult situations. Still others seem to have been indifferent to deities or cults "trusting neither in the White Christ nor the Red Thr, but in their own might and main" (Jones 1935:140). One thing is quite clear: a man might practice what rites he pleased so long as he did not give offense to others. The formal adoption of Christianity by the Althing was a considered affair of convenience, in which the General Assembly decided that all Icelanders should submit to baptismwith certain reservations in order to placate the over-zealous and ambitious King of Norway. The account of the conversion is so characteristically Icelandic that it might be well to present it here. [7] For a hundred years, the settlers heathen, Christian, eclectic, or sceptic had lived in relative amity. But in the last decade of the tenth century, lafr Tryggvason, the King of Norway, an ex-Viking and fanatic Christian convert, sent a personal missionary to Iceland. This man promptly got into trouble with the Icelanders and killed some of them. He returned to Norway with the report that the Icelanders were hostile to Christianity. Thereupon lafr arrested and imprisoned the sons of those prominent Icelanders who happened to be in Norway and threatened to kill some and maim others. Two prominent Icelanders who were already Christians interceded with the king and promised to try their hand at getting their countrymen to accept Christianity.

The next summer the matter was taken up at the Althing and Christian and heathen factions almost came to blows. "One man after another began to call witness, and declare himself out of law with the others, the Christians and the heathen... Then came a man running and saying that earthfire (a volcanic explosion) was coming up in Aulfus [Oelfus] and that it would overrun the homestead of Thorod goi. Then the heathen men began to say, 'It is no wonder that the gods are enraged at such speeches.' Then Snorri goi [8]: 'About what were the gods angry then when the lava burned the ground on which we now stand?'" Then the people left the Rock of Laws. Thereupon the Christians asked one of their number to speak a law for Christians to follow, but he turned over this responsibility to the Lawspeaker, Thorgeir Ljsvetningagoi, who was himself a heathen. Thorgeir went to his booth, and lay down in silence for a day and a night, never speaking a word. The next morning, he assembled the folk and and spoke, pointing out that men would fall into assaults and batteries and throw the land into great disorder if all did not have one law. "And now this seems to me the best counsel, that we do not let their will prevail who are most eager against each other, but let us so umpire the cases between the two sides, so that each side may win part of his case, and let us all have one law and one faith. For this may be truly said: if we split the law, we will break the peace." Each side then agreed that there should be one law and that Thorgeir should now declare it. "Then it was made law that all men should be Christians, and they should take baptism that were yet unbaptized here in the land; but that as to the exposure of children the old laws should stand, and also as to the eating of horse-flesh. Men might sacrifice secretly (to the old gods) if they wished, but they should be under the lesser outlawry if witnesses could be brought forward thereto." As Hallberg (1962:13-14) remarks: "A provision such as that relating to pagan sacrifice, to be sure, reveals very little of the spirit of Christianity. The point of view is conventional and social; one was not to give offense to others by his heathen practices. the entire manner in which Christianity was introduced seems to indicate that religion was regarded essentially as a community affair rather than a matter of personal conviction. The indifference toward religion takes on an almost comical aspect in the description of the collective baptism following the conclusion of the General Assembly. Kristni saga relates that the thingmen from the North and South Quarters were baptized in the warm spring Reykjalaud in Laugardalr on their way home from the Assembly because they did not want to go into the cold water at Thingvellir."

During the two hundred years that followed their formal acceptance of Christianity, the Icelanders developed their church primarily on an indigenous social framework. Instead of building, maintaining, and conducting services within his privately owned heathen temple, a goi now might build and maintain a Christian church and have himself ordained as priest. Indeed, at one period there were more churches than clerks to serve them (Turville-Petre 1953:71). Other chieftains built their churches and hired their priests as they might hire a servant; or they trained a young man for the priesthood, after which the trainee was legally bound to the church like a thrall. Clergy were as subject to the secular law as anyone else, and a proposed change in ecclesiastical practice had to be submitted to the secular legislature, the lgrett. In the eleventh and twelfth century, episcopal sees were established and the Icelandic bishops began to develop schools and monasteries, importing teachers from the mainland to instruct the young men, and, occasionally, young women, in Latin, music, and poetic composition. Both teachers and pupils must have been intelligent and enthusiastic, for the scholastic works produced by men trained in these centers of learning were, all things considered, quite remarkable. (They are discussed in the next section.) Some young men of the "better families" were sent to the university at Paris for instruction. Whatever else may be said for this period during which sacred and secular responsibility and power continued to he viewed as undifferentiated phenomena, it was one of relatively positive and peaceful development. But around the middle of the twelfth century, conflict broke out on a number of levels. Church authorities in Norway and on the continent began to exert themselves to bring about a separation between spiritual and temporal systems of authority. Norwegian bishops scolded the Icelandic laity for unchastity, adultery, and mistreatment of the clergy. Those chieftains ordained as priests were reproached for their contentiousness, forbidden to carry arms, and forbidden to engage in lawsuits on their own behalf. The ancient custom of church ownership by the chieftain was denounced as contrary to God's law. In 1190 the holders of goors were forbidden to take holy orders and in 1196 the Pope expressly forbade the "abominable practice of lay jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters" (Sveinsson 1953:114). The Icelanders did not hasten to comply with these directives. When a particularly zealous bishop forbade the secular court to pass judgment on a priest, the chieftains defied him, complaining that the bishop "respected neither men nor the law of the land." Nevertheless, in the end, the dictates of the church prevailed and, as the years passed, many ordained goar gave up their secular powers (Sveinsson 1953: 112-117) I am not able here to review the various economic, political, and climatic developments in Iceland and on the continent which may have played a part in the difficulties experienced by the Commonwealth. Suffice it to say that the balance of power between goar had been disturbed and secular authority came more and more to be concentrated in a few influential and ambitious persons, who, with the help of kin and other followers, took over control of large sections of the country. This process was accelerated as more and more of the ordained chieftains resigned their authority to lay relatives. Not content with their gains, the great families began to fight each other. The rich became richer, and the poor, poorer. Ordinary farmersthe thingmen grew tired of the incessant conflict and sometimes refused the call to fight for their chieftains. According to contemporary

accounts by participants, the restraints of older times were abandoned, or at least weakened: men took oaths only to break them, slew their relatives, maimed the wounded and butchered the dead. Simultaneously, they preserved and produced one of the world's notable literatures. Eventually, the warring family factions appealed to the King of Norway for support in their internal disputes and in the sixth decade of the thirteenth century Iceland became a tributary to the Norwegian crown.

Wax Ch. 3: The MythologyMotion, Substance, and Play

The Dynamic Universe
Virtually no being or thing in the ancient Scandinavian mythological universe is static, unless, like Loki or the Fenris-Wolf, it is tied down to keep it out of mischief. [1] Like atomic particles, all animate things keep in motion. The sun and moon flee through the heavens, for after them run monstrous wolves intent on swallowing them. The world tree, Yggdrasill, is subjected to never-ending assault and renewal. Serpents gnaw at its roots and harts rend its branches. Three goddesses shower the tree with potent liquid from a sacred well, for only by this incessant drenching can Yggdrasil maintain its life and strength. Meanwhile, a squirrel scurries up and down the tree bearing insulting messages between an eagle, perched in the topmost branches, and the serpents, gnawing at the roots. The high gods also participate in this vigorous activity. in wanders incessantly in search of magical wisdom. The mighty and impulsive Thr is always on the move, journeying to the East to fight the giants. When the gods are not busy fighting, playing, or sitting in council, they may even work, building temples or founding forges. The dead are granted no repose. If, as chosen warriors, they have been carried to Valholl, they fight all day and carouse all night; if they end up in Hel, a more ancient general abode of the dead, they must wade through mighty and turbulent rivers. So all-pervasive is this emphasis on energetic motion that even the mythological landscapes, though they may contain no human or divine personages, are enlivened by rushing streams, flying birds, falling leaves, or the heaving sea. The contemplation of this universe arouses a curious sympathetic reaction. The reader feels as if he were watching an intricate ballet in which every entity follows its energetic but true path and fulfills its proper function. The heavenly bodies revolve, and, at the correct distance behind them, come the hungry wolves. The world tree is torn and gnawed, but its branches, nourished by regular applications of sacred liquid, always burgeon anew. Every day, the warriors in Valholl go out to fight, and, every night, their wounds are healed and they feast on flesh of the sacred boar, which likewise renews itself for the next day's round. The ancient Scandinavian wood-carvings and metal work, whether representational or abstract, convey a similar impression of constant but controlled motion, as they depict the writhing MidgarWorm, galloping horsemen

preceded by their dogs, battling warriors, or gaping figure heads. Indeed, there is perhaps no art form that so persistently gives the impression of a fearful energy confined within a rigidly limited space. The mythic world of the Old Scandinavians seems to deny the organic need for rest, or even for a "breather" or a "time-out period." I have found no evidence that the ancient Northmen ever thought that this universal and perpetual motion needed an explanation or a rationalization. Though a purpose or function could probably be found for every movement or act, the various beings seem to move, not because movement is right or because they have been set in motion by some force external to them, but because movement or action is their nature. Nevertheless, as in many mythologies, there does exist an implication that certain acts are necessary to preserve the status quo. If the sun or moon paused in their flight they would be swallowed and light would disappear from the earth. If the wolves became fatigued and took time out, the natural procession of day and night would end. Similarly, it Thr relaxed in his battle against the giants or in in his quest for wisdom, Asgar, the citadel of the gods, would fall. More so than from many other mythologies, I receive the impression that the balance among these incessant activities is precariously maintained. One slack moment on the part of any creature in the universe might lead to a pile-up which would bring the whole system to ruin. On the whole, however, this omnipresent threat of disaster is exhilarating rather than depressing. The gods are involved or involve themselves in one predicament after the other, and a part of the charm of the Scandinavian mythology derives from the fact that they invariably meet these crises actively, energetically, and sometimes, quite ingeniously. There is here no trace of the mopish, constipated lethargy in which Wagner's Wotan wanders through the greater part of The Ring of the Nibelungs. When we come to examine the later and less magically oriented literature we will see that much of it is as motion- or action-oriented as the mythology. The Skaldic verse is a verbal motion picture. The laws, proverbs, and sagas see man primarily as an extremely active being, who, moreover, acts primarily on his own initiative. The heroic ethic, the image of man may be contrasted with that of the Homeric Greeks, who saw man as often but an instrument of the gods, and with that of the ancient Hebrews, who saw man as obligated to seek, find, and obey the law of God. In the mythological and cosmological literature, items of interest and even events are precisely and systematically ordered by their position within the cosmos. Thus, it is often more important to know where something happened than when it happened. Indeed, some of the cosmological poems, like the Lay of Vafthrnir, sound as if they were built on an imaginary, three-dimensional model, which, though it moves, is not going anywhere. In marked contrast but with equal precision, the sagas and histories are organized on a linear temporal framework in which every event takes the story one step closer to its end. Since I describe these phenomena in my discussion of the appearance of the linear time perspective (chapter 8, p. 112 ff.) I will not carry them further here.

Everything Has Substance

In the Old Scandinavian literature, matter, in all of its manifestations, is regarded as hard, concrete, solid, and substantial. We encounter no semi-transparent ghosts, no supernaturals clouded in smoke or vapour, no disembodied voices. If a thing cannot be felt by the hand, or, better yet, does not ring or crack when hit, it is not deemed worthy of notice; if a thing cannot be clearly perceived by the eye in precise and definite outline, it is not worth describing. Surely, the Northmen would have preferred the particle to the wave theory of light; a stereopticon to a chiaroscuro painting; a Mozart symphony where every note is intended to be clearly heardto Wagner's Magic Fire Music where, it has been said, Wagner wanted the effect achieved by an orchestra trying to play an impossible score. Many specialists in the Old Scandinavian literature have sensed this attitude toward matter and tried to communicate it. Davidson (1943) suggests that the Northmen had a tendency to turn the abstract and symbolic into the actual and concrete. Leach (1946:14) epitomizes the Northman's concept of virtue, "The pragmatic science of life is more to be praised than metaphysics." Phillpotts (1931:146) speaks of an absence of "otherworldliness" and tells us that while "there is plenty of vigorous imagination there are no 'faery lands forlorn' either in the world of gods or in the world of men." Perhaps the most cogent expression of the Northman's idea of matter has been given us by Snorri Sturluson himself when, in his prologue to The Younger Edda (Young 1964:24-25), he remarks that his ancestors had not been given spiritual understanding and, in consequence, they understood everything in the material sense and thought that everything had been made from some substance (my italics). Snorri faithfully communicates this impression in his prose redaction of the cosmological poems. Here we learn that the creators of this mythology had been able to conceive of a time in which the present universe, the gods, and man did not exist. Yet, until some heathen sophisticate composed the Vlspa [2] they seemed unable to imagine a time in which substance or matter had not been present. Thus, their creation story began, not in a void or in chaos, nor with intangible or invisible spirits brooding over shapelessness, but with vast cosmic rivers whipped by falling showers. These rivers hardened like slag and turned into ice. As this ice thawed, the drops turned into the first of the frost giants, Ymir. Ymir, however, was slain by the gods, in, Vili, and V [3] who proceeded to make the world from his body; from his blood the sea and lakes, from his flesh the earth, from his bones the mountains, from his skull the sky, and from his brains the clouds. Snorri's description of the rainbow bridge, which leads from earth to the house of the gods, carries with it no hint of mystery or delicate evanescensce. It is thoroughly solid: "You will have seen it, (but) maybe you call it the rainbow. It has three colours and is very strong, and made with more skill and cunning than other structures. But strong as it is, it will break when the sons of Muspell ride over it to harry." (Young, 1964:40)

The great body of magical or enchanted incidents in the Eddas and sagas supports Snorri's insight. Other literatures may feature corporeal "spirits," but few such obtrusive ones. For example, there was the fylgja a protective Being of Power, which accompanied certain individuals through life, and was invisible but quite substantial. So, we are told (Davidson 1943:127) of a little boy of high birth who entered a hall "with a great rush, as children usually do" and tripped over his fylgja which was invisible to him but visible to an observer in the form of a white bear cub. The visible walking dead were equally substantial. Occasionally these revenants walked with what might be called good intent, as when Thorgunna (Schach and Hollander 1959:109-111)whose corpse-bearers had been inhospitably treatedrose from her bier, took food from the buttery of the stingy host, laid the table and set out meat thereon. But the majority of the walking dead had been contentious and ill-natured in life and became even more so in death. Some were content to reside in their grave mounds (in corporeal form) and guard the treasure that had been buried with them. Others sallied forth to bring heavy-handed and thoroughly physical ruin to their erstwhile neighbors. Perhaps the most awe-inspiring of these substantial walkers was Glmr (Magnusson and Morris 1900:95-111), a stupid, taciturn, malevolent, and enormously strong hired laborer who, after death, turned his ill-will against his former employer. Amid tremendous racket, he killed the cattle of this unfortunate farmer, tore down the outer timbers of his house, and frightened away all of his household. No one could cope with him until the hero Grettir arrived. When Glmr lumbered into the hall, Grettir was lying there covered with a heavy fur cloak. Glmr rested his elbows on the beam and peered about; spying Grettir's cloak, he grabbed and pulled. Grettir hung on, so the cloak was ripped in half, whereupon Glmr gaped in foolish astonishment at the rag in his hand, "and wondered greatly who could tug so hard against him." A wrestling match ensued, and it places even more emphasis on "the hardness of the material," for we are told how the sleeping benches are torn from the walls, and how Grettir, almost exhausted, braces his feet against the wooden threshold and cracks the back of his gigantic opponent. Equally characteristic is the account (Schach and Hollander 1959:113) of how the youth Kjartan routs the seal spook: "...when the kitchen fires were lit and people had come to sit by them, they saw a seal's head come up out of the fire pit. A serving woman, who was the first one to get there and to see this marvel, took up a cudgel which was lying in the doorway and struck the seal on the head with it. It only grew larger from the blow and glared up at the bed furnishings of Thorgunna [the dead woman who was causing these hauntings]. Then a serving man went up and struck the seal, but it continued to come forth with every every blow until the flippers could be seen. Then the serving man fell down in a faint. All who were there were struck with terror. Then the youth Kjartan ran up and seized a large sledge hammer and struck the seal on the head with it. It was a powerful blow, and the seal shook his head and looked around. Kjartan let blow after blow rain upon him, and the seal sank down like a peg being driven into the ground. He kept on striking until the seal had sunk down so far that he could pound the floor together over his head. And thus it always happened throughout the winter that all specters feared Kjartan most."

I have entertained all manner of hypotheses about the Old Scandinavians' taste for solid spooks, but to date, none serves to explain more than Snorri's remark that his ancestors thought everything had to be made of some substance. I would, however, add that this emphasis on substance becomes especially marked whenever a fight or battle is to be described, whether in Skaldic verse of the ninth or tenth century (See chapter 6) or in the sagas written during or after Snorri's time (thirteenth to fourteenth centurysee chapter 8.). Clearly, the impression of hardness or substance was in indispensable to the satisfying story of a fight.

Play and Venturesomeness

The Eddic mythological poems and Snorri's prose redaction contain much evidence to substantiate Huizinga's contention (1955) that culture begins in play. The gods and the early heroes love contests of all kinds. They compete with giants or giantesses in "duels of wisdom" where the contestants put cosmological riddles to each other. (The loser usually forfeits his life.) They accept a giantess' challenge to make her laugh and succeed when Loki ties one end of a rope to a goat's beard and another to his genitals. In a number of the mythological poems, the gods and heroes engage in duels of abuse in which the participants strive to outdo one another in scurrilous insult. Even the trickery in which some of the gods are so expert may be interpreted as a form of play. In their ability to stay one-up on the giants, the divine inhabitants of sgar can hold their own with any pantheon created by man. A delight in play and trickery seems to be universal among peoples who have not been subjected to the stifling restrictions of certain civilizations. The Old Scandinavian gods, however, played as the Vikings were supposed to fightwhich is to say that no matter what the odds, they never gave up. One of the most engaging of the myths (Young 1964:73-78) concerns a contest between the gods and the magically gifted henchmen of tgara-Loki. [4] The three travelers Thr, Thjlfi (Thr's serving lad), and Loki, the tricksterchance upon the stronghold of tgara-Loki, a giant sorcerer. Smiling contemptuously, he tells them that only men who are masters of some art or accomplishment may stay in his hall. Loki, with characteristic impudence, declares, "There's no one here will eat faster than I." A trencher filled with meat is brought in and "Loki sat down at one end and Logi [his opponent] at the other, and each of them ate as fast as he could. They met in the middle of the trencher and by then Loki had left only the bones of his meat, but Logi had eaten all his meat, bones, and trencher into the bargain so everyone thought that Loki had lost the contest." Thr's servant Thjlfi then races with Hugi, but "Hugi was so far ahead that he turned back to meet Thjlfi at the end of it." The valiant (but not very bright) Thr is not dismayed by these defeats and offers to outdo all present in drinking. But although Thr takes three enormous drafts, he is unable

to empty the horn brought to him. He then tries to lift the sorcerer's cat from the floor but succeeds only in raising one of its paws. Then tgara-Loki says: " 'This contest has gone as I expected: it's rather a big cat and Thr is a short little fellow compared with such big men as we have here."' At that Thr said: " 'Call me little if you like, but let someone come and wrestle with me now; now I am angry!' " An aged and tottering crone takes up his challenge, but though Thr puts forth all his strength, the crone throws him to one knee. If the story ended here one would be inclined to conclude that this tale demonstrates the dangers of boasting and the foolishness of attempting to bite off more than one can chew. In point of fact, it does nothing of the sort. After the gods have left his stronghold, tgara-Loki tells them that if he had known they were so strong, he would never had admitted them. He then reveals that Loki competed in eating with wild-fire; Thr, in attempting to drain the drinking-horn had actually tried to drain the sea; the cat Thr had failed to lift was Migar-Worm which encircles the earth, and the old woman who threw him to one knee was old age. The bold and brash gods had unwittingly essayed the impossible and yet did not come off too badly. This preference for action rather than inactioneven in the face of impossible odds and inevitable defeatpermeates much of the Old Scandinavian literature. We will encounter it again in the skaldic verse, the heroic lays, the sagas, and as a basic premise of the legal system.

Wax Ch. 4: The Ideal Typical Enchanted Point of View[1]

Introductory
Neither Snorri's mythodology nor the Elder Edda give us a reliable basis for sketching the picture of how the heathen folk viewed their world. As Nordal (Young 1964:12) has pointed out, some of these stories about the gods are the product of poetic imagination and others derive from speculation current during the decline of heathen religious practices. Yet, being familiar with the philosophy of existence and the pattern of beliefs characteristic of the magically oriented Eskimo, the Amerindians, the Bantu, and other such peoples, and having become familiar with the unmagical view of the sophisticated saga writers and antiquarians of the thirteenth century, I could often distinguish earlier heathen themes and ideas from later heathen and Christian ones. For example, it is most unlikely that Snorri Sturluson himself believed such incidents in the tales he recorded as that a young man might mate with a Being whose shape might change into a swan. But his ancestor, Egil Skallagrmsson, did likely believe such things could happen, and some of Egil's ancestors almost certainly knew people who believed they had undergone this kind of experience.

In this chapter I will try to present a picture not of the heathen "reality" or "religion" but of the logic and guiding principles of the most enchanted and ancient of the Old Scandinavian world views. I do this primarily so that the reader will be able to approach the subsequent discussions of disenchantment with a fairly clear working notion of just what a thoroughly primitive or magical world view is. Without this background he will not understand what I mean when, for example, I assert that the formal body of Old Scandinavian law does not seem to be hostile to magicwhereas the heroic ethic, or, as some scholars call it, the ethic of manly excellence, represents a relatively disenchanted tradition.

The Principles of the Enchanted World View [2]

Vital Power
In this world of the gods and ancient heroes, the only important atrribute is what has been called supernatural power. A better term is Vital Power, for people who live in the enchanted world do not usually distinguish between power and life or between the natural and the supernatural. Vital Power is the only kind of blessing, and its presence ensures well being. All good and desirable things follow from it and the only fundamental or true misfortune is its diminution or loss (cf. Tempels 1959; Gluckman 1944:32). in appears insatiable in his desire for Power. It was for magical power to see into the future that he gave his wondrous eye, which saw everything that happened in the universe. It was for the magical mead that he took the form of a snake and tunneled into the giant's cave, there seduced the giant's daughter and swallowed the mead, and, then, in the form of an eagle flew back to sgar. It was for the magical power of the runes that he hanged himself on the world tree Yggdrasill and wounded himself with his own spear (Hollander 1962:36) I wot that I hung on the wind-tossed tree all of nights nine, wounded by spear, bespoken to thin, bespoken myself to myself, upon that tree of which none telleth from what roots it doth rise Neither horn they upheld nor handed me bread; I looked below me aloud I cried caught up the runes, caught them up wailing, thence to the ground fell again. Most of the stories about the gods depict them as setting out deliberately to wrest or steal Vital Power from the magically potent giants, or as defending themselves against the loss of Power, or as sallying forth to recover Power that has been stolen from them. As in all magically conceived universes, the possession of this Power was not a matter of mere

conceit or aggrandizement over other beings, but of life and death. For example, when the giant Thjatsi kidnapped Iunn and her youth-giving apples, he made off, not only with a beautiful goddess and her magical trinkets, but with a part of the life force maintaining the community of the gods. Men like Helgi and Vlund also moved within a universe governed by the Vital Power principle. Indeed some of the early lays are not primarily stories of adventure or heroic deeds, but (like the tales told by tribal Africans or American Indians) detailed descriptions of how certain heroes obtained their wondrous Powers and how they lost them. Thus, many verses are taken up in telling how Atli, Sigur, or Helgi were instructed in Power-giving rituals by wonderful beings, who might assume the form of swans, women, or Valkyries; whereas relatively little is said about the battles they fought or the great deeds they accomplished. In contrast, the later sagas give us elaborate blowby-blow descriptions of a particular hero's every battle or remarkable deed.

The Living Universe

Equally important and inseparable from the "power principle" is the assumption in this mythological literature that all of the phenomena perceptible to man are the manifestations of living beings, so that the universe is alivenot in the sense that most sophisticated or scientific men define animate as against inanimate, but in the sense of an Indian who told de Angulo (1950:372), "Everything is alive. White people think everything is dead." [3] Since these beings are vital, a man may enter into social and emotional relationships with them. Thus, the universe of the Old Scandinavian gods and heroes teems with dwarfs, giants, monsters, troll-women, and speaking birds. There are trees, stones, and streams from whom one may demand an oath and who may, as in the Baldr myth, weep in concert. There are speaking birds who talk to men and Valkyries or swan women who enter into romantic attachments with young warriors and favor them in battle. All of these vital creatures, from the lowest troll to the high gods, possess what we today consider a uniquely human attributea will of their own. They interfere in the world of men or with each other, play favorites, and are prone to all of the weaknesses and passions of humanity, including love and death. The heroes of the ancient lays exhibit another characteristic common to many primitives but very rare among civilized peoples. They expect to meet nonhuman beings. Indeed, if they did not encounter them they would not obtain Power or virtues. Moreover, like the Biblical Jacob, the heroes are seldom in doubt as to the meaning of a divine visitation. They know they have been favored or have been given information that will enable them to manipulate the universe to their advantage. Or, sometimes, they know that they are doomed and will be slain in their next battle.

The Empathic Integration of the Universe

Another intrinsic aspect of the magical world view is the idea that man, the gods, and all other phenomena are related or connected to each other by a web of empathy. The

mightiest being is, somehow, related to the humblest. As Father Tempels has put it (1959:39, 41), the "concept of separate beings ... which find themselves side by side, entirely independent one of another, is foreign to Bantu thought .... All creatures are found in relationship according to the laws of a hierarchy .... Nothing moves in this universe of forces [Vital Powers] without influencing other forces by its movement. The world of forces is held like a spider's web of which no single thread can be caused to vibrate without shaking the whole network." A fine exemplification of this perspective appears in an autobiography of a Papago Indian woman especially in such incidents as when she, her mother, and all members of the village observed ritual precautions when the men left on a war party, and how even the owls (who were the souls of the Papago dead) helped the medicine man spy on the enemy (Chona 1936:11-13). Snorri's Edda contains a number of examples of how the heathen Northmen may have seen this web of being. Thus, with tongue in cheek, he tells us (Young 1964:88) that people who want to help the Aesir [4] should throw away the leather straps they cut from their shoes as these scraps go to form the material of the god Viar's shoe. Viarr, at the Ragnarok is destined to place his foot on the lower jaw of Fenrir, seize the upper jaw in his hands and tear the wolf's gullet apart. Similarly we are told (Young 1964:106) that hones should never be thrown across the floor, for Thr, after a battle with a honewielding giant, was left with a hone sticking in his head. Consequently, the careless handling of hones gives Thr the headache. The fundamental sensitivity of all things may, perhaps, be as beautifully expressed in the Baldr myth as in any mythology in the world. Baldr the Good, the son of in, dreams that his life is in danger. Hearing of this, his mother Frig exacts an oath from all creatures, whatever their form, that they will not harm him. She neglects, however, to obtain this oath from the mistletoe, "because it was too young to ask an oath of." When Baldr is killed by the mistletoe it is discovered that he may be brought back from Hel (the abode of the dead) if all creatures on the earth weep. "Thereupon the Aesir sent messengers throughout the whole world to ask for Baldr to be wept out of Hel; and everything did thatmen and beasts, and the earth, and the stones and trees and all metals just as you will have seen these things weeping when the come out of frost and into the warmth" (Young 1964:80-84). Snorri's picture of the weeping of the stones, trees, and metals as they become warm may be a poetic simile. On the other hand, some scholars suggest that Baldr was a god of the Spring, and, if this was so, rites involving universal weeping could be seen as hastening the arrival of Spring by simulating a thaw, just as the drinking ceremonies of the Papago were seen as intoxicating the clouds so that they poured down rain (Chona 1936: 10-11), or the fertility rites of the ancient Near East were seen as encouraging the reproduction of the grain (Frazer: Vol. 2, Ch. xi). The Old Scandinavian literature tends to express the

notion of the web of being most strongly in its frequent reference to dreams and omens. But these for the most art manifest themselves without being sought and they usually foretell evil rather than good fortune.

The Morality of the Gods

Many students of the Old Scandinavian literature comment adversely on the absence of morality among the gods and contrast their expediency and trickery with the stern code of ethics followed by the human heroes of the later lays and sagas. This judgement is hardly fair to the inhabitants of sgar, for the behavior of the gods is, in its general nature, very like that of the divine or powerful characters of most magical tales. Mythological personages, be they American, Indian, Eskimo, or Greek, are not interested in conflicting moral imperatives, abstract definitions of justice, or the dilemmas that accompany a rigid code of honor. Rather, as the old gods of Scandinavia, they wish to obtain and augment the magical Power that brings all the good of life and they hope to avoid those actions that lead to its "neutralization" or loss. Moreover, as a number of observers and scholars have pointed out, peoples with a thoroughly enchanted outlook do not tend to judge deeds by the means employed in their achievement. Success in the hunt or in battle is a demonstration of the presence of Vital Power, and Vital Power, as we have remarked, is the source of all good things. As Huizinga (1955:81-82) notes, it is not how a man wins but the fact that he wins which shows that he has found favor with the supernaturals. Or as a Crow Indian explained to Lowie (1948:8), "When I hear a song and have good luck immediately after that, then I consider the song sacred." It is likely that most of the examples in which the Old Scandinavian poets accuse the gods of misdeeds, and especially of trickery, reflect a quasi-sophisticated point of view rather than an enchanted one. In any case, the accusations are not to be taken in their modem sense. Most tribal peoples admire the successful trickster. It is the unsuccessful trickster, the one who is caught and punished, who has done "wrong," or better, who has revealed his lack of power. If he had sufficient Power he would not have been found out. I suspect that in the ancient heathen days, the Aesir were seen as living according to norms very like those of men. A few hints of the nature of these norms may still be gained from the older poems and from Snorri's redaction. Thus, the story of the binding of the Fenriswolf (Young 1964:56-59) shows us how much labor and ingenuity the gods were willing to expend rather than defile their sanctuary by slaying the wolf within it. Again, the elaborate scene (Young 1964:99) of conciliation between the gods and the giant's daughter sounds as if it might once, for all its burlesque, have reflected an ancient peace-making ceremony. But on the whole, the picture of "divine morality" is so fragmentary and distorted that, for me at least, it yields no satisfactory Gestalt. I therefore use the professional eye-witness reports of social anthropologists as sources for my models when I discuss the moral logic of the enchanted world view.

The Moral Logic of the Enchanted World View

Very fine brief introductions to the moral logic of the enchanted world view are to be found in Gluckman's (1944) discussion of Evans-Pritchard's book on the Azande and in a recently published article by Winans and Edgerton (1964). Gluckman (p. 67) holds that "witchcraft works as a theory of causes" and that the theory is "reasonable and logical, even if it is not true," whereas, Winans and Edgerton (p. 745) assert that magic is "manifestly a negative sanction against violation of moral norms," and that is not only moral, but jural. If one looks at magical causation as an integral part of a world view, one may carry these observations a step farther and assert that magical causality is moral in its very essence. "The universe is morally significant. It cares" (Redfield 1953:106). The man who becomes seriously ill or suffers great misfortune knows that he has offended or irritated some being, human or otherwise, who has used Power against him. Whether the offense is intentional or accidental does not matterthe results are the same. Conversely, the man whose children are hale, who is always prosperous, who escapes unscathed from storms and battles, has always managed to do all the "right" things and none of the "wrong." (Or should he offend some Being or Power and suffer no misfortune, it is because he is under the protection of a more powerful being.) Should such a man be visited by ill fortune, everyone knows that he has somehow fouled up his relationships with the Beings of Power. In fine, the essential principle of magical logic is that all blessing and all suffering have a cause. Viewed from this perspective, many of the basic stories of the early Old Scandinavian literature are profoundly moral. In the lay of Grotti (Hollander 1962:153-158), King Fri;s giant servants grind out a terrible fate for him, after he has abused them by granting them no rest. The magically gifted Vland (Hollander 1962:159-167) kills King N's sons and dishonors his daughter, after the king has enslaved and crippled him. The downfall of the gods is traced to the foresworn oaths, which they pledged to the giant who built Valholl for them (Hollander 1962: p. 5, verse 26). Numerous instances of ill fortune following on offense or error appear in the histories and sagas. Thus, in Eyrbyggja saga (Schach and Hollander 1959:107-115), many folk die because the instructions of a dying woman are not carried out; King Eirk Bloodyaxe (Eddison 1930) loses his throne because he cheats Egil Skallagrmsson out of his wife's inheritance; Korik, the skald (Hollander 1949:20-23), is never able to possess his beloved, because he refuses to compensate a witch for the death of her sons. Moreover, he refuses to cooperate with the curing witch whom his mother hires to remove the spell. On the other hand, most of these examples of magical morality appear in works in whichas we shall seethe major aim of the author was secular or quasi-secular. It is perhaps for this reason that the implications of many of the stories and particularly the myths are often blurred. For though some of the men who collected and recorded the myths knew a great deal about their ancestors, they were not particularly sympathetic to their ancestors' moral point of view. A discussion of Old Scandinavian law will prepare the way for further analysis of this development.

Wax Ch. 5: Some Principles of Old Icelandic and Norwegian Law [1]
General Characteristics
Pragmatic Emphasis
The Old Icelandic and Norwegian heathen law was restitutive rather than punitive, civil rather than criminal, and emphatically pragmatic. The closest approximation to a crime was a Ningsvg [2], a foul or dastardly deed, committed "under such circumstances and by such methods as to give the doer the character of a mean, infamous, treacherous person" (Larson 1935:423). The man who committed a "foul deed" was not punished in the sense that he was subjected to treatment which would purify him or frighten him into mending his ways. Rather he, like his detestable deed, was declared "outside the law" by the Thing (the general assembly). In theory, this declaration put the evil-doer and his deed out of the society. All of his property was forfeited and all of his social ties were dissolved. If he did not leave the district within a specified time, anyone might kill him without having to pay a recompense to his kin. The man who lived "within the law" did not necessarily refrain from injuring his fellow man, for it was his manly right and duty to seek vengeance. He stood ready to demand or take payment from any individual or group that had injured either his person, or his property, or any person for whom he was responsible. Conversely, he stood ready to pay or "do right by" any individual or group (within his district) for any injury perpetrated upon them by himself or by any person for whom he was responsible (compare Nuer as described in Evans-Pritchard 1940:139-191 or Mair 1962:37). That the individual's willingness to stand up for himself and strike back at anyone who offended him was the keystone of the heathen conception of law and order is not explicitly stated in the ancient literature. But it is implicit in the law itself and in every story of the doings of men. As Sveinsson (1953:70-71) puts it, "The idea of the state can hardly be seen for mere individuals. It is they who must take all of this [the law] on their own shoulders." There is no evidence in the law (or any of the literary works) that payment or the settling of a dispute through payment was viewed as a punishment established and meted out by a superordinate authority embodying justice, or that the obligation to pay was regarded primarily as a deterrent to future injuries. Rather the act of payment was seen as an honorable compliance with a jural agreement. All free men had agreed that the loss of a thumb was worth three marks. If a man had his thumb cut off, his honor requiredor, "it was his right"to be paid three marks by the offender; if he cut off another man's thumb, it was the other man's "right" to demand three marks. One gains the impression that if a man did not wish to pay the proper recompense for an injury, he was supposed to refrain from committing it. But if he were willing to pay the price, there was no clearly expressed moral reason for restraining himself. (Of course, there were obvious social and financial reasons.)

Because of this pragmatic emphasis, the Old Scandinavian laws resemble a detailed and complicated price list. Every man had his wergeld (man-price), the payment due his kin should he be slain. The higher a man's status, the higher the wergeld, which means that accepting a meager payment lowered the status of the slain man and his kin. Almost every injury which a "decent man" might conceivably inflict in the course of an active and energetic life was described and assessed. Thus, one paid more for a wound that exposed the bone than for a flesh wound, and still more if the weapon touched the bone. A wound in the abdomen was more expensive than a wound in the chest, and a wound in the back was twice as expensive as a wound in the chest. In preliterate times an official called the Lawspeaker bore the responsibility of memorizing all the laws, including these "price-lists," and reciting them before the Thing at stated intervals. This price list functioned as a guide both in the settlement of minor disputes (which might be decided between the individuals concerned) and in the arbitration proceedings by which a feud involving a series of injuries might be brought to a conclusion. Indeed, as Jones (1935:31) points out, the arbitration procedures bore an interesting resemblance to modern accounting practices: "The making of the award was like the drawing up of a balance sheet, which showed clearly the assets and liabilities of the disputants. The assets of the one side were the liabilities of the other. The two accounts were then compared, and the common factors struck out. In its simplest form this meant that a death on the one side tallied with death on the other, a wound with a wound, and so on through the whole range of wrongs and injuries. At the final reckoning a balance would be left on one side or the other, and it was the business of the arbitrators to make a pronouncement as to its value in terms of money fines or lesser outlawries, the only punishments which they were allowed to inflict. This was called 'paying the difference.' " (For an excellent example, see Eyrbyggja Saga [Schach and Hollander, trans. 1959: 100:101].)

The Suit at Law

In heathen Iceland a great number of disagreements were settled by arbitration, each side choosing its umpire or umpires and agreeing to abide by their decision. The initiation of a case at law was entirely the responsibility of the injured party, though he almost always acted with the assistance of friends and relatives. For example, if a prominent man wished to bring suit against another man, he would first visit relatives and friends and try to enlist their support. Poor men, freedmen, women, or minors would try to get a powerful kinsman or their goal to act for them. Lacking such support, an aggrieved person usually would not institute a suit. Theoretically, only cases which could not be settled privately or by arbitration were brought to the Thing. However, the sagas suggest that a vengeful individual might deliberately reject an informal settlement and force a case to the Thing if he believed that he could do his opponent greater harm through formal legal procedure. The conduct of a formal law suit was so complicated that it cannot be adequately described here. For detail the reader should consult Larson (1935:13-20) or Jones

(1935:16-36). Suffice it to say that in Iceland the plaintiff (among other things) was obliged to give notice before witnesses that he intended to bring a suit. Next, he summoned his witnesses, the men who were to testify for him before the Thing. He was also obliged to summon his opponent in person and in his own house, and this was often a dangerous undertaking. Then he would either have to plead his case himself or place it in the hands of a chieftain who would plead for him. Meanwhile, if the suit were for a manslayingthe usual cause of a feud in the sagasthe defendant would try to "unhallow" (heilagr) the man he had killed. He might seek to prove that his action was unavoidable, that he had acted in self-defense, or that the slain man had put himself outside the law by breaking an agreement. Or, he might try to prove that the plaintiff had neglected to fulfill some technicality, for example, that he had not served the summons properly. If the offender succeeded in finding and exploiting any of these loopholes, the case would be dismissed. But if no defense was put forward, or if the injured party pleaded his case well and had plenty of support from his followers and particularly from chieftains, the judges would find in his favor and declare the offender, "out of the law." In theory this meant that he had no worth. If he were slain, his relatives had no legal right to wergeld. The greater outlawry was for life, the lesser for a period of three years. The lesser penalty was the more usual and, judging by the sagas, provided the occasion for spirited young men to travel abroad and acquire wealth and fame. Fair and precise restitution seems to have been the primary legal principle, and, implicitly, it may have been the primary principle of psychological and social organization. Although the law books do not tell us why a man ought to pay or demand the payment of a fine, the characters in the sagas are pictured as devoting the greater part of their time to what the Northmen called "the return of a fair balance" or what Durkheim (1947:69) described as "the return of things as they were." When the balance of an individual's relationship to others was disturbed by an unpaid injury, he was inwardly impelled to take action to restore it. If the offender did not offer to even the score by a proper payment, the injured party might simply go to his farm and appropriate his fair due in livestock or other property. And if the circumstances were such that he could take no action at all, he might try to destroy himself, as did Egil Skallagrmsson (Eddison 1930:187) when, his son being drowned, he felt aggrieved by the gods. (See also The Saga of the Jmsvikings Hollander 1955:46-47 and Whitelock 1952:40.) As for society, the sagas provide us with evidence that the Icelanders spent a great deal of time trying to resolve feuds through discussion, arbitration, or formal legal action. Though they were admittedly a contentious and easily offended people, they believed, like the warrior Sioux, that "hard feelings, and quarrellings between families is not a good thing" (Wax, et. al. 1964:49). From the sagas one also gains the impression that ideally the act of paying a debt resembled the giving of a gift; it did not complete or make final a relationship but initiated, maintained, and legitimized it; so that it was a concrete manifestation of the existence of a social obligation. Thus, a man brought his wife a "morning gift" of silver or cattle which he paid directly to her on the morning after they

had lain together. By "buying his wife" he legitimized their children, for only children born of such a union were automatically the inheritors of their parents' property (Larson 1935:72-73; 79-80). When Aur was saved from violence at the hands of her husband's enemies, she immediately gave her rescuer a gold ring "for his goodwill" (Gsli's Saga, Allen 1936:123). When Hjialti, in Bjarkaml, (Hollander 1936:6, vers. 2), exhorts the housecarls to battle, he reminds them first of all of the gifts given them by their king, "gifts in peace must be gained in war."

Power of the Oath [3]

Certain of the Icelanders' oaths of peace or truceformulae to be repeated by both parties after the settlement of a major disputehave been preserved. These reflect a thoroughly magical point of view. The first part defines a new or different state or relationship to which the oath-takers pledge themselves. The second part consists of the curse which the oath-takers lay on themselves should they deviate from the behavior demanded by the new relationships. A part of one of these formulae (Hollander 1936:80-89) is cited below: Ye shall henceforth be men at peace and pledged at ale and eating, at thing and at folk-meet, at kirk-going and in king's hall; and wherever men gather together, there shall ye be so agreed as though this matter had never come between you. Ye shall share both steel and steak and all the things that are betwixt like friends [4] and not like foes. ... But that one of you who is traitor to this truce and goes against word given, he shall be as ill outlaw hunted and hated, as far as men ever an outlaw hunt, as Christian [5] folk visit churches, as Heathen folk have hallowed shrines, as fire doth flame and earth is green, as babe calleth mother, and mother suckles child, as folks kindle fire, ships sail the sea, and shields are borne, as the sun shineth, snow drifteth, Finn glideth, fir-tree groweth, as falcon flieth on a fair summer-day with brisk-blowing breeze under both his wings, as the sky arches and earth is tilled, wind doth howl, waters flow seaward, and seed is sown. He shall shun churches and churched ones,

God's house and men's homesevery abode but hell only. ... Now, then, are N. N. and N. N. agreed and at one, where'er they may meet on shore or on water, on ship or on snow-shoe, on high sea or on horseback, to share in the rowing or in baling out, on bench or on deck, if need there be, at one with each other as is father with son or son with father, in all their dealings. ...

Concept of Rights
The legal and ethical principles of the Northmen rested upon a particular conception of personal rights (rttr). However, the Northmen did not employ this term in any general or universal sense as we do when we speak of civil or human rights. Rather, it was used in reference to a particular individual, a particular status group, or to a concrete situation (as with Hindu dharma): social status, sex, and maturity entitled one to certain rights and informal reciprocal obligations. One's rank was one's right; in case one suffered an injury, the specific compensations proper to one's rank were also one's right. Moreover, the concept of right was inseparable from concrete action. The just or honorable man was not right, nor precisely speaking, did he do right. Rather, he acted according to his rights or, by taking lawful vengeance, he "did himself a right." A great part of Old Icelandic and Norwegian law consists of the definition of what individuals of a given rank or status were and were not permitted to do without laying themselves open to a demand for compensation. For example, in Norway any free man had the right to kill a man who attempted to violate his wife, sister, daughter, mother, stepmother, brother's wife, or daughter-in-law, or any man caught in the act of stealing his goods or cattle. He had this "right," however, in the sense that the evildoer, by his act, was considered legally "unhallowed" and therefore he and his kin had no "right" to ask for compensation. Similarly, a man did not have the right to strike his wife "in the sight of assembled men." If he did, she had the right either to ask for as much compensation as he could demand in his case or to leave him and take with her his contribution to the wedding portion and that property set aside to balance the wedding portion (Larson 1935:132-133; 75-76). In the ancient Norwegian law even the rights of kings were limited. [6] For example we are told (Larson 1935:314-, 278) that: "It is the king's right to command and to forbid, but [he must] rule according to the law... "No man shall attack another in his [the host's] home, neither the king nor any other man. If the king does this, the arrow shall be sent forth through all the shires, and [men shall]

go upon him and slay him, if they are able to seize him; and if he escapes he shall never be allowed to return to the land." (A token shaped like an arrow was sent through the community to summon the farmers to the Thing. Whoever received the token was obliged to carry it to his neighbor.) Rights were, in their very essence, personal, individual and private. Characters in the poetic or prose literature always spoke of their personal rights or the personal rights of some specific individualnever of farmers' rights, thralls' rights, women's rights, the rights of the Althing or of all Icelanders. Most offenses and demands for restitution were committed or made by individuals against individuals, and a settlement, when instituted, involved first the offender and the injured person, and then, when necessary, the kith and kin of both parties and, finally, the Thing. On the other hand, the sagas make it abundantly clear that these private acts, like those of a member of an African or American Indian community, were also essentially social or publicin the sense that everyone in the community knew, appreciated, and understood what was going on and, if he wished, could make his influence felt. There was no abstract notion of a society or state against which crimes might be committed and thus no offense could be "social" in the modern legal sense. The one type of behavior that harmed "all the people" or (as the sagas put it) "the folk" was the messy and inconvenient dragging on of a state of hostility. The Icelanders do not seem to have suffered overmuch from this phenomenon until the thirteenth century when the great families began to fight in a fashion which could not be resolved. Since the system was intended to settle disputes either man-to-man or through the use of arbitrators, there was no need for a formal executive "arm of the law" so long as (1) men were both willing and able to defend themselves, (2) the participants in a dispute were more or less evenly matched, and (3) the community could bring pressures on a proud or contentious man who had refused to accept what everyone considered ajust settlement.

Private Property
If the Northmen anticipated the modern capitalist in their invention of the balance sheet, they also anticipated him in what we today rather inaccurately call "respect for private property." While it would seem that the Northmen were all too prone to appropriate the property of strangers of enemies, yet raiding as a Viking was defined as an activity entirely different from that of theft. For example, on one of his Viking expeditions, Egil Skallagrmsson and his companions were taken prisoner by a farmer. They managed to escape, taking with them the farmer's treasure chests. But Egil stopped in mid-flight and announced that he would not be a thief. Against the advice of his companions, he returned alone to the farm, set fire to the farmer's house and killed the men as they tried to escape. Then, having won his treasure "honorably," he returned to his friends and, with easy consciences, they sailed away (Eddison 1930:89-90).

However the Vikings may have regarded looting from the outsider, on their home ground they put an extraordinary amount of effort into the establishment of formal rules (Larson 1935:102, 103, 96) which were intended to keep their personal property inviolate: "No man shall take another man's boat or his horse without his permission; if he does take it, he shall pay one and one-half oras ... No man shall set traps on [another] man's land and, if he does, he shall pay the fine for trespass and deliver the catch to the owner of the land...If a stream runs between farms and there are fish in it, each farmer shall control the half out to the mid-channel, if the have the land on the two sides..." The laws dealing with the inheritance of property are equally specific and detailed. The complex order of inheritance within the blood and affinal kin groups is precisely stated. Exceptional cases, such as the inheritance of illegitimate children, freed-men, housecarles, ship-masters, partners, guests, and even inheritance by gift are carefully regulated. Sometimes, the listing of fines for the destruction of private property approaches the ludicrous, as for example (Larson 1935:369): "If a man kills another man's lap dog, he shall pay twelve oras." (And it is a lap dog if one can place his hand about the dog's neck so that the fingers meet.) Apparently only a very few material objects in Old Scandinavia escaped ownership. Among these were the wild bear and wolves. These, a man did not own, since bears and wolves (Larson 1935:103) "are outlawed everywhere, for no man wants to be answerable for their doings." But even this exception was qualified if a man penned a bear in its lair. Then the bear was his property, providing he had given "notice where men come together that the barred lair belongs to him." It is not to be wondered at that a people who guarded their property so jealously should regard theft as a major crime. Theft was, perhaps, the most repellent deed, a deed so awful that it could not be handled within the bookkeeping system of the law: a man who stole as much as a third of an ounce of silver was outlawed. Most of the laws dealing with theft are intended to be applied to bondmen or thralls (slaves), and they provide one of the very few examples in the legal system of genuine punishment used as a deterrent to wrongdoing. Indeed, with their attitude toward theft, the Northmen began to approach the notion of a social offense. Significantly, the group which here protects itself from offense is the freeborn men, the people who have property. "If a well-born woman steals, she shall be driven out of the land into another kingdom. If a minor steals, the penalty shall be according to the deed. If a thrall of native birth steals, let his head be stricken off, or let his master clear him with a six-fold oath. [This is an oath taken by the accused and five oath helpers to deny and refute an allegation.] If an alien thrall or the son of an alien [thrall] steals, he shall be flogged, and let his master have him flogged within five days... If a man's freed-woman steals, or a native bondwoman, one of her ears shall be cut off. If she steals a second time, the other ear shall be cut off; and if she steals a third time, her nose shall be cut off. After that she shall be called 'stumpy and stubby,' and let her go on thieving if she likes." (Larson 1935: 167168)

One is given the impression not only that theft was abhorred in and of itself, but that it was a deed from which all freeborn or decent persons disassociated themselves. Only thralls were expected to steal and the free person who stole was, by implication, no better than a thrall. Also worthy of note is the sharp distinction between an offense and a theft. An offense, such as a slaying, was not in and of itself a dishonorable deed or in any way outside the law if the slayer announced his deed and made proper recompense. But the man who slew or injured the member of another kin group with no intent to make recompense was, by implication, a thief, divorced from honor,

Respect for the Person

Any injury to the person inflicted in a proper combat situation fell within the law. No shame accrued to either party, providing a satisfactory payment was made. But striking or injuring even a hated enemy in a situation defined as improper was a shameful act that dishonored both the giver and the receiver of the blow. The odium attached to this ill deed seems to have increased in direct proportion to the helplessness of the injured person or his inability to defend himself. The heaviest fines of all were assessed for deliberate mutilation or torture. Castration or cutting out a man's tongue were outlawed. The older Gulathing law places the fine for torture at forty marksa small fortune. The Frostathing law states that anyone who cuts off a man's hand or foot shall be outlawed or pay a fine of fifteen marks. Accessories to the deed (those who held the victim) were to pay a half wergeld. This intense respect for the person was not extended to thralls or bondmen. As we have noted, the laws order that the latter be flogged or mutilated for theft. But even thralls accused of theft, the Gulathing law warns us, ought not to be tortured, for (Larson, 1935:168) "if a man is tortured to such a degree that he admits the theft, he speaks in fear; and he is guilty only if his confession bears the clear mark of truth." The sagas, with their interest in human interaction, make skillful use of the dishonor attached to assault or injury suffered outside of proper combat. One high-spirited wife divorced her husband because he accidentally struck her in the face during a pillow fight. Another woman brought her husband to his death because, under great provocation, he had slapped her. More understandable to us is the terrible rage of Thrarin when he discovered that his wife's hand had been cut off during a fracas that she had attempted to stop (Eyrbyggja Saga, Schach and Hollander 1959:28-30). Even children do not seem to have been beaten by parents who expected to have proud and high-spirited offspring. Occasionally we read of a father who strikes a small child, but he is usually presented as a boor.

Evidence and Due Process

There is in the Old Scandinavian law a notable emphasis on due process, impartial judgment, precision as to time and place, and eyewitness rather than circumstantial evidence. This phenomenon has already been illustrated in our brief description of the business of putting a man outside of the law. The outlaw, we have seen, was heilagr that is, the opposite of hallowed or taboo. He was no longer in the pattern or scheme of

things. But a man could be "unhallowed" only through a complicated and highly secular legal procedure. While public opinion, gossip, hearsay evidence, or supernatural sanctions may have operated in actual cases, the law itself gave them no recognition, except, of course, in the oath. The accuser had to produce valid evidence and reliable witnesses and he had to serve his summons exactly at the proper place, the proper time, and in the proper manner. Due process, valid evidence, impartial judgment, and precision as to time and place are so strongly emphasized in the language of the law itself that it is difficult to cite any law without exemplifying one or more. The following excerpts (Larson 1935: 67, 66, 62-3) are typical of the older Norwegian law: "If a man who has a debt to pay shall die and the one to whom it is owing survives, the latter cannot obtain his dues unless he comes with witnesses; for no one shall swear a [negative] oath on a dead man's behalf. But he [the heir] shall take an oath that 'to my knowledge the debt did not exist'; then he swears only to what he himself knows and not to the knowledge of the deceased. ... And if this one [the plaintiff] has taken into his doom any near kinsmen on either side or any one closely related by marriage or someone who has a suit against the defendant, these shall arise and leave the doom, and the suitor shall find disinterested men in their stead." [A doom was a tribunal of twelve men called in by the parties to a suit to hear the contention and, if possible, to pass judgment.] "...if a man owes money to another and the debt is known to witnesses, he [the creditor] shall summon him to be at home in his high seat ... to hear the demand for payment and the statement of witnesses.... [The creditor may give him] as brief a respite as he likes, but fifteen nights at the longest. Now he [the debtor] shall say that he will be at home when he comes there. The entire day is available for the appointment, whether the summoner comes early or later in the day but [comes] openly and [while] there is yet daylight. Then the witnesses to the home summons shall be heard at once and after that the complainant shall offer testimony as to the amount of money owing to him. If he (the debtor] refuses to make payment, he [the creditor] must summon him before the thing after five nights, at the shortest, and five times five at the longest, if he knows when the thing is to meet; if he does not know, the business will have to wait till he does know." [When the merits of a dispute were not generally known, the claimant proceeded with a "demand" (literally, a greeting) that the defendant do right in the matter. The defendant then had to comply with the demand or agree to have the complaint heard and considered by a doom.]

The "Tribal" Nature of Old Scandinavian Law

The structural and functional resemblances between the Old Scandinavian law and that of many of the recently studied tribal African peoples is striking. Particularly if one compares the Icelanders with a proud, touchy, and warlike people like the Nuer, the specific resemblances are almost uncanny. Both peoples maintained order by a system of fighting or, at least, by standing always ready to fight (Mair 1962:40). "It is an ideal standard of conduct, rather than a rule, that every man should be quick to retaliate against an offense, either to his honour or to his rights. It is taken for granted that

a man who was afraid to fight for his rights need not hope that they would be respected. Yet the knowledge that a man who considers himself wronged will not hesitate to fight, though at first sight it may seem to indicate a condition of lawlessness, is in fact what maintains the law." A virtually identical point of view is expressed in the sagas. For example, Gsli's saga (Allen: 1936) opens with a series of incidents which demonstrate Gsli's willingness to exact vengeance. He slays Bari for seducing his sister and Skeggi for offering him an obscene insult. He retaliates immediately when Kolbjorn bums his (Gsli's) father's house and twelve of his dependents, by burning Kolbjorn's house "along with twelve men." Thus, we are at once informed that Gsli is an able and valiant young man, zealous in keeping the law as it was then defined. Nuer and Icelandic procedures for redressing offenses are similar. An offended Nuer may simply go and take a cow from a man who has wronged him. Similarly, Arnkel appropriates seven of his father's oxen when the latter refuses to pay a debt (Eyrbggja Saga, Schach and Hollander 1959:62). Again, a Nuer, like an Icelander, may challenge an offender to a duel. Both societies had elaborate rules for reducing the risks of dueling. Among the Nuer, men who live in the same camp are supposed to duel with clubs rather than spears and older men will often try to separate the duelists. Among the Old Scandinavians, a hold (a formal duel in which the participants went to an island to fight) was fought with both men standing on a single hide. If one man stepped off the hide or a drop of blood fell on it, the duel, in theory, was at an end (Vigfusson and Powell 1905:320-321). Among the Nuer, kith and kin are much concerned to bring about a reconciliation between feuding lineages and a great deal of time is spent in formal and informal arbitration proceedings. For though feuding is an intrinsic part of the system of law and order, a slaying disrupts what the people themselves consider the normal life of the community. It is believed that if persons between whom there is a blood feud eat or drink from the same dish they will die. Since a feud involves lineages and everyone customarily visits about a great deal, whole villages may have to break off relationships while a feud endures. The saga writers speak with marked respect of noted conciliators and devote many pages to the details of arbitration and to the efforts of "friends of both parties" to bring about a settlement. Men who otherwise were in no way cowardly or bashful, are pictured as refraining for a long time from a deed that would initiate a blood feud, and the saga writers, in telling the story of a feud, usually state very carefully exactly how and where the feuding parties kept their winter feasts. And when one reads that if a Nuer kills a near neighbor, his kin may immediately present a cow to the injured family, signifying their willingness to make good the offense (Mair 1962:45), one is reminded of the incidents in which Gunnar and Njl indemnify each other (Bayerschmidt and Hollander 1955:85-90). All in all, the following statements (Mair 1962: 44,43 italics hers) about the Nuer apply equally well to the Icelanders: "...although the lineage kin of a man who has been killed are expected to show implacable resentment against the killer and his lineage kin, and do in fact often maintain

this resentment for years, many other people are always anxious to persuade them to accept compensation for the injury that they have suffered... When it comes to making peace, the people who are asked to accept compensation...make it very clear that they are yielding only to persuasion, and keep up a show of intrasigence to the last moment." The Icelandic system for keeping law and order also resembles not only the system of the Nuer but that of many tribal or folk societies, in that no person or group had the right to coerce any free man in any way whatever. As Sveinsson (1953:71) puts it: "Compulsion was the negation of the very spirit of the Commonwealth." No oath or bargain made under force was binding. And no man had the right to order others to stop fighting or to force an offender to pay the man he had injured. There was, in short, no police force, no executive arm, no purely secular authority at allin the sense that we understand the term. A court might hear a case and decide on a proper settlement, but this decision merely gave the plaintiff the lawful right to take what had been awarded to him.

Icelandic Law and the Enchanted World View

So long as one remains on the level of structure or function, the legal practices of the Old Scandinavians seem very similar to those of the Nuer, the Samburu, or other pastoral African peoples. But when one compares detailed case histories, and especially magical or quasimagical legal practices, certain striking differences immediately become apparent. Among the most obvious of these is the disposition of the African peoples to use the curse as a means of paternal or paternalistic moral coercion. That is to say, if the participants in a quarrel, feud, or lawsuit are immoderately stubborn, an elder or council of elders may threaten to lay a curse on the troublemaker(s). This threat is often sufficient to bring about a speedy resolution of the hostile situation. Or if the curse is pronounced, the "offender" may repent, offer gifts and recompense, and have the curse lifted. Judging by most of the cases related in the old literature, the Icelanders and Norwegians used the sanctioned curse somewhat differently, turning its power on themselves, swearing to live in peace with their co-swearers as bloodbrothers, and laying the most dreadful penalties on themselves should they fail to keep their word. One might say that the Nuer or Samburu use the curse like a paternal rod, to pacify quarreling children, whereas the Old Scandinavians used it as a self-imposed fetter, binding the oathtakers into a state of peace. Whether this difference in emphasisthe African paternalistic curse as opposed to the Old Scandinavian contractual cursereflects a basic difference in the social system or a difference in level of political sophistication, I am not now prepared to say. I am inclined to see the magical contract as more sophisticated, since it involves the enlargement of familial or regional relationships and could be used in the development of confederations. There is some evidence that the Icelanders of the latter part of the tenth century did, on occasion, use the curse as an instrument of moral and even jural retribution. When Egil Skallagrmsson was, as he thought, unlawfully used by King Eirkr, he recited an anathema against the Earl, asking the gods to punish him. Subsequently, Egil erected a nstong, a "spite-pole" with a horse's head on it, and, turning the head toward the land, he announced that he was turning this n against the Beings of the land who would now

go wild and take no rest until they had driven the erring King and Queen from the country (Hollander 1945:58-0; Almqvist 1965:215-216). Another interesting case appears in Heimskringla where Snorri related that the Icelanders "put into law" that all Icelanders heap shame on Harald Gormsson, King of Denmark, by composing n verses against him. This, to them, was a lawful action justified because the Danes had appropriated the cargo of a wrecked ship owned by Icelanders. Unfortunately, Snorri does not explicitly state that these verses were supposed to excite the rage of powerful Beings against Harald. We learn only that Harald decided to avenge this "insult" by invading Iceland and so sent a warlock to spy out the land. The warlock took the shape of a whale but was driven away by the fierce and powerful Beings native to Iceland. When Harald heard the report of his warlock spy, he sailed home (Hollander 1964: 173-174). No doubt a study of the literature would reveal other instances of cursing used as an instrument of law and justice and even instances in which an individual refrained from committing an offense because he knew that the offended person would have the moral right and the Power to curse him.[7] But the precise meaning of these incidents is hard to assess because the recorderseither out of disenchantment or Christian pietywere often disposed to underplay or omit the notion of moral magical retribution in the heathen scheme of things. That the Scandinavians of the old heathen times took the oath of truce and bloodbrotherhood very seriously is suggested by the context of the heroic lays and by the fact that almost all of the oath-breakers mentioned in the lays promptly proceed to unpleasant ends. For example, in the Fragment of a Sigurd Lay Gunnar and Hgni swear the oath of blood-brotherhood with Sigur and then slay him, whereupon a raven "wrathfully" warns them: "your mainsworn oaths will murder you" (Hollander 1962:244 vers. 5). In the First Lay of Gurn, Sigur's widow tells his slayers "May ye lose your land, and lieges also, as ill ye kept the oaths ye sware" (Hollander 1962:250 vers. 21). And in the ancient second lay of Helgi, the Hunding Slayer, Sigrn, on hearing that her brother had slain her lover, begins to curse him with the wish that all his foresworn oaths (to her lover's kin) strike him down (Hollander 1962:198, verses 30-33). Even the downfall of the gods is traced to the breaking of their contract with the giants (Vlusp, vers. 26, Hollander 1962:5). That the Icelanders of the tenth and eleventh centuries customarily used the contractual oath-curse is suggested by the fact that it was written down in a twelfth century compilation of laws. Moreover, the laws and curses of various kinds are frequently mentioned in the sagas. On the whole, however, the attitude of the classic saga writers of the thirteenth century was disenchanted. None wrote a saga demonstrating in detail how an oath or truce breaker was punished by the curses he had placed upon himself Gsli (Allen 1936:17-18) tries to avert discord by the suggestion that he, Thorgrm, Thorkel, and Vestan swear an oath of blood-brotherhood, but the attempt goes awry. Vga-Glmr (Head 1866:102-103) puts an end to a lawsuit by swearing falsely on the ring of the god Frey that he has not committed a particular slaying. Frey does not punish this insult so long as Glmr keeps the Power-filled weapons and cloak given to his grandfather by

in. But, when Glmr gives these away, his "luck" is gone, and he loses his status and property. Some of the tribal peoples who keep order through the feud assert that if they do not avenge a slain kinsman his ghost will torment them and bring misfortune upon them, the implication being that the ghosts of the dead lack the power to avenge themselves and must drive a laggard kinsman to the deed. This particular notion does not appear either in the sagas or the early literature. Even in the oldest known source of Hamlet, which appears in Saxo Grammaticus and is, apparently, derived from a very ancient tale, Hamlet's murdered father does not walk (Gollancz 1898). On the occasions when a vindictive ghost does walk, he is quite capable of taking out his spite for himself, killing cattle, and frightening to death the humans who see him (Eyrbyggja Saga, Schach and Hollander 1959:69-70). In general, it is the living kin of a slain man, and especially his female relatives, who egg on the avenger. On the other hand, the heathen Icelanders were anxious to keep the men they had slain in their graves. When Vstein is buried, Thorgrmr, who has killed him, binds the Hel-shoes on his feet, remarking, "I do not know how to tie Hel-shoes, if these come loose" (Gsli's Saga, Johnston 1963:19). Later, when Gsli slays Thorgrmr to avenge Vstein, he, in his turn, drops a great rock upon Thorgrmr's burial ship, remarking, "I cannot make fast a boat if the weather moves this one" (Johnston 1963:25). But whether these slayers were afraid that the walking dead would harm them or inform upon them, we are not told, though judging from the few narratives we have of the matter, the walking dead sought to exact a personal retribution. Another magical sanction that seems to be weak or lacking in the Old Scandinavian literature is the belief that a slaying charges or pollutes the slayer and his kin with Power deadly to them and to others. Until this Power is neutralized by ceremonies or conciliation, normal social existence cannot be carried on (cf. Mair 1962: 43-45; Chona, Papago Woman 1936:13-18). On the other hand, the saga writers suggest that the heathen Icelanders placed great emphasis on the ancient Old Scandinavian sanction which forbade fighting and bloodshed within the precincts of the Thing. This, however, may be a reflection of the power of the oath of truce which the participants in the Thing laid upon themselves. (Tacitus mentions that the assemblies of the German tribes were placed under divine protection which would make a breach of their peace an act of sacrilege.) Another magical sanction of certain relatively sophisticated tribal societies, is the notion that it is far more seemly to pay back an offense through sorcery than through violence (Thomas 1962:2). [8] In such societies, the correct behavior for an injured man is to treat his offender with outward courtesy and, simultaneously, bewitch him. Any show of violenceeven a harsh wordis improper. There is, so far as I know, no indication that the Northmen ever deemed sorcery more seemly than a blow with a sword or spear. Thr, the most popular deity of all, seldom does anything that is not violent. And in, the greatest of sorcerers, uses his Powers to incite men to combat. The heroes, skalds, and chieftains much prefer fighting to casting spells and, in the sagas, those men who hire male or female witches to curse their enemies are usually presented as pusillanimous,

while the witches themselves are usually of low social status. A notable exception is the Viking poet, Egil Skallagrmsson, who curses King Eirk Bloodyaxe, but few persons who read the saga can doubt that Egil would have preferred to take vengeance with his own hands. The only Old Scandinavian tales that carry some flavor of a moral preference for witchcraft as against open violence are those which involve the sanctity of the community of the gods. When the gods bind the Fenris-Wolf with the magical rope made by the dwarfs, the implication seems to be that this is a wise and moral act, far preferable to shedding the blood of a hostage within the sacred precincts of the gods' abode. I do not wish to imply that the Northmen of high heathen times were inexpert or reluctant sorcerers. From Skaldic verse (Ynglingatal) composed in the first half of the ninth century, one gathers that sorcery was common practice among the ruling folk of Sweden (where heathendom prevailed longer than among the other Scandinavians). But it does seem as if the heathen Norwegian and Icelandic warriors of the tenth century were beginning to regard certain types of witchcraft as beneath them. Of all the notable men of the classic sagas, only Egil is depicted as a practicing magician. In societies pervaded by the magical world view, a man who suffers misfortune or serious illness tends immediately to wonder who among his acquaintances dislikes him sufficiently to hire a sorcerer to bring trouble upon him. Alternatively, he may wonder whether he has offended a Being of Power who is paying him back by visiting misfortune upon him. If his troubles continue he will hire a diviner to find the source and then proceed to make peace with gifts or by offering other means of conciliation. Or, if he suspects that he has been unjustly bewitched, he may hire a counter-sorcerer or go to law and turn the magical sanctions of the elders against the sorcerer. A similar modality of action may be maintained in the art or drama of highly sophisticated societies. Thus, the Greek tragedy of Oedipus begins with the onset of a terrible plague; the "cause" of this plague is then sought through divination, whereupon the gods disclose that they are angry because a tabu has been broken. This point of view plays a very minor role in the Old Scandinavian literature. There are only a very few incidents or anecdotes which begin with a mysterious ailment or misfortune which is subsequently explained by divination and cured. The clearest case appears in Egil's saga when Egil discovers that a young woman's illness comes from improperly cut runes left under her bed by a hopeful young man (Eddison 1930: 174-5, 182). Another example occurs in Eyrbyggja Saga, where Thorbjorn consults a diviner to find his lost cattle (Schach and Hollander 1959:26-27). As far as the literary form is concerned, the emphasis is always the other way around, the narrator beginning at the beginning of a sequence of events, hiding nothing, and presenting his materials so as to demonstrate the inexorable workings of fate. This procedure sets the second sight quite outside the area of morality or law, for what we get are numerous incidents in which wise individuals foresee what is going to happen without being able to do anything about it. This variety of second sight, I suggest, is at some remove from being thoroughly magical and is related to the heroic traditions discussed in Chapter 9.

There are in the sagas a number of interesting incidents in which ordinary folk who appear to be living solidly within an enchanted view, ask the advice of men (e.g. chieftains) who are pictured as more sophisticated and sceptical. Thus, the people who are being haunted at Frd (Schach and Hollander 1959:105-117) may have approached Snorri goi as they would a diviner. In this account, the mistress of the house had invited Thorgunnur, a wealthy woman traveler whose goods she had coveted, to stay at the homestead. Thorgunnur, who obviously was gifted with mysterious powers, died with the urgent request that her beautiful and costly bedding be burned. But the greedy housewife had insisted on keeping them. Finally, the master of the house and his men were drowned while fishing, and at their funeral feast, they had walked into the hall, dripping wet and sitting at the fire "without returning anyone's greeting." Folk at first had taken this for a good omen, "for at that time," the narrator tells us, "a great deal of heathendom still prevailed even though all the people had been baptised and were nominally Christians." But when the feast was over and the revenants kept appearing night after night, wringing out their wet clothing, and were then joined by seven additional recently buried dead men "all covered with earth ... the people of the household fled from the kitchen, as was to be expected." The next night they built their fire in another room but the ghosts followed them there. Finally, two fires were built, the ghosts appropriating the larger and the living members of the household, the smaller. After additional marvels and deaths, Kjartan, a bright youth, went to his uncle, Snorri goi, and asked advice. Snorri's advice was eclectic and inclusive. Following it, they burned the bed curtains as their dead owner, Thorgunnur, had suggested. Next they summoned the revenants to a court held at the house door and cited them for "haunting the house without permission and depriving people of health and life." "Then the door court was set up, the charges were stated, and the procedure was exactly as at an assembly court. The testimony of the witnesses was heard, the cases were summed up, and the verdicts given. When sentence was pronounced against Thrir Woodenleg, he got up and said, 'Sat I have while the sitting was good.' Thereupon he left by way of the door before which the court was being held." The remainder of the revenants were also sentenced, arose, and left, though it "was obvious from their comments that they were reluctant to leave." A priest then carried holy water and relics through the house and sang a solemn mass, after which all apparitions and haunting at Frd ceased. In another case (Hollander 1964:80-81), King Harald Fairhair loved a beautiful and magically gifted woman who, like Snow-white, died and remained ruddy and unchanged in appearance. The King neglected his duties to sit by his wife, imagining that she would revive. Finally, the people consulted Thorleifr the Wise, who cured the King of his illness by suggesting that he dress the corpse in fine new raiment. Thereupon the corpse disintegrated and the King "was brought back to his sense and reason, and swore off his folly." Finally, there is the case of Gsli (Allen 1936) who, though a valiant and able man, was unjustly outlawed and, moreover, was never able to get his brother or his friends to help him redress his case. He does, however, obtain help from people who live on the outer islands. The saga writers derive this ill luck from a spell cast by Thorgrmr Nosea

spell which extended only to the main and not to the outlying islands. And since Thorgrmr had been slain by Gsli before lifting the spell, there was, seemingly, nothing that could be done about it. While this is not precisely an example of divination it is, nonetheless, a thoroughly magical explanation of a misfortune put forward either by the folk who passed on the story of Gsli or by the man who recorded it. The incident is interesting on another level because it is one of the few cases in which sorcery plays a role in formal legal actionthat is to say, if Thorgrmr had not cast the spell, Gsli's friends would have stood by him at the Thing and he would not have been outlawed. On the other hand, since Gsli's saga is one of the most fate-oriented of the sagas, there may be a more subtle explanation: Gsli is fated to be outlawed and slain; therefore he is also fated to injure Thorgrmr, be cursed, and then kill Thorgrmr before anything can be done about the curse.

Wax Ch. 6: Skaldic Verse [1]

Form
Skaldic verse was one of the few types of oral literature preserved in the same form as composed. So complex were its technical demands, that they acted as an agent of petrification. Verses and entire poems might be lost or words eroded, but, like the shards of a fired pot, the Skaldic stanzas could not easily be reshaped and reused. Thus, when we read a verse by Egil Skallagrmsson, we can be fairly sure that we have the words as Egil spoke them, sometime between 925 and 990, or as Heusler (1931:134 as cited in Hollander 1945:20) puts it, "the genuine records of a warrior society ... fresh and immediate, not second-hand and toned down by the tastes of literary authors." In contrast to the other literatures of heathen times, almost every Skaldic verse was attributed to its composer, and authorities agree that in large part these attributions were accurate. And since many of the Skalds were notable men, their deeds were recorded in biographical sagas. Thus, while we know virtually nothing about the composers of the Eddic verse, we know a great deal about the Skalds, both as individuals and as a class. Most of the famous Skalds were warriors, members of the landowning gentry of Iceland. [2] They lived in the heyday of Viking power, and many were men of exceptional character and intellect. They visited the courts of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, English and Irish kings, often were accepted as members of the hir (the king's guard of honor), and sometimes became the king's confidential advisors and ambassadors. They were noted for their independence of opinion, their frankness and self-possession, and they criticized, exhorted, and advised the sovereigns whom they served. In the practice of their art these men were professionals and litterateurs. Their more formal and elaborate verses could not be composed, appreciated, or understood without an arduous and consciously acquired technical education. A part of their technique involved the extravagant use of the implied simile, the kenningthat is, whenever possible, the Skald refrained from calling a being or thing by its ordinary name and

instead invented a name (or used an already established invention) that displayed his intimate knowledge of the mythology. For example, men might be called "in's ash trees," a sword might be in's grey rainbow," and a shield, "the stormy sky of the valkyrie." Similarly, the poetic art might be in's gift in's theft, since in stole the mead of poetry from the giant Sutting and gave a part of it to men. Again, a whale might be called Boar of Viblindi, since the giant Viblindi drew whales out of the sea like fish; the sea was "the drink of whales," and gold, "the amber of the sea." In addition to kennings, Skaldic verse demanded internal assonance and rhyme, whose nature and position in the line were strictly regulated. Even more complexities were added by the extreme liberty of word position, the addition of two, three, or sometimes more parenthetic sentences to a single stanza, and sentence separation. In the last mentioned tour de force, a stanza was composed by separating two sentences into syntactically unrecognizable parts which were then intertwined according to formal rule. Or a half stanza might contain two or three strands of thought "intertwined like polyphonic music or intercalated one within the other like Chinese boxes" (Einarsson 1957:55). The artfulness and subtlety of some of the Skaldic verse cannot be appreciated without effort, and the reader will be rewarded by a perusal of Wood's (1959) interpretation of the verses that a newly christened heathen, Hallfrr ttarsson, recited before the zealot King lafr Tryggvason. On the other hand, as one struggles with these convoluted verses, one is tempted to sympathize with the Danes at the court of Harald Gormsson, who, in a fictional account (Bengtsson 1966:153-154) are pictured as listening to a Skald "with an appearance of understanding, for any man who could not understand poetry would be regarded as a poor specimen of a warrior." Still, these fictional Danes are one up on the historical Anglo-Saxon nobles who, at the court of Harald Godwinson, did in fact listen to a Skaldic nonsense poem delivered by a rapscallion Icelander named Sneglu-Hallr (Hollander 1945:212). A great part of the Skaldic verse consisted of the recital of the more notable warlike exploits of the particular king or earl to whom the Skald wished to give honor or to whose court he was attached. Indeed, kings and warriors seem to have taken for granted that a great poem into which their deeds and name were embedded would be remembered for all time, and in this sense the Skalds functioned both as recorders and record keepers of the fame of their patrons. Skaldic verse could also take the form of a straightforward description, an exhortation, an expostulation, a magical spell, or even a satirical lampoon. (Sodomy being among the deadliest of insults, a Christian missionary to Iceland killed two men because they composed verses taunting him with having engendered nine children on the bishop [Einarsson 1957:47].) In Iceland the Skaldic art was not limited to professionals, and most men could turn out an occasional verse of the less difficult type. Even a spirited girl might compose a verse to taunt or tease a youthful warrior (Egil's Saga, Eddision 1930:92-93).

Meaning
Personalization and Self-Expression
More than any of the other creators of the quasi-secular literature, the Skalds were naively and consistently interested in themselves. They always speak in the first person and rarely omit a reference to themselves. The greatest of the Skalds, Egil Skallagrmsson (ca. 910-1000), begins his equivocal eulogy of King Eirk Bloodyaxe (Hollander 1945:76-77) by describing how he (Egil) came to the king's house. He opens his poem in praise of his friend Arinbjrn by stating that he, Egil, is quick to praise worthy deeds but will not fawn on false greatness. Then, in the process of praising Arinbjrn for standing by him in trouble, he gives us a detailed picture of his (Egil's) personal appearance. He tells us that he is not handsome, that his ugly head and his eyes are wolf grey, and that he has shaggy eyebrows. Of how Arinbjrn, the subject of his poem, looked, we learn nothing. Unfortunately the technical complexity of these works renders them very difficult to translate and even more difficult to interpret. We may, however, gain some impression of the intensely personal usage to which the Skaldic art could be put from the tale of one of Egil's finest poems, the Sonatorrek (literally, "the difficult vengeance of sons"). Like most of the other Skaldic verse, Egil's poetry has been preserved by incorporation into a saga, which in this particular case is one of the most complete and reliable life histories in the literature. We learn that from early childhood Egil was contentious, selfish, stubborn, resourceful, reckless, and extremely jealous of his rights. He pays off every score made against him, often with interest. His avarice is pictured as extraordinary even for his day and age. If he cannot get proper restitution without delay, he sulks like a child. Or, if he is truly frustrated, as when King Eirk deprives him of his wife's inheritance, he flies into a maniacal rage and turns his knowledge of sorcery against his foes. In later middle age, this man, who has almost always "had his own way," suffers an injury for which there appears to be no payment. One of his sons dies of a fever and, shortly thereafter, another, a promising youth of seventeen, is drowned. After the burial, the saga tells us, Egil returns to his house, locks himself in his bed-closet and refuses to speak, eat, or drink. On the third day, Egil's daughter manages to trick him into breaking his resolution and coaxes him into composing a eulogy for his son. Egil says that he does not know if he can do this, "but try I shall." (The following translation is taken from Hollander [1945:9098].) Egil begins by describing the difficulty of expressing his emotions in poetic form: Tardily takes my tongue to move, and to stir the steelyard-of-song: [3] hopeless is't about Odin's theft, [4]

hard to draw from the heart's-fastness! He pictures the devastated state of his kin: Grim the gap which the gale did tear in my sib's serried ranges unfilled aye and open will stand the breach blasted by the breaking sea. Then, in a furious outburst, he vents his rage on his son's "slayer", the sea-god, Aegir, and challenges the "ale-smith," the maker of the foaming billows, to battle: If my suit with sword I could press, all over for the ale-smith were it: could I kill the storm's kinsman, Aegir's might I would meet as foe. But Egil knows that he cannot hope to meet the gods face-to-face and that his kin's lost must go unavenged: But strength to cope I could not muster, so meseemed, with my son's slayer: soon will it be seen by all how helpless the hoary warrior. In several stanzas he then pictures his loneliness. His brother is dead; he has no friends; he trusts none of the "self-seeking, base-minded men of Iceland," who, he asserts, are so low that they would accept wergeld from their brother's slayer rather than kill him: Often I in anguish think, left alone, of my lack of brothers cast about when battle rages,

look around and would like to know what bold man would band with me, stout-hearted, in stress of danger ... Hard to find a friend to trust anywhere in all Iceland: caitiff wretch would wreck his kindred, barter off his brother for rings. He then turns upon in, the god of warriors and skalds, whom he had "trusted as truehearted," but who, he reasons, has betrayed him: Well I stood with the strife-abettor, trusted him as true-hearted, until he turned upon me, the gallows'-lord [5] the giver-of-victory. Up to this point in the poem, Egil has catalogued his wrongs and expressed his fury, agony, and helplessness. Now, however, like a good arbitrator, he fairly states the other side, listing the special gifts given him by in: Not bow I to the brother-of-Vili, [6] the great god, with gladsome mind; |yet Mim's friend [6] to me hath made for all harm these high amends: the Goth's friend [6] hath given me one fault-free unfailing skill, and that mind

which made for me frank foes aye of the false-hearted. Thus, he concludes, though Hel, the goddess of death, waits for him, he will abide her coming Gladly though, and ungrudgingly, with light heart ... The saga tells us: "Egil regained his spirits as he went on composing the poem: and when he had finished it he recited it to... the members of the household. Then he rose up out of bed and seated himself in the high-seat," that is, he resumed his position as head of the house. This poem seems to be a desperate and passionate claim for self-respect. Egil, if we can understand him at all, believes that he has suffered a terrible wrong, a wrong which he cannot right by any means available to him. In this situation he must either die or find some means of bringing his self and the world to a proper state of balance. Or, in Old Icelandic legal terminology, he must convince himself that "the difference has been paid." If we add to this the interpretation provided by the saga, the poem may be viewed as a justification of Egil's decision to live. The saga tells us that he had resolved to starve himself to death. Through no fault of his own, he had broken this resolve. Thwarted in his attempt to die with honor, he had to find a convincing defense for living with honor. Thus, the Sonatorrek, in addition to being a remarkable example of self-expression, may be viewed as a kind of legal debate and self-judgment. The poet himself argues both sides and then acts as doomsman. The case against the gods is stated: they have robbed Egil of his kin. Next the case in favor of the gods is stated: in himself has given Egil "one fault-free unfailing skill," that is, he has made Egil a perfect Skald, and he has given him the ability to expose false-hearted men. Then Egil, as judge, decides that in spite of his grief, he and his friend in are even. He may hold up his head and live "gladly" and "light-heartedly," as a warrior should, until the goddess of death comes for him. (Perhaps we may gain some idea of the extraordinary value placed upon the Skaldic art by the fact that a man like Egil here asserts that it is equal in price to his own son.)

The Dynamic Universe

In Chapter 3 we remarked that the enchanted literature gave us a picture of a world in which all animate things moved with energy. In our discussion of the law, we noted that the greater part of the law was devoted to regulating the movements of extremely active men and that many of the legal concepts were conceived in terms of action. Now, in the early Skaldic verse we find an art form that is literally a verbal motion picture. Each tightly involuted little stanza is like a flash of lightning that casts a dazzling and momentary illumination upon each detail of a swirling scene.

For example, this is how Thjlfr of Hvinir pictured the god Thr driving his chariot through the heavens (Hollander 1945:47): Flamed the firmament with fiery lightnings, and all lands below the hail did lash, before Ull's kinsman [7] as galloping, the goat-bucks gaped the earth on sudden hauled the wheeld wain of Hrungir's foeman [8] thurs-ward. Equally notable is Egil Skallagrmsson's description of a storm at sea (Turville-Petre 1953:42-43): The angry troll of tree-trunks the tempest's chisel wieldeth, around the bull of bow-sprits beats a file of breakers; the freezing wolf of forests files the swan of the sea-god, grinds the beak of the galley, grimly batters the forecastle. [9] The Skalds' photoflash technique is, of course, ideally suited to their favorite theme: the description of battles. Spears and swords flash, arrows swarm, blood streams, corpses fall in piles, ravens and wolves gorge, in patterned and repetitive orgies of violence and death (Hollander 1945:69): Was lifted sword 'gainst linden-board [l0] around the lord as rushed he for'rd. Was heard the roar of raging war as flowed wound-gore on far-off shore.

Orientation
Authorities agree that the Skaldic verse is one of the most eye-oriented literatures in the world. By and large the Skalds rely on the physical senses which relate man to what the modem psychologists call the "real world." They trust their "physical" senses rather than their intellect, emotions, or insight. By placing primary emphasis on complex technique the Skalds come close to transforming poetic expression into something a man can

manipulate with his hands. They seem, as one scholar puts it, to hew out their work in a state of intense and deliberate concentration on externals, rather than let it well forth impulsively from within themselves. Though the Skalds may describe their own feelings, they rarely speak of the feelings of another individual. They seem to have no interest in any emotions but their own and they are concerned primarily with man's visible and tangible accomplishments and his demonstrable successes. But though one may justly characterize the Skalds as incapable of "taking the role of the other," one cannot call them dispassionate or unemotional. Any manifestation of tumult, noise, or fury fascinates them. But they subject these violences to a curious kind of restraint, and try to depict a raging sea, a battle, or their own emotions and passions through the medium of an exquisitely controlled art form involving the utmost in technical discipline. Thus, we may not be surprised that a Viking, like Egil, produced so impressive a picture of a storm at sea. But I, at least, am greatly impressed by the fact that he managed to do this and remain within so rigid and binding an art form. Again, in the Sonatorrek, Egil's despair, fury, and loneliness are, for me, raised to awesome heights when I consider that he was able to produce this effect with language so abstruse and indirect that it may not have been fully comprehensible even to his contemporaries. Whether the Vikings themselves admired the Skaldic art because of its emphasis on controlled energy and tightly reined passion we can only guess. The saga writers, however, suggest that in heathen times the ideal individual was capable on the one hand, of tremendous outbursts of passion and, on the other, of an extraordinary self-rule or selfcontrol.

Skaldic VerseMagical or Disenchanted?

We know that Egil Skallagrmsson laid an effective curse on King Eirk Bloodyaxe in Skaldic verse, that the heathen Skalds derived their poetic gifts from in, the god of sorcerers, and that many Skalds considered themselves the particular "friends" of in. The question arises, did the differences of Skaldic verse and the power and influence which many of the Skalds obtained at the courts of kings and earls of the Viking Age derive from the fact that being a Skald was virtually the same as being a formidable sorcerer? [11] We have a great deal of evidence of how the most gifted of the Skalds were regarded by their fellow men either abroad or at home in Iceland. We also have a great deal of evidence of how warrior peoples, like the Indians of the Plains, treated their warriors and their most powerful and revered medicine men or "doctors." Members of both societies seem to have taken it for granted that promising and enterprising young men were by nature aggressive, contentious, impulsive and proud. Young men were not expected to become conventional and "law-abiding" until they married and had dependents for whom they were responsible. Thus, when Ogmund went a-viking and returned home "with fame and much wealth" his father thereupon declared, "that Ogmund was not likely to win more fame in forays and I shall get you for wife Helga, the daughter of Earl Fr6thi"

(Kormks Saga, Hollander 1949:13). In brief, for the most part, the skalds behaved and were treated much more like ideal-typical warriors than like professional or semiprofessional magicians. I emphasize this rather obvious point because I think that the Skaldic verse tells us much more about the world view of warriors than about the view of either a magically oriented or a disenchanted folk. Indeed, it seems to have been the most transcendental of the literary forms of Scandinavia, since it was invented by genuine heathen, then practiced and brought to its climax by heathen, half-heathen and ambivalent newly baptized Christian warriors, after which it fell into a declines and then, two centuries later, was revived and nourished anew. One may suggest that it represents another of the relatively sophisticated aspects of the late Viking cultureanother facet of the process which turned some warriors into "godless" men, and led others to develop and refine their code of ethics. I am also inclined to see the record keeping of the Skalds as more an expression of a warrior culture than as an index of naivet or sophistication. As the Maya priests and Babylonian astrologers attest, records can be kept as assiduously and accurately by members of a magically oriented society as by persons who are thoroughly disenchanted. The important point is that the Skalds flourished because they recorded the noteworthy and largely military achievements of kings who expected that through these verses their fame would remain alive. That the efforts of the Skalds provided the historians of a more prosaic age with invaluable though sketchy historical data is, perhaps, a joke on the kings. But the fact that the deeds of the Viking kings are remembered because of the labors of modern historians is, perhaps, a joke on the historians.

Wax Ch. 7: The Hvaml

The Instrumental Good
Much of the Old Scandinavian literature reflects a hard-headed materialistic individualism - a self interest that is shrewd, down-to-earth, and pragmatic. The gods are often depicted as master of expediential trickery. The law is stated so that its enforcement rests on man's inclination to guard his own interests. Many of the skalds are naively and consistently interested in themselves and in the furtherance of their careers. Moreover, some of the major characters of the sagas, like Snorri goi and Vga-Glmr, are notorious for their cold-blooded, calculating self-interest. This seeming amoralism, which accepts almost any act as proper so long as it materially benefits the actor, is most clearly and consistently expressed in the Hvaml (Sayings of the High One), a conglomeration of didactic proverbs, mythological incidents, and magical pronouncements ascribed by the thirteenth century compilers of The Elder Edda to in, the god of warriors. Although a collection like this cannot be precisely dated, we know from other sources that some of the stanzas existed in the tenth century (Hollander 1962:14).

The first cluster of seventy-nine stanzas in the collection differs from the succeeding and probably older sections in a number of significant respects. It contains no references to magic or mythology and almost no moralistic sanctions such as "Beware of evil and avoid faithless dealings." Instead, we encounter a consistent and uncompromising emphasis on practical and worldly wisdoma calculating and realistic philosophy that does not seem to be quite in harmony with the magical world view, or the heroic ethic, or the perspective of the sophisticated and learned saga writers. The remaining half of the collection (stanzas 80 to 165) consists of a variety of poems or fragments, most of which are magical in meaning. There are first a score of stanzas dealing with masculine sexual adventures, in which ain points out how gullible and how exasperating women can be. There follow some simple-minded stanzas on wise living. Next comes the great rune poem of in hanging on the tree (ch. 4, p. 48) and this is followed by a list of the eighteen magical charmns which the chanter purports to know, e.g., how to cure sickness, dull swords, break fetters, put out fires, settle strife, calm winds, and so forth. The prime virtue acknowledged by the initial seventy-nine verses is manvit, that is, intelligence as manifested in common sense, shrewdness, and the accumulation of useful information"having one's wits about one." When a man who is clever but reticent comes to a house, his prudence often shields him from misfortune, for never will a man get a more trustworthy friend than a good store of common sense (vs. 6, Clarke 1923). Of his wit hath need who widely fareth a dull wit will do at home; a laughingstock he who lacketh words among smart wits when he sits (vs. 5, Hollander 1962). Better burden bearest thou nowise than shrewd head on thy shoulders; in good stead will it stand among stranger folk, and shield when unsheltered thou art [l] (vs. 10, Hollander 1962). I suggest that we have here not the absence of morality, but the clear and unsentimental expression of an instrumental morality. The reciters of the Hvaml have no interest in abstract or categorical good. For them, to be good, a thing must be good for something. Thus, a man is advised to avoid excess in eating, drinking, speech, sex, and sometimes even in fighting, not because overindulgence is considered evil, offensive to the gods, or contrary to tradition or custom, but because it may lead him into situations harmful to his self-interest. Trouble or sorrow are seen as the logical outcome of foolish conduct. An act is "good" insofar as it brings success to the actor. The Hvaml even furnishes us with linguistic evidence of its instrumental orientation. In this first section, the adjectives "good" (gr) and "evil" (illr) are used only in what Clarke (1923:22-23) calls an ironical sense or what I would prefer to call an instrumental

sense. That is, good and evil refer to the profit or benefit that one may get out of associations with certain persons. A good man is one from whom one can get something useful. Thus: "Knowif you have a friend in whom you have sure confidence and wish to make use of him, [2] you ought to exchange ideas with him and go to see him often" (vs. 44, Clarke 1923). The expedient use of "good" is intensified in the complimentary strophe: "If you have another in whom you have no confidence and yet will make use of him, you ought to address him with fair words but crafty heart and repay treachery with lies" (vs. 45, Clarke 1923). This forthright espousal of the instrumental good sometimes produces an effect of cynicism. When the later, more magically oriented sections of the Hvaml speak of giftexchange, they present it as a categorical virtue, an ancient and hallowed practice. The first part of the Hvaml, however, makes gift-exchange sound like a covert encouragement to bribery: "I have never found a man so generous and hospitable that he would not receive a present, nor one so liberal with his money that he would dislike a reward if he could get one" (vs. 39, Clarke 1923). The positive emphasis that many of these strophes place on the ruthless exploitation of one's fellow man is nicely balanced by exhortations to take care lest one be taken advantage of. Perhaps no didactic work in any literature puts so strong an emphasis on constant vigilance. The world is seen as a hostile territory through which the "man with wits " picks his lonely, self-reliant way: Have thy eyes about thee when thou enterest be wary alway, be watchful alway; for one never knoweth when need will be to meet hidden foe in the hall (vs. 1, Hollander 1962). The wary guest to wassail who comes listens that he may learn, opens his ears, casts his eyes about; thus wards him the wise man 'gainst harm (vs. 7, Hollander 196 2). From his weapons away no one should ever stir one step on the field; for no one knows when need might have on a sudden a man of his sword (vs. 38, Hollander 1962).

Even wealth is regarded as treacherous: in a twinkling fleeth trothless wealth, it is the ficklest of friends (vs. 78, Hollander 1962). The one (other than himself) on whom a man may rely is his kinsman and especially his friend. But even this relationship, as exemplified in the strophes quoted above, is tinged with self-interest. Being uninterested in abstract good, this first section of the Hvaml is also uninterested in abstract evil. Thus, the despised anti-ideal is not the evil-doer or the lawbreaker, but the naive and guileless man, who, because he is snotr (uninformed) or hann ekki kann (he knows nothing) is not able to take care of himself. "He is a foolish man who thinks all who smile at him are his friends. If sensible people show their dislike for him when he is in their company, he will not realize it" (vs. 24, Clarke 1923). "He is a foolish man who thinks all who smile at him are his friends. He will discover when he comes into court [of law] that he has but few supporters" (vs. 25, Clarke 1923). But much as the sharp-witted reciters of the Hvaml may have scorned the honest and trusting bumpkin, they offered him one excellent bit of advice: A witless man, when he meets with man, Had best in silence abide; For no one shall find that nothing he knows, If his mouth is not open too much (vs. 27, Bellows 1957).

Viking, Farmer, or Aristocrat

The Viking Farmer
Most of the verses of the Hvaml are compatible either with the point of view of a canny, action-loving Viking or an equally canny but prudent farmer. Repeatedly, we are told that only the clever and opportunistic man can survive away from home. But on the other hand we are also told that "one's home is best," and that there is no shame in independent and self-respecting poverty. Washed and fed let the farmer ride to moot, though worse for wear his garments for old breeks and boots let no man blush, nor yet though his steed be a screw (vs. 61, Phillpotts 1931). One's home is best though a hut it be: there a man is master and lord; though but two goats thine and a thatchd roof 'tis far better than beg (vs. 36, Hollander 1962).

One's home is best though a hut it be: there a man is master and lord; his heart doth bleed who has to beg the meat for his every meal (vs. 37, Hollander 1962). That these verses represent a single point of view rather than an unblended juxtaposition of fighters' and farmers' sentiments is suggested by the absence of invidious comparisons between fighting and farming. [3] Both are proper activities for men and both are to be pursued in a practical and prudent manner. Indeed, several verses present us with a remarkable amalgamation of ferocity and sober industry, applying the farmer's virtues of industry and early rising both to managing a farm and to predatory activities: Betimes must rise who few reapers has, and see to the work himself; much will miss in the morn who sleeps: for the brisk the race is half run (vs. 59, Hollander 1962). Betimes must rise who would take another's life and win his wealth; lying down wolf never got the lamb, nor sleeping wight slew his foe (vs. 58, Hollander 1962). This combination of alert self-interest (whether in wandering abroad or staying at home), of keeping one's weapons always within reach, of shrewdness, and self-respect, seems entirely compatible with the kind of life ascribed by the saga writers to the early settlers of Iceland. Indeed, no verse of the Hvaml would seem out of place in the mouth of Skalla-Grmr, who could fight in battle as well as he could run a farm or beat out a sword, though Grmr's famous son, Egil, would probably have favored the wandering and adventurous verses over the more modest and homely. Indeed, the proverbs of the Hvaml are so exactly the expressions one would expect from the people portrayed in Eyrbyggja, Vga-Glms, or Egils saga that I find rather pointless the academic debate over whether they represent the view of Norwegian or Icelandic farmers or the view of Viking adherents to the cult of in. Rather, I would suggest that first and foremost they give us a remarkably clear inside view of the unadorned attitudes of the ordinary man, the Norwegian or Icelander who might worry about a boundary dispute one day, look for some lost cattle the next, pull a sharp deal whenever he could, and spend an occasional summer abroad, harrying the Wends or helping the King of England cope with the Scots. This is not to say, of course, that a Viking, newly returned with fame, loot, a blue cloak, and a sword wound with silver, might not use some of these strophes to twit the fellows who had stayed at home. But the latter, for their part, could tell the loud-mouthed braggart: The man who is prudent a measured use of the might he has will make; He finds when among the brave he fares that the boldest he may not be (vs. 64, Bellows 1957).

The Hvaml contrasted with the Heroic Ethic

Other interesting problems are raised if we compare the underlying moral precepts of the Hvaml with those of the heroic ethic or the more courtly Skaldic verse. While the heroic literature and the proverbs agree that a man should be loyal to his friends and ruthless to his enemies and that he should defend his rights and abide by the principles of proper restitution, they differ on many other important points. For example, the skalds praise the nobly born man for being generous and lavish to a degree. The Hvaml points out that a friend may be won with little: Not great things needs give to a man: bringeth thanks oft a little thing; with half a loaf and a half-drained cup I won me oft worthy friend (vs. 52, Hollander 1962). The heroic poets and the skalds picture the ideal hero as impetuously reckless. The Hvaml points out that the "wise man" is cautious and foresighted; he never leaves his house unarmed, he assesses a situation before he jumps into it, and he "makes a measured use of his might." In the lays and sagas aristocratic persons are almost always pictured as extremely passionate individuals who love, hate, and fight with all their being. The Hvaml advises continence and moderation, and points out that "wise men" do not drink, eat, or talk too much, or run off with other men's wives. To the ideal aristocratic hero all compromise is repugnant: he must have his own way or he will have nothing at all. The Hvaml points out that only the living man gets loot and that a corpse is of no good to anyone. And yet, there is no verse in the heroic or aristocratic literature that gives so clear an expression of indomitable human spirit: May the halt ride a horse, and the handless be herdsman, the deaf man may doughtily fight, a blind man is better than a burned one, ay: of what gain is a good man dead? (vs. 71, Hollander 1962). It is likely that we have in the heroic lays the purest expression of an aristocratic tradition involving honor, heroism, steadfastness, and manly excellence, and in the Hvaml the expression of a folk tradition emphasizing the homely, ordinary, and eminently practical virtues. To judge by the behavior ascribed to persons in the historical sagas, these traditions seem to have influenced each other a good deal, and in Iceland, where the major social distinctions involved coming from a prosperous "old family" as against being poor, they seem to have influenced each other a very great deal. Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that the writers and compilers of the family sagas, with their intense and self-conscious interest in the ancient literature, admired both traditions and combined them very skillfully. Thus, in the sagas, a young aristocrat caught in a tight pinch, may quote the Hvaml, while a poor farmer's son, bent on gaining renown, may do his best to behave like a hero of a heroic lay.

The Disenchantment of the Common Man

The disenchantment reflected in the heroic literature (described in chapter 9) has a pronounced aristocratic tone. It may be, as Turville-Petre (1964:263-268) has suggested, that in the ironical cynicism and unabashed self-interest of the first part of the Hvaml we have the reflection of another kind of disenchantmentthat of the common man who had travelled so far and seen so much that he had come to rely more on his personal wit and skill rather than on the Power Beings of his native community or the priestly Power of his goi (Bloch 1964:31-32). Be this as it may, the fomaldar sgur (sagas of ancient time) and the historic sagas contain many tales about "godless men" or Vikings who trusted neither in the White Christ nor in the Red Thr, but in their own might and main. Perhaps the classic statement is that of the quasi-fictional Finnbogi the Strong who, on being asked about his beliefs by the Emperor of Byzantium, is supposed to have said, "I believe in myself" (ek tri a sjlfan mik). I think that the most sensible thing one can say about these Viking sceptics is that there is no doubt that they existed, but that they were considered exceptional or somewhat peculiar by their contemporaries. The following stories give us a good picture of what they were like. The first two come from Saint Olaf's saga in Heimskringla (Hollander 1964:490-491, 493-494, 504), and relate to the King's preparations for his last battle. "There were two men, one called Gauka-Thrir, the other, Afra-Fasti. They were highwaymen and evil robbers. They had with them thirty men of the same kind as themselves They said to each other that it might be a good plan to join the king and ... go to battle with him because they had never before been in a battle in which troops were drawn up against each other in battle-array, and they were very curious to see how the king arrayed his troops. This plan was much to the liking of their comrades, and they made their way to where the king was... The king said... 'I am inclined ... to accept the service of men like these. But are you Christians?' "Gauka-Thrir answered, saying that he was neither Christian nor heathen. 'Nor have we fellows any other belief than trust in our own power and success, and that proves to be enough for us.' "The king replied, 'A great pity that men of such prowess do not believe in Christ, their maker.' "Thrir answered, 'Is there, sir king, in your company any Christian, who has grown to greater height than my brother and I?' [When the brothers refuse baptism, the king rejects their services.] Then Gauka-Thrir said, 'It is a great shame that this king rejects our services. That has never happened to me that I was not accepted as an equal with other men. I shall not go back with that shame on me.' Thereupon they joined company with other men from the forests and followed the troops. [Just prior to the battle the king requests all the heathen to be baptized or to leave.] Then Afra-Fasti said [to his brother], 'If you want my opinion, I don't care to turn back. I take part in the battle and stand on either side, and I don't care on whose.' Gauka-Thrir answered, 'If I go to battle I want to stand on the king's side, for he needs help most. And if I am to believe in some god, what difference is it to me whether I believe in the White Christ or some other god? So now it is my advice that we let ourselves be baptized if the king thinks that it is of such great

importance.' [The brothers and their followers are baptized, fight under the king's banner, and die in the battle.]" Another heathen champion, Arnljtr Gellini, also offers his services to the king. Arnljtr, however, is a man of good family, clad in chain mail and carrying a spear inlaid with gold. When the king asked him whether or not he was a Christian, Arnljtr: "said concerning his faith that he believed in his own power and strength. 'That belief has so far sufficed me; but now I mean rather to believe in you, sire.' "The king replied, 'If you will believe in me, then you must believe what I shall teach you. This you are to believe, that Jesus Christ created heaven and earth and all human beings; and that after death all shall go to him who are good and have the right faith.' "Arnljtr replied, 'I have heard the White Christ spoken of, but I do not know what is his function and where his dominion lies. Now I shall be willing to believe all you tell me. I shall entrust myself to you altogether.' (Arnljtr also dies for the king.] " Another story (Turville-Petre 1964:266) is told of the Christian King, lafr Tryggvason (995-1,000): "Br was the name of a powerful chieftain in Upplnd; he would not submit to the King, nor embrace the religion which he taught. The emissaries whom the King had sent to him failed to return. There was no temple on Br's estate, and the King had no reason to believe that he was devout in his worship of the gods. Wishing to make a final attempt to convert Br,Olaf sent the Icelander, Thorvald Tasaldi to him. Declaring his religious beliefs, Br said: 'I believe neither in idols nor demons; I have travelled from land to land, and I have come across giants as well as black men, but they have not got the better of me. Therefore, I have believed in my might and strength.' " It is interesting that the Vikings were not the only wandering warriors who sometime came to look at the beliefs of their home community with a sceptical eye. The following story is told of a young Kiowa brave of the 19th century (Nye 1962:83-90): A young warrior, Big Bow by name, scoffed at the power of the medicine men. He boasted that "he did not require the aid of a bird to give him success in battle. He said that it was cowardly and the work of a weakling to solicit the aid of a medicine man; he himself won his fights through his own courage and strength. Naturally this sort of talk was resented by the other ~Kowas. Repeated publicly at the victory (scalp) dance, it brought so much criticism that thereafter Big Bow went on raids by himself, or accompanied by only one or two others. (From Bad Medicine and Good: Tales of the Kiowas, by Wilbur Sturtevant Nye. Copyright 1962 by the University of Oklahoma Press.) On one occasion Big Bow was absent from his tribe for three years and, on returning, claimed that he had accomplished a remarkable exploit, killing three enemies. The war chiefs did not believe his story, until one took the trouble to make a long journey to verify it.

"When the announcement was made that Big Bow's story was true, the whoops of the women doing him honor could be heard all through the village. All criticism was now stifled, and the reputation of Big Bow continued to grow. Despite this, the Kiowas were never entirely happy over the fact that he was able to win his victories without the aid of medicine." (From Bad Medicine and Good: Tales of the Kiowas, by Wilbur Sturtevant Nye. Copyright 1962 by the University of Oklahoma Press.)

Wax Ch. 8: The Sagas

Origin, Form, and Style
The Sagas as a Whole
When people say that the Icelandic sagas are "precociously fresh, clear and objective" in style, they are usually referring only to a score or so of classic or family sagas (or to the works of Snorri), and not to the hundreds of other, structurally similar but relatively neglected works such as the early sagas of the kings, the legendary sagas (fornaldar sgur) and the romantic "lying sagas" (lygi sgur). The family sagas are unique; other peoples have created mythologies, heroic literatures, or highly technical and subtle forms of poetry. But these sagas are a thoroughly idiosyncratic achievement of the Icelanders. While the virtues of the classic sagas may be appreciated without knowing much about the others, a broader knowledge of the genre is helpful to an understanding of how the much admired works were developed and how widespread among the population was the viewpoint they reflect. [1] When the Icelanders acquired the art of writing (ca. 1100), they were accustomed to listening to long prose tales that recounted the adventures of legendary or living heroes. The tellers of such tales seem to have had relatively little status or prestige as compared to the skalds. This being so, it is not surprising that the men of good families who had acquired the foreign and prestigious art of writing first devoted themselves to the preparation of pious churchly works or to straightforward technical works in astronomy, calendrical reform, Latin grammar, rhetoric, and linguistics. Between 1140 and 1180 one of them produced a perfect phonological orthography for the Icelandic language. Among the most notable of these technical and scholarly works are those of Ari Thorgilsson the Learned (1067/8-1148). Ari wrote a short history of Iceland (Islendingabk) remarkable for its accurate dating and respect for fact, as well as for its character sketches and dramatic incidents. He also may have written or helped write The Book of the Settlements (Landnmabk), which enumerates about 400 settlers, their land claims and their genealogies in a manner "astoundingly minute and correct" (Einarsson 1957:108). Though Ari had only an oral tradition to work with, he conscientiously named his informants so that his readers might form their own conclusions about the reliability of his assertions. For example (Vigfusson and Power 1905:288), he names his fosterfather Teitr, "the wisest man whom I knew"; Thorgils Gellir's son, "who could remember far back"; and Thrir Snorradottir (Snorri goi's daughter), who "was both wise in many

things and a truthful narrator" and who, besides, was eighty-seven years old. This is how Ari described the colonization of Greenland: [2] "The country which is called Greenland was discovered and settled from Iceland. "Eirkr raui was the name of a man from the Breiafjur District, who sailed out there and took possession of land at the place which since then has been called Eirfksfjur. He gave a name to the land and called it Greenland, for he said that people would want to go to that place if the country had a good name. They found there traces of human habitation both in the east and the west of the country and fragments of kayaks and stone implements, from which one can see that the same kind of people had traveled about here who inhabited Vinland and whom the Greenlanders call Skraelings. Eirkr raui began to colonize the country fourteen or fifteen years before Christianity came to Iceland, according to what a man who himself accompanied Eirkr raui out there told Thorkell Gellisson in Greenland." Meanwhile, other Icelanders had begun to translate saints' lives, homilies, and other devotional works from the Latin into their native tongue and also to write the sagas of those Norwegian kings who had come to be regarded as saints. Most of these works were strongly influenced by the hagiographical tradition of the church, which is to say that they tended to be more edifying than accurate. But the style set by Ari was carried on and expanded by Snorri Sturluson (1172-1241), who produced "the best history written in the Middle Ages" (Hollander 1945:23), relating the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings from the beginnings down to nearly his own time. Snorri used both oral and written sources, studied the works of predecessors like Ari, collected material from diverse quarters, and exercised a marked critical judgment in the selection of his data. His argument that the Skaldic verse was accurately descriptive of expeditions and battles is frequently quoted (Hollander 1964:4): "At the court of King Harald there were skalds, and men still remember their poems and the poems about all the kings who have since his time ruled in Norway; and we gathered most of our information from what we are told in those poems which were recited before the chieftains themselves or their sons. We regard all that to be true which is found in those poems about their expeditions and battles. It is (to be sure) the habit of poets to give highest praise to those princes in whose presence they are; but no one would have dared to tell them to their faces about deeds which all who listened, as well as the prince himself, knew were only falsehoods and fabrications. That would have been mockery, still not praise." On the other hand, Snorri departed from the sober, concentrated, factual reporting of Ari in many respects. He loved to tell a good story, and his accounts of great battles or significant encounters between historical personages are as much fine literature as prosaic history. With the impartiality of the man of reason, he tended to cut both the sentimentally pious, Christian, miracle tales and the heathen "old wives' superstitions" from his earlier Scandinavian sources. Moreover, and here he truly reflects the stylistic spirit of the Sturlung period: "He cannot refrain from making a muddled account

intelligible, nor from putting events into a chronological order, and he likes to trace cause and effect" (Phillpotts 1931:228). The first of the classic sagas were likely to have been written about 1200 to 1220 and took the form of fairly extensive biographies of famous skalds who had lived circa 9501000. Shortly thereafter appeared the family sagas, focussing on the "history" of a particular family, or several families, or, in some cases, an entire district. Among the more noted of these are Egil's saga, the biography of the greatest of the skalds; Gsli's saga, the tragic story of a heroic but unlucky outlaw; Eyrbyggja, a kind of community history of a particular district; Laxdoela saga, a long work which mixes history, romance, and heroism and has a strong-minded woman as a major character; Bandamanna saga, a satire relating how a young merchant, with the help of his father, outwits the greedy chieftains who plan to get his money through a legal technicality; Gunnlaug's saga, a mournful tale of ill-fated love; Njl's saga, a very long, elaborately structured work which tells three stories in one; Hrafnkel's saga, a short but artful tale about a feud between a chieftain and a common man; and the late Grettis saga, a strange work full of trolls and gloomy fatalism. All of these works relate events which occurred or were supposed to have occurred during the tenth or the early eleventh century. About 1300 a man of meager talent collected and compiled various sagas dealing with contemporary or nearly contemporary Icelandic history. This compilation is called Sturlunga saga and it comprises our major source of information about the disintegration of the Icelandic Commonwealth. At about the same time, the Icelanders began to write down the legendary sagas (until then neglected by the learned men) that related the stories of Sigur, Helgi, and other heroes in prose. They also began to produce the lygi sgur or lying sagas, fabulous tales based on romances from the courts of Europe and Asia, and differing markedly from the classic type in their emphasis on extravagant adventures and superhuman feats of arms. These imported tales frequently use a motif that is very rare in the classic sagasa mysterious illness caused by magic and cured by the efforts of the hero.

The Classic Saga

The classic sagas vary in size, form, and content. They may be a dozen or a hundred pages long. The emphasis may be on family history, biography, tragedy, satire, adventure, romance, or a mixture of these elements. For the most part the stories are told in neighborly fashion, with emphasis on the intimate details of everyday life, so that a missing cheese, a stranded whale, a woman's thoughtless words, an unsuccessful trading venture, a sudden thunderstorm, a stolen cow, a young man's stubbornness or an old man's foolishness are given as much weight as the words or deeds of people of great account. Whether great or small, all events, words, and deeds, are arranged and presented in strict chronological order, so that as the story unfolds they are seen to be significant causal elements in the plot. Every reader who comes freshly to the sagas is immediately struck by their objective and unbiased style. It is not so much that the authors had no moral or political axes to grind

(for indeed they did), but that they were masters in writing as if they had none, and so their style emerges as amazingly fair, lucid, accurate-sounding, and restrained. The sagas report as fact only what could reasonably have been seen or heard by a witness, and at their most typical, they do not even state that a man was angry or depressed, but record his words and acts, letting the reader draw his own conclusions. They studiously avoid expressing a personal judgment on any matter whatever. If a character in a saga has committed an atrocity, they may say, "Folk thought that deed ill done." They do not even, as Einarsson (1957:133) points out, permit themselves an ornamental adjective: "He grasped his fine sword" would not be saga style; it should be: "He grasped his sword, it was a fine weapon." So violent are some of the events in the sagas that we today may overlook the intense interest of the writers in the process by which the conflict was resolved, just as we may overlook the paradox that the conflict itself was viewed as a deliberate effort on the part of the antagonists to restore a just and honorable balance among themselves. Fundamentally, most of the sagas are detailed accounts of how trouble developed and how the differences between individuals or groups were worked out. The writers begin by telling us how the balance of relationships between two individuals or households came to be disturbed. Next they describe the long and complicated series of acts by which both parties attempted to right the balance, and finally, they give us an equally detailed account of the eventual resolution. Indeed, if one were obliged to describe many of the finest sagas in one phrase, one could do worse than call them skillfully narrated legal case histories. The focus of the saga writers is so broad that a social scientist accustomed to making distinctions between the "individual" and the "society" may at first conclude that these writers had turned their attention away from the individual toward the society or the nation. But this is not the case. The saga writers are interested first and foremost in the notable man or woman. They differ from the composers of the heroic lays, not by virtue of the fact that they reduce or diminish the value or stature of a man, but by the complexity of the background against which they present him. As Einarsson (1957:125) aptly puts it: in Iceland "the individual could never get lost in the crowd.... Indeed, the Icelanders might be accused of never discovering the woods because of the prominence of the trees." In the delineation of the character of these individuals the skill of the saga writers is uncanny. Even persons who play minor roles, poor men, loquacious serving women, or sharptongued housekeepers are portrayed via simple but telling actions as individuals rather than types. Typical of this portraiture is the tenant farmer whose condition and soul are baldly revealed by his response to threats intended to force him to betray a friend, for he says, "My clothes are bad, and it is of no concern of mine whether I wear them a shorter or a longer timebut I would rather die than fail to help my friend in any way I can" (Gsli's saga, quoted by Einarsson 1957:133).

Whose View do the Sagas Reflect?

For half a century scholars have disagreed over the issue of whether (a) the classic or family sagas represented an older oral tradition which was accurately recorded by the

literate Icelanders of the early 13th century or whether (b) they were created at that late date as written compositions, having a partial basis in oral tales or earlier written works. If the former, they would contain unparalleled data on the world view and values of the men of the late heathen age. If the latter, they would throw an equally valuable light on the values and interests of the literate laymen of the 13th century, men who were acutely conscious that the world of their ancestors had vanished and that their own ways and values were shifting. Recent research has tended to support the latter view, which is to say that most of the sagas seem to have been more or less skillfully constructed by literate men out of a variety of materials from a number of sources. Scholars have also long assumed that the saga writers (or recorders) put down only what they believed to be fact and that if they were not always able historians they were, at least, fairly reliable reporters. Ari and Snorri had been true historians and because the saga writers imitated their style they had thereby set themselves off from the writers of the fantastic "lying" works. But in 1940, Nordal demonstrated that Hrafnkel freysgoi, long considered one of the oldest and most heathen of the sagas, was an artful fiction. Today, the tendency is to judge each of the "classic" sagas on its own characteristics. As Nordal (1941) puts it: "There are primitive sagas, chronicling oral traditions without mastering the material (Bjarnar saga Htdoelakappa) [3], there are well-composed sagas, stressing the historical and antiquarian element (Egils saga), there are novels, often perfect works of art, either completely heroic-Icelandic in spirit (Hoensa-Thris saga, Hrafnkatla) or suffused with the foreign romantic element (Gunnlaugs saga, Laxdaela, Njla). There are sagas based on native folklore (Grettla), troll sagas, adventure and lying stories influenced by the fornaldar sagas and the sagas of romantic chivalry. There are rewritten sagas where the old and the new is often inextricably mixed."

Sketch of Hrafnkel freysgoi's saga

Before discussing the degree of sophistication reached by the writers of the classic sagas, it might be well to present a short version of one of them. The following sketch of Hrafnkel freysgoi's saga is adapted from the translation by Jones (1935): Hrafnkel is introduced to us as a proud, powerful goi, "a very overbearing but talented man. He forced under him the men of Glacierdale as thingmen... took part in many single combats, and paid wergeld to no man, so that no one got any redress from him whatever he did." He built a great temple to Frey and dedicated to Frey his most prized possession, a beautiful stallion, making "a mighty vow that he would be the death of that man that rode him against his will." One of his hired men, an honest and able fellow, disregards Hrafnkel's warning and rides the stallion in order to find some lost sheep. When Hrafnkel questions him, he admits his misdeed. Hrafnkel is obviously torn in mind. " 'I would have let you off this once,' he says, 'had I not sworn so deeply about it. All the same, you have owned up like a man.'

...But in the belief that nothing goes well for those men who draw down on them the curse for a broken oath," he kills his hired man. The slain man's father, a poor farmer called Thorbjrn, "took these tidings hard." He rides to Hrafnkel's estate and demands "pay for the slaying of his son." And now, faced by the father of the man he has killed, Hrafnkel albeit stiffly and proudly admits that he is sorry and that his oath was ill-considered: "It is not unknown to you that I will pay no man redress and people have to put up with it all the same. Even so, I grant that this deed of mine seems to me among the worst slayings I have done. You have been my neighbor for a long time, and I have liked you well, and each of us the other... We must now regret that we were too wordy, and seldom would we have to be sorry that we spoke less than we meant rather than more." Then, in lordly style, he offers a generous payment; he will furnish Thorbjrn with everything he needs, forward his numerous sons and daughters so that they make good matches, and look after him until the day of his death. To this he adds the most important point in the payment of the slaying, "many men will say the man was full dear." "I will not take this offer," said Thorbjrn. "What do you want then? " "I wish that we have men to arbitrate between us." "Then you think yourself as good as I," Hrafnkel answered, "and we shall not be atoned on these terms." (Arbitration implied equality of status, and the chieftain, who is quite willing to be overgenerous in a voluntary compensation, will not demean himself to meet a mere farmer on equal terms.) Thorbjrn then tries to rally his kin to support him in a lawsuit against Hrafnkel. But they are all relatively poor men of little influence, and they sensibly point out the impossibility of prevailing against a chieftain like Hrafnkel and urge him to take the generous wergeld. Finally, Thorbjrn seeks out his brother's son, Smr, a spunky young man and "keen at law." On hearing of the terms Hrafnkel has offered for the slaying, Smr immediately suggests that he and Thorbjrn ride to Hrafnkel's manor, "treat humbly with him and find out whether he will hold to the same offer." Thorbjrn, bent on getting what he considers honorable vengeance, says: "It seems to me the height of meanness in a man like you, who think yourself keen at law and are eager in petty suits, but will not take up this case, which touches you so near. It will be a reproach to you, as is fitting, for you are the biggest braggart of our family...... "What better off are you than before," Sam answered, "though I do take up this case, and we both come to griefs " "All the same," said Thorbjrn, "it will be a great comfort to me

that you do take it up, come of it what may." "It is unwillingly I go into this," said Sam. "I do it rather for kinship's sake, but you ought to know that as matters stand with you, nothing can avail." Then Sam stretched forth his hand and took over the case from Thorbjrn. Smr then begins formal legal action and gives public notice of the slaying against Hrafnkel. Hrafnkel laughs. Smr summons his witnesses and, at the proper time, summons Hrafnkel to the Thing. Hrafnkel rides to the Thing with seventy well-armed followers. Smr, the saga tells us, mostly got tramps and vagabonds to ride with him. At the Thing, Smr does his best to interest some of the chieftains in his case. But though Hrafnkel is not a popular man, the chieftains hang back, pointing out "that it had gone one way with most of those that had Thing-dealings with Hrafnkel." Thorbjrn becomes so discouraged that he begs Snr to give over the case. "Let us make ready for home," says he. "It is now easy to see that there is nothing for us but dishonor." But now Smr, though he does not belong to one of the "first families" of Iceland, shows a flash of the heroic spirit. he says, "I shall never give up until I think it past hope that I get something done." At that Thorbjrn was so moved that he wept. Then, by good luck, Smr comes upon a chieftain newly returned to Iceland from a journey to Byzantium and manages to win his support. We are not told specifically just why this chieftain is willing to help Smr, but he is presented as a boisterous and jovial fellow who loves a good fight and, as he himself says, a man who takes up a blood-suit for a near kinsman deserves help. This chieftain enlists the aid of his brother who has seventy followers with him and the party proceeds to Hill of Laws. Smr pleads his case skillfully and "the applause was great." Meanwhile, men hurry to tell Hrafnkel what is afoot. "He stirred himself quickly, called up his men, and went to the court, reckoning that there would be little defense there. He had it in mind to put an end to the bringing of lawsuits against him by petty folk, and meant to wreck the court for Sam and drive him from his case. But of this there was now no chance. There was such a press in front of him that Hrafnkel could get nowhere near, and he was crowded away by sheer force, so that he could not hear their case against him, and was therefore unable to bring forward a legal defense for himself. But Sam carried his suit the full length of the law, until Hrafnkel was outlawed at this Thing." (Legally, those present at the Thing could do nothing else, because a man who did not contest a case, lost it.) Thereupon, Hrafnkel rides home "making as if nothing had happened." But Smr stayed behind at the Thing, and "went about with a swagger." Then, with fine irony, the saga tells us: "Many men thought it well although it had turned out that Hrafnkel had been put to shame, and they now called to mind that he had shown injustice to many." After the adjournment of the Thing, Hrafnkel has two weeks in which to leave Iceland. But being a powerful chieftain, he pays no attention to the sentence. According to law,

Smr is the executor of the sentence and Hrafnkel has little to fear from him. But Hrafnkel reckons without Smr's new friends, the chieftains. They offer to help Smr finish the job, make up a company of men, and fall upon Hrafnkel's household. They bind the proud Hrafnkel and his men, pierce holes behind their heels and string them from the wash line. This, according to the customs of the day, was a dishonorable deed which, though it shamed Hrafnkel terribly, did not reflect any particular honor upon the doers. Smr, however, is not a ruthless man. Because Hrafnkel has many dependents, he offers him his life, providing he will promise that he and his heirs will never lay claim to the property, all of which now belongs to Snr. Hrafnkel then again deviates from the rigid heroic ideal and says: "To most a swift death would seem better than such disgrace ... but it will fare with me as with many others that life is the choice if choice there be. I do it chiefly for the sake of my sons, for poor will be their upbringing if I die and leave them." Smr's powerful friends protest at this, pointing out that Smr will regret giving his enemy his life. But Smr will not change his mind. In describing the plight of the destitute Hrafnkel, the saga tells us: "Many now called to mind the old proverbPride comes before a fall." But Hrafnkel buys a farm on credit, works very hard, and rapidly rebuilds both his wealth and his power. Now we are told: "A change had now come over his temper. The man was much better loved than before. He had the same mind for readiness to help and for hospitality, but was much quieter and gentler than before in every way." Smr takes over Hrafnkel's position and becomes well-liked by the thingmen, being "quiet and gentle and good at easing troubles." He is also, however, a "great man for show." On the advice of his chieftain friends, he has the unlucky stallion killed, plunders the temple Hrafnkel built, and burns it. When Hrafnkel hears of this, he swears another oath "that from then on he would never have faith in a god." Thereafter, he never sacrificed. Now, however, fate gives Hrafnkel the opportunity for revenge. Smr's brother Eyvindr, who has been abroad, returns to Iceland. He is described as "a most gallant man," who possesses the rare virtue of charity, having taken a destitute lad into his service "and kept him as himself." Hrafnkel is told of Eyvindr's arrival and determines to ambush and slay him on the route to Smr's house. Eyvindr is repeatedly warned that he is in danger, but refuses to turn back, pointing out that Smr and Hrafnkel had come to terms and adding, "I will not flee from men to whom I have done no wrong." (Eyvindr's stubborn faith in the good intent of the man whom his brother has humiliated makes him sound, incidentally, as if he had derived his conception of human nature from romance rather than from accurate observation of what his fellow Icelanders were like.) Hrafnkel and his followers overtake Eyvindr and after a brave defense, the young man is slain. Before Smr can rally his followers, Hrafnkel rides to the manor (where Smr now resides) and takes him in bed and leads him out. Hrafnkel thereupon gives Smr much the same choice that Smr had given him: to die or give Hrafnkel self-doom, i.e., the right to

dictate the "price." Smr chooses to live and Hrafnkel lays down the judgment that he shall remove himself from the homestead, taking with him only the property he brought. "No wergeld shall come for Eyvind your brother, because you followed up the bloodsuit too ruthlessly for your former kinsman, and in any case you have redress enough... in that you have had power and property six winters... You shall be my underling as long as both of us live; and you can think this, too, that you shall fare the worse, the worse we get on together." Smr makes one more effort to enlist the assistance of the two chieftains who had previously helped him, but they point out that he did not follow their advice to kill Hrafnkel when he had the chance, and though they invite him to come and live with them, they will give him no more aid. Smr goes to his original home and resigns himself to his fate.

How Sophisticated Were the Saga Writers?

The Linear Perspective of Time
Many of the basic ideas of western civilizationincluding the notion of progressrest on a linear conception of time, a perspective in which time is seen as a stern dimension along which action moves in an irreversible sequence of events. Once this perspective is adopted, it enables human beings to arrange acts, events, accomplishments, or material objects in an orderly chronological sequence. We today take this linear perspective so much for granted that we find it difficult to think in terms of any other, and unless we are specialists in the study of temporal concepts, we are usually not aware that until a few centuries ago it had been adopted and rigorously applied only by a few peoples, notably the Ancient Hebrew and the Icelandic saga writers. While the Hebrew Pentateuch is a collection of several kinds of materials, it is most evidently a history. The twin sources for its account, titled long ago by the Germanic students of the Old Testament as J and E from their manner of referring to the deity, each integrated into his narrative a variety of traditional and mythic materials to emerge with a chronological ordering that was a history of Israel. So J, whose labors are usually placed in the 10th century B.C., narrates a historical drama that incorporates the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the captivity in Egypt, the Covenant on Mount Sinai, the promised land and the glories of its conquest. He does this, not out of a simple urge to array events in their temporal order, but because his very account is a statement of the historic existence of Israel and of its divine mandate to occupy the holy land. Necessarily, Israel cannot be portrayed in primitive fashion as having existed timelessly, but rather its existence and its might is the outgrowth of a historical sequence, a religious drama, that manifests the activity of the one God (Burrows 1955:128-129). "The basic, distinctive presupposition of all ancient Hebrew ideas about history is the conviction that in human history the one eternal, living God is working out his own sovereign purpose for the good of his creatures, first for his chosen people, and through

them for the rest of mankind. History therefore cannot matter of undeviating, automatic, and irresistible progress in civilization. It is the work of a personal divine will.... One generation after another may fail and be excluded from the promised reward of obedience, but the promise still stands, and through all the vicissitudes and changes of human history the purpose of God moves toward its ultimate consummation." The Icelandic saga writers also arranged their legends, poems, and other oral and written materials in what they thought was a correct chronological sequence. But more than this, for them, the idea of linear temporal arrangement became the basic paradigm of literary style. One might say that for the Hebrews, the linear time perspective was the means by which they expressed a great religious drama in which they and Yahweh were the two major participants; for the Icelandic saga writers the linear perspective became a tool for ordering events in causal sequence so as to produce a work of narrative art in what was defined as the style of learned men. Before enlarging further on the linear perspective of the Icelandic litterateurs, it might be useful to compare it with that of other peoples. Most people with a magical or "primitive" world view conceive of time in cyclic rather than linear terms. They do not visualize themselves or the universe as progressing or regressing, but rather as passing through a series of cycles or repetitions: night and day, winter and summer, misfortune and blessings, poverty and wealth, death and life (Evans-Pritchard 1940; M. Wax 1962). With increasing sophistication and civilization, this cyclical orientation may be elaborated into a complex cosmic or metaphysical system, as among the Mayan or ancient Greek philosophers. Plato (The Politicus), for example, "developed the cosmology that the world is like a spinning top, put into motion by the deity." Initially bountiful and harmonious, it gradually runs down until the Creator is obliged to whirl it once more into vigorous motion. Lucretius and the Stoics also held that the world passes through repetitive cycles of youth, fruitfulness, age, and sterility (Oates 1940; M. Wax 1959). Though the Vlusp presents a picture of the destruction and renewal of the cosmos, most of the preliterate works of Old Scandinavia seem relatively unsophisticated with regard to time perspective. Like the folk tales of certain American Indian tribes, they conceive of what we term "the past" not as a linear or even a cyclic progression, but as a multiplicity of images and events, or, as Dunbar (1882) put it in describing the Pawnee, as a "timeless" storehouse of tradition. When, as in certain of the cosmological poems, the Old Scandinavian poets feel the need of an organizational device, they use place, space and distance rather than time. [4] Indeed, some of the mythic poems are so place and space oriented that they sound like an atlas of the cosmos. In The Lay of Grmnir (Bellows 1957), we are told: Three roots there are that three ways run 'Neath the ash-tree Yggdrasil; 'Neath the first lives Hel, 'neath the second the frost-giants, Neath the last are the lands of men. (vs. 31)

Eikthyrnir is the hart who stands by Heerfather's hall And the branches of Laerath he bits; From his horns a stream into Hvergelmir drops, Thence all the rivers run. (vs. 26) Twenty of these rivers are named and we are told that they flow through the fields of the gods. Then we are given the names of seventeen additional rivers and are told that these "go among men and hence they fall to Hel." Another Eddic poem, The Lay of Vafthrnir also begins geographically, telling us about the river that flows between the realm of the gods and giants and giving us the exact dimensions of the field on which the gods will fight their last battle. Next, we are told that "in earliest time" the earth was made from the body of Ymir. Casually, the poet then tells us about numerous events that must have occurred before this "earliest time." We learn that Ymir had a long line of ancestors, the first of whom arose from the venom which dropped from the river livgar and that he begot his offspring from beneath his arms. How thoroughly this three-dimensional map-like orientation of the mythological poems differs from the linear orientation of the sagas, the reader can best perceive for himself. The first is like an image in the round, with moving partsthe second like a long knitted mural, in which each stitch is an essential part of the pattern. Why the saga writers of the thirteenth century should have adopted this perspective with such enthusiasm and used it with such peerless skill is difficult to say. The older mythological poems and Skaldic verse are not oriented toward linear time. On the other hand, the heroic lays, with their emphasis on predestination and their interest in the hero's inevitable progression toward his doom are linear in their general orientation, but lack the meticulous detailed causality of the sagas. The possibility of selective acculturation should not be overlooked. Turville-Petre (1953:87) remarks that some of the young Icelanders from prominent families were studying in Paris at precisely the time when the established medieval systems of dating were being vigorously attacked, and new and more accurate systems of astronomy and chronology were being proposed. Whether the educated Icelanders were exposed to these radical and revolutionary ideas, we may never know, but there can be no doubt that Ari the Learned was phenomenally scrupulous in the accuracy of his dating. The young Icelanders would also have been exposed to the reigning intellectual ideal of the Medieval philosophers, the exemplification of general principles through detailed occurrences, each of which was supposed to be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly detailed manner. To the grand general principles and final ends of their mentors, the empirically minded Icelanders seemed to have been indifferent. But correlating events with antecedents in a perfectly detailed manner is exactly what they did in their sagas.

Accurate Observation
That the family sagas and the histories of Ari and Snorri reflect a fresh, clear, and hardminded outlook and an extraordinary interest in the "material" world is a truism. Set

beside such contemporaries as Summa Theologica or The Divine Comedy, the sagas sound as if they had been written by Benjamin Franklin. For example, consider the following passages from the work of a thirteenth century Norwegion (Larson 1917: 7981), written for the isntruction of young men of good family: "The man who is to be a trader will have to brave many perils, sometimes at sea and sometimes in heathen lands, but nearly always among alien peoples; and it must be his constant purpose to act discreetly wherever he happens to be. On the sea, he must be alert and fearless. "When you are in a market town, or wherever you are, be polite and agreeable; then you will secure the friendship of all good men. Make it a habit to rise early in the morning, and go first and immediately to church wherever it seems most convenient to hear the canonical hours, and hear all the hours and mass from matins on. Join in the worship, repeating such psalms and prayers as you have learned. When the services are over, go out and look after your business affairs. If you are unacquainted with the traffic of the town, observe carefully how those who are reputed the best and most prominent merchants conduct their business. You must also be careful to examine the wares that you buy before the purchase is finally made to make sure that they are sound and flawless. And whenever you make a purchase, call in a few trusty men to serve as witnesses as to how the bargain was made. "You should keep occupied with your business till breakfast or, if necessity demands it, till midday; after that you should eat your meal. Keep your table well provided and set with a white cloth, clean victuals, and good drinks. Serve enjoyable meals, if you can afford it. After the meal you may either take a nap or stroll about a little while for pastime and to see what other good merchants are employed with, or whether any new wares have come to the borough which you ought to buy. On returning to your lodgings examine your wares, lest they suffer damage after coming into your hands. If they are found to be injured and you are about to dispose of them, do not conceal the flaws from the purchaser; show him what the defects are and make such a bargain as you can; then you cannot be called a deceiver. Also put a good price on your wares, though not too high, and yet very near what you can see can be obtained; then you cannot be called a foister." As we have remarked (R. and M. Wax 1955:3): "The remainder of the work is in the same spirit. The author again resembles Franklin in his disposition to give plentiful moral advice and in the character of the morality he advocates. He lauds forethought, prudence, 'a rational outlook,' and 'a temperate mind" and advises young men to observe 'carefully the activities of the ant,' since he 'will derive much profit from them.' Would-be merchants are counseled to avoid undue risk and danger rather than lose all profit through 'obstinate contriving.' For, 'first of all a man must have a care for his own person; for he can have no further profit, if it fares so ill that he himself goes under.' Sober prudence is applied even to blood revenge, a moral imperative of traditional Germanic culture." It is to be expected that we, as members of western civilization, would place a high value on the objectivity and accurate observation of historians like Ari and Snorri and on the

general hardmindedness and pragmatic good sense with which many of the Scandinavian writers of this period viewed life. It is also to be expected that we would judge them (as did Olrik and Toynbee) to be precociously sophisticated and "astonishingly free from tradition and superstition." Indeed, if we favor Weber's views we might wonder whether the Scandinavian elite of the 12th and 13th centuries, with their scorn of magic, general hard-mindedness, and their emphasis on implacable fate, had not achieved a kind of super-Protestant ethos some three centuries before the appearance of Calvin and Knox. Here and now, however, I would like to suggest that some of the very traits for which we admire Ari and his emulators are not necessarily characteristic of a highly sophisticated or a disenchanted people. Indeed, that a people can be extremely urbanized, sophisticated, civilized, disenchantedor whatever one wishes to call themand still have relatively little interest in, or respect for, the external concrete world is so obvious a fact that one hesitates to state it. [5] On the other hand, many ethnographers and social anthropologists have remarked that the so-called non-urban, tribal, or folk peoples are often thoroughly pragmatic in their outlook on life, that their knowledge of concrete matters, contracts, ownership of property, genealogies, and degrees of relationships may be extremely accurate and that they are, more often than not, peerless observers of the world about them (Lvi-Strauss 1966:1-16). Similarly, field investigators, (myself included), have been impressed by the scrupulous accuracy of certain native informants and by their skill and efficiency in gathering data (Lowie 1960). Moreover, ethnographers who have worked among the warrior peoples of the North American Indians have reported that scouts sent to spy on the enemy or young men announcing their war exploits before the assembled people were expected to be absolutely factual in their statements. In view of the above, it seems reasonable to suggest that Ari's phenomenal accuracy and concern with the external world were indigenous traits, and that when the bishops encouraged him to write down historical and topographic facts they were asking him to apply himself to an endeavor in which he was already highly skilled. In pointing to this possibility, I am not, of course, suggesting that the Icelanders were a "primitive" people. Rather, I suggest that the competence which a particular people show in the accurate observation of and interest in the world outside of man, may not be related to their sophistication or disenchantment.

Impartiality and Objectivity

I am also inclined to see the saga writers' impartial and objective literary style as rooted in a relatively ancient and indigenous aspect of the Icelandic culture. As we have already remarked, the family sagas are studded with tales about cases at law so that Njl's saga may well be described as a series of three, grand, legal, case histories. The narrators strove always to present events with scrupulous fairness, favoring neither side, and limited their observations only to what might have been observed by a reliable eyewitness. Moreover, as in the case of Hrafnkel they strove to give the impression of scrupulous fairness and objectivity. Many sagas are filled with blow-by-blow accounts of quarrels and fights. We are told exactly what was said and done, what kind of blow was struck, who struck it, and how much damage was done. When a moral judgment is

expressed, it is put into the mouths of the people of the community. Thus, we may be told, "Folk thought that deed ill done," or, "Gunnar gained great fame by that." These facts suggest that when Ari the Learned, Snorri Sturluson, and their successors and imitators took pen in hand, they may have adopted the role or stance of the respected Icelandic chieftain acting as umpire or arbiteror, in the case of Snorrias Lawspeaker. These men, if they fulfilled the expectations of their office, submerged their personal interest and sentiments and disdained to consider any but the most objective and factual evidence. While, like all men of law, they were interested in the mechanics of winning a case, their ultimate aim was a fair decisioin. In short, what I am suggesting is that the historians and saga writers wrote down events in the discourse employed by learned and respected men of law, and that their successors adopted and developed this stylistic pattern of expression. Whether the later saga writers, whose fiction bears such an air of veracity, consciously saw themselves as wise men of law trying to influence the course of events we do not know. We have only the terse statement in Njl's saga (Bayerschmidt and Hollander 1955:352) which tells us how when Flosi, who had unwillingly led the party that burnt Njl in his house, was telling the story of the burning, "he told it without bias, and so they believed him." I further suggest that much of old Icelandic legal procedure was a relatively sophisticated but limited folk phenomenon roughly comparable, perhaps, to the kind of sophistication Paul Radin saw in the Midwinin of the Winnebago, or early travellers saw in the ceremonials of the Samoans. On the other hand, the late thirteenth century writers' ability to write fiction which expert scholars Jong accepted as accurate history is something else again. To produce so artful and self-conscious an imitation of a vanished way of life is sophistication of a more disenchanted variety. Moreover, this phenomenon may tell us as much about the world view of the scholars who let themselves be deceived as about the world of the men who, unwittingly, deceived them.

The Idea of the Self

Magical Conceptions of the Self
Difficult as it is to grasp the fact that people of another age or culture conceived of identity or the "self" in terms very different from ours, it is even more difficult to make comprehensible exactly how these people did conceive of the "self," of their own identity or that of other beings. Accordingly, I do not expect here to do more than call attention to certain of the more interesting phenomena regarding the Northmen's notion of the self. So that we have some patterns for comparison, let us begin by contrasting two very different systems of self-conception: that of nineteenth century Western man and that of the Trobriand Islanders. For us, and perhaps, even more for our grandfathers, man's self, his personality, or his character were by definition malleablesubject not only to change but to development. At birth, man's characterif it were there at allwas plastic and unformed. Our grandfathers "built" their own characters and they expected their children and their pupils to do the same. They insisted that "man makes himself." Ambitious and

enterprising young men and women subjected themselves to methodical disciplinary exercises, designed systematically to change their "selves" for the better. The notion was widely accepted that anything a person did or achieved contributed ineradicably to the forming of his individual being (e.g. children allowed to be idle would develop an idle character and be irredeemably lazy). Thus, any act, "good" or "evil," was something a man could never lose or shake off. The statement, "I'll never be the same again," was taken literally, whether one had experienced first love or committed a murder. And yet, and this is the most important point of all, this incessant and sometimes even catastrophic process of self-change was seen as producing no change in the individual's identity. Or, to put it another way, Western man somehow developed the ability to keep his identity while his "self" kept changing from day to day. For the Trobriander (Lee 1959:89-104) the man who changes any important attribute becomes something elsea quite different variety of being. Trobrianders have no word for become. All objects, including man, are recognized by what they are, not by what they might be like or unlike, or by what they might become. "Being is (seen as) a fixed point in a single changeless whole." If an object changes an attribute, it does not "become" something; rather, it loses its identity and is another being. This means, if I understand Lee correctly, that for Trobrianders, a man's identity involves only being that which he is; if he changes an important attribute, he is no longer his "self." For him, the statement, "I'll never be the same again," would have no meaning.

The Northmen's Conception of the Self

I have found no convincing evidence that the Northmen ever conceived of "being" in quite the same fixed fashion as the Trobrianders nor have I found that even the most sophisticated of the saga writers conceived of man's character in the crescive fashion, say, of Benjamin Franklin or certain of the Puritans (Perry 1950). This much I say with conviction: One section of the Old Scandinavian literature (the mythological) resembles the literature of tribal peoples in that it pays very little attention to identity or personality. Another and even larger section (the older lays and the sagas) places an extreme emphasis on "character" (here seen not only as individuality but as resolution) on self-reliance, and on certain types of self-restraintor, as the Northmen called it, self-rule. Snorri's Heimskringla offers excellent evidence that the poems which ignore character or personality represent the magical view. The Saga of the Ynglings (derived from a ninth century Skaldic poem) has no "characters," but only kings or queens who for the most part are remembered for their magical experiences: King Sveigir is lured underground by a dwarf; his son, Vanlandi, and his grandson, Vsbur, are slain through sorcery; Dmaldi, Vsbur's son, is sacrificed by the people to relieve a famine. King nund, however, does clear land and build roads. We are told an interesting tale of the lad, Ingiald (Hollander 1964,37), who was fed the heart of a wolf and become "the most cruel and most ill-natured or men," but whether eating the wolf's heart gave Ingiald a new identity or merely added cruelty to his innate personality, I cannot say.

With the Saga of Harald Fairhair (lived 850-933) we enter another dimension, for Harald, despite his luck and his occasional encounters with sorcerers, is an individual, a "character" whom the reader of the saga is unlikely to forget. The same thing !nay be said even more emphatically for the portraits of King Olafr Tryggvason (lived 968-1000) and King Olaf the Saint (died 1030). Accompanying this interest in character is an interestequally unmagicalin what the Northmen called self-rule or self-mastery. Many of the saga writers seem to relish telling anecdotes about notable people who were able to check their reckless impulses and master their passions. For example, Snorri (Hollander 1964:92) relates that when King Harald Fairhair was being mocked by an ambassador of King Athelstane of England, he bore in mind: "as was his habit..... to control his temper whenever rage or fury would overcome him, and thus let his anger blow off and look at matters dispassionately. So he did also now. He brought this up before his friends, and they all agreed on what to do; and first of all they decided to let the emissary fare home unharmed." A similar emphasis on self-restraint appears in the Hvaml (Hollander 1962:14-41) where a man is advised to avoid excesses in eating, drinking, speech, sex, and sometimes even in fighting, not because overindulgence is considered evil, offensive to the gods, or contrary to tradition or custom, but because it may lead him into situations harmful to his self-interest. Trouble and sorrow are seen not as the result of unseemly or offensive conduct toward Beings and Power, but as the logical outcome of an individual's foolis and naive conduct: Better burden bearest thou nowise than shrewd head on thy shoulders; but with worser food farest thou never than an overmuch of mead (vs. 11). For good is not, though good it is thought, mead for the sons of men; the deeper he drinks, the dimmer grows the mind of many a man (vs. 12). The greedy guest gainsays his head and eats until he is ill; his bellow oft maketh a butt of a man, on bench 'midst the sage when he sits (vs. 20). In heroic anecdotes, self mastery is used as a device for adding dramatic power to an eventual outburst of violence. For example, when Eylf offers Aur money to betray her husband (Gsli's saga, Johnston 1963:51), she seems to agree, and calmly lets him count the silver. Then she asks him, "You will think now that I have the right to do with it as I please? " Eylf gladly agrees, whereupon Aur puts the silver into a moneybag and strikes Eylf in the face so violently that "the blood spurts out all over him."

Similarly, in Njl's saga (Bayerschmidt and Hollander 1955:100, 196-197), we are told that Njl told Skarphein and his other sons to keep the peace. Thereafter, when Njl's family is insulted we are told that Skarphein "smiled scornfully ... and yet the sweat broke out on his brow and red spots appeared on his cheeks." His brothers are even more controlled. They are silent and bite their lips or do not change their expression at all. But when Skarphein lets himself go, he slays Thrin with a dazzling speed and ferocity: "Skarphein took a running start and leaped over the river from one icy bank to the other, landed on his feet, and continued to rush forward on the impetus of his slide. The ice floe was so slippery that he shot forward with the speed of a bird. Thrin was just about to put on his helmet as Skarphein bore down on him and struck him with his axe, 'Battle-Troll.' The axe came down upon his head and split it right down to the jaw, so that his jaw teeth dropped out on the ice. This happened so continued to glide along on the ice sheet at great speed." Finally, in the Saga of Saint laf there is a curious tale involving penance and selfdiscipline. In the earlier variant of the saga, an Icelandic churchman relates how the king, on learning that he had neglected to observe a holy day, filled his hand with wood shavings and set them alight. All present were awed when the fire did not burn the saintly king. Snorri Sturluson (Hollander 1964:485) deliberately turns this miracle tale into an edifying example of self-discipline. The king puts the shavings into his hand, lights them, and lets them burn his palm, "from which one could gather that from that time on he would strictly observe the laws and commandments, nor do anything but what he knew was right." If one sets the shrewd saws of the Hvaml and the stylized pictures of self-rule narrated by the saga writers against the maxims of the nineteenth century self-builders, one sees that there are some quite fundamental differences. When a Northman keeps a tight reign on his passions, it is not with the hope or expectation of becoming something but an assertion that he is something. He is not improving himself, rather, he is holding to a standard. When Aur smashes Eylf in the nose it is an emphatic assertion that she is a true and loyal wife. When Sigur sleeps with his sword between himself and Brynhild (whom he has promised to another man), he does this because he is a man of honor and not because he hopes to become one. Again, when lafr holds the burning chips in his hands, I suspect that he is reminding himself that he is a man who keeps his word and not that he expects, step by step, to build himself into a good Christian. The notion that character or personality is something one possesses and defends (rather than something one builds or develops) likely is related to an assumption stressed in many of the sagas, namely that a man is born with his personality and his talents and maintains them unchanged until the day he dies.[6] For example, in the saga of Egil Skallagrmsson (Eddison 1930), the author seems to take satisfaction in the fact that Egil, as a child, was aggressive, stubborn, greedy, powerful, and poetically gifted and that he remained so until death. Similarly, in the Sagas of the Kings, children of noble birth, reared in exile and poverty, usually exhibit signs of their innate "high-born" nature in their flashing eyes, hardihood, and pride.

The Idea of the Changing Man

The notion that a man may change his "nature" or his "personality" and still remain himself,appears only in the classic sagas and then very rarely. Snorri has King laf the Saint turn from a merciless Viking into a saintly (but warlike) Christian, and thereby reconciles in an ingenious way the fact that some early sources on laf had painted him as a saint and others as the very opposite (Einarsson 1957:118-119). The saga of Hrafnkel Freysgoi (Jones 1935:38, 55) contains unequivocal statements about changing personality. At the beginning of the saga the chieftain Hrafnkel is described as: "a very overbearing but talented man. He forced under him the men of Glacierdale as thingmen. [He] was gentle and blith with his own men, but harsh and stubborn toward those of Glacierdale, and men got no fair play from him. [He] took part in many single combats, and paid wergeld to no man, so that no one got any redress from him whatever he did." But after his humiliating defeat and his remarkably speedy return to wealth and prominence, the saga tells us: "A change had now come over his temper. The man was much better loved than before. He had the same mind for readiness to help and for hospitality, but was now much quieter and gentler than before in every way." Hrafnkel is also depicted as changing his attitude toward the gods. He is introduced as a particularly pious man who dedicates half his goods to Frey, including his stallion, Freyfaxi. His troubles begin when he keeps his oath to slay anyone who rides this stallion (in whom Frey owns a half interest) without permission. But when he finds himself utterly defeated and hears that Smr and his friends have burnt his temple and killed the stallion, he says, " 'I think it folly to believe in a god...... and he kept to what he said, so that he never sacrificed." The character of Smr, the farmer's son who pits himself against Hrafnkel, may also have changed with his good fortune, for he is described, at the beginning of the saga, as "a very contentious man and keen at law" and, at the height of his power, as "quiet and gentle and good at easing troubles, and ... a great man for show." It is probably no accident that Hrafnkel with its clear conception of changing character also lays an unusually heavy emphasis on changing fortunes and changing times. Hrafnkel begins the saga as a powerful chieftain, loses all his property through Smr's persistence and good luck, and regains all through effort and ability. Smr begins the saga as a young man of modest means, takes over Hrafnkel's goods and social position, and then loses all that he has gained. It should be noted that Hrafnkel's author introduces the notion of man's changing "temper" without abandoning the traditional idea that unchanging steadfastness is essential to manly excellence. Thus, Hrafnkel is as stubborn as a hero of old when he keeps to his oath and regretfully kills the man who rode his horse. Eyvindr, Smr's brother, likewise seems to exhibit an exaggerated and naive

heroism when he goes to his death insisting that he will not flee from men to whom he has done no wrong. On the other hand, Smr's stalwart resolution to stick with his hopeless seeming case at law and Hrafnkel's unbroken determination to rebuild his fortunes are also examples of a resolute character, and, so far as I can judge, they are presented in a fashion which makes them wholly admirable.

Wax Ch. 9: The Process of Disenchantment

Magical and Disenchanted Moral Logic
The Problem
In the magical world, the man who accomplishes deeds of worth and grandeur is able to do so because of his Vital Power (Wax and Wax 1962). Thus, in ancient Scandinavian society, if a man's family were hale, his trading or raiding ventures successful, and his party triumphant and unscathed amid storms and battles, then surely he possessed Power. Such Power might issue either through his fortunate relationship with a potent Being-as when Vga-Glm's good fortune depended on keeping the cloak, sword, and spear given him by his grandfather-or it might issue from his own innate nature-as when the saga writer traces Egil Skallagrmsson's more than human talent, strength, and ferocity to his giant or etin ancestors. In any event, he had gipta, gaefa, or hamingja. Conversely, if nothing of his turned out particularly well, then he had no such relationship and no such Power; while if he were really unlucky, then wittingly or unwittingly, he had done some dangerous or ill advised deed-he had offended some being who was paying him back by withdrawing his favor or using sorcery against him. Life, health, and well-being in the magical world are inextricably related to virtuous or correct behavior. The wise person does not even uproot a flower without taking proper moral (or social) precautions (Fortune, 1932:175 cited in Levi-Strauss 1966:40): "In the hole from which the root was withdrawn a pinch of tobacco was left. Often a knife or some money was left there also, and the taker of the root uttered a brief prayer, 'I have taken what you have given, and I am leaving this here for you. I want to lead a long life and to have no harm strike me or my family.' " If we translate this philosophy into terms more familiar to us, we may say that in the magical world, every grave mishap is perceived as having a specific cause, which very often is proved to have been an ill-intentioned or careless deed. The man who is smitten with woe may have offended someone, intentionally or unintentionally. Perhaps, if nothing else, his prior prosperity and health aroused the enmity or greed of others. Contrariwise, the man who is blessed above all others has offended no one. He has done all the "right" things and none of the wrong. [l] Or again, an individual who suffers mishap, illness, or death may have been exposed to the malevolence of an innately

destructive or dangerous being, just as the extremely fortunate or lucky man may have been exposed to the health and power infusing influences of an innately benevolent being. Because of this causal emphasis, the tales told by peoples who live by the precepts of the magical world tend to be etiological, which is to say that, primarily, they explain why good or evil things happen to particular persons or peoples. This magical perspective, as outlined above, dominates a good part of the early Old Scandinavian literature. Appearing in the myths and in some of the Eddic poems, it shows itself later, in occasional incidents, in the sagas. For example, in The Lay of Grotti (Hollander 1962:153-158), King Fri meets a terrible fate because he mistreated his giant thralls; in The Lay of Vlund (Hollander 1962:159-167) King No loses his sons because he enslaved and abused the magically gifted hero. Similarly, in Ynglinga saga, King Vanlandi dies because he was not permitted to return to his witch-wife and King Vsbur because he refused to give his sons their inheritance (Hollander 1964:16-18). Kormk the skald, who lived in the tenth century, refused to compensate a witch for the death of her sons; thereupon she laid a spell upon him so that he was never able to possess his beloved (Hollander 1949:20-23). [2] By the thirteenth century, a distinctly different perspective and moral philosophy was being manifested in the literature of the classic sagas. These seem to exhibit what may be termed an eschatological point of view in that the sagas focus not on a cause or explanation of misfortune but on the long and intricately linked series of events which lead to a predetermined apocalyptic resolution, usually the death of the hero. He is portrayed as a man of excellence and honor, and his death confronts the audience with a moral paradox, namely that the reward of virtue may be misfortune and defeat. The Norse hero is no Job, and his demise is usually an act of vengeance which he himself had helped to provoke, but the moral issue is as clear as the Book of Job: "One of the most disturbing experiences of the old saga writers appears to have been the recognition that worthy men, too, must endure suffering and defeat -merely because they lack a sufficient measure of 'good fortune' " (Hallberg 1962:95). "Great gifts and ill fortune go hand in hand... everything is constantly shifting.... And in the midst of the general dissolution we still find individual men of remarkable integrity and blamelessness. And -lest the drama should point too simple a moral - these men fare not a whit better than the others-but not a whit worse either" (Sveinsson 1953:1-2). The difference between the magical point of view and the saga writers is profound; within the former view all of the crucial phenomena of man's experience are morally and socially explicable, while within the latter the coherence is troubled by rationalistic disenchantment. In this chapter it will be my task to describe some aspects of the change from one to the other. So far as I have been able to determine, the first literary manifestation of the change appears in some of the early heroic lays (ca. 600-800). Here, and in the subsequent literature, it is associated both with a change in the conceptions of fate and of the nature of man-or of the "self" The point of view of Snorri Sturluson or others of the sophisticated saga writers probably represents an extreme or ultimate aspect of the process, as it was reflected in the writings of an elite class of men who were

acutely aware that their way of life had undergone marked changes and that their values were increasingly out of tune with each other.

The Conflicting Moral Imperative of the Heroic Literature

Some of the oldest poems in the Old Scandinavian literature are based on situations which rarely, if ever, appear in mythological or magical stories: the hero is placed by fate in a situation where he must choose between defending his personal honor or slaying someone near to him, either his blood kin or his beloved. Thus, in an ancient Gothic lay, Hiltibrant is obliged to slay his son, while in a later Scandinavian variant, he must go into battle and be slain by his half-brother (Hollander 1936:52-65). Brynhild (Hollander 1962:252-263) must kill the hero Sigur, whom she loves, because Sigur pledged her his love and then married another woman. Gurn is obliged to kill her children and her husband because her husband slew her brothers. Starkar is "fated to kill the chief and friend who has trusted him" (Hollander 1936:18-25). In some of the heroic lays the hero (or heroine) laments his (or her) woes and tells us, either at the beginning or end of his discourse, that his sad lot was brought about by fate or by evil norns. In other poems, like The Lay of Atli, we are shown by the narrative and by the words of the characters how fate has made inevitable the series of disasters. So that the reader may gain some notion of these lays, here is a synopsis of one based on a legend which is very old-perhaps fifth century. As recorded in the Edda, The Lay of Atli (Hollander 1962:285-293) may itself date from the ninth century. Gunnar, King of the Gjkungs, and his brother Hgni possess the great gold hoard of the Niflungs. Atli, King of the Huns, invites Gunnar and his court to visit him. Atli and Gunnar are brothers-in-law, Atli being wedded to Gunnar's sister, Gurn. When the invitation is presented, Gunnar turns to his brother for advice. Hgni advises against the journey, pointing out that Gurn, their sister, has sent them a warning token by the Hunnish messengers, a ring wound with wolf's hair. For reasons not made clear (experts think certain stanzas are lost), Gunnar ignores Hgni 's advice and the brothers set out for Atli's court. When they arrive, Gurn begs them to flee, but Gunnar says that it is too late. Thereupon, Gunnar and Hgni are captured, though Hgni defends his brother most valiantly, slaying seven men with the sword and throwing another into the hearth fire. Atli now demands that Gunnar give him the Niflung hoard or die. Gunnar says that he will reveal the hiding place of the treasure only if his brother Hgni 's heart is laid in his hand. The Huns first cut out the heart of a thrall, but Gunnar is not deceived, because, he says, only a thrall's heart would beat so much. The Huns then cut out Hgni 's heart, whereupon Gunnar tells Atli that now only he knows the secret of the hoard and he will not tell. Atli then has Gunnar thrown into a serpent pit, where he holds off the serpents for a time by playing the harp. When Atli returns to his hall he is met by his wife, Gurn, who offers him young game to eat. After the Huns have eaten, Gurn announces that to avenge her brothers she has slain her two sons by Atli and that this is the meat they have eaten. That night she kills Atli in their bed and, after warning the

housecarls and freeing the dogs so that they may escape, she sets fire to the hall, burning up the dead Atli and his sleeping men.

Conflicting Moral Imperatives in the Sagas

Like the lays, some of the sagas show how fate relentlessly pursues its ends by placing individuals in situations where honor demands that they do something dreadful to their relatives or neighbors. The deeds committed in the name of honor are usually not so extreme in the sagas as in the lays: no mother kills and cooks her own children, no wife slays her husband with her own hand (though Hallgerr stands by and lets her husband be killed because he had once slapped her [Bayerschmidt and Hollander 1955:159]). The sagas also differ from the lays in the painstaking and explicit manner in which they reveal the influence of fate in every chronological step of the action. The Saga of Gsli (Johnston 1963): Gsli Sursson, an uncle of Snorri goi, lived in the third quarter of the tenth century. The earlier of the two sagas about him may have been written in the latter part of the twelfth century.

The saga begins in Norway and introduces us to three siblings: Thrds, the handsome and wilfull sister, who takes her fun where she can find it; Thorkell, the elder brother, who is easy-going and inclined to make friends outside of the family; and Gsli, who is ruthless and zealous in defending family honor. Before the family leaves Norway for Iceland, Gsli has killed three of Thrds' suitors and two of Thorkell's friends, always for reasons compatible with his code of honor. In Iceland the three siblings and their spouses settle in the same district and are joined by Vstein, the brother of Aur, Gsli 's wife. Gsli hears that a man has predicted that this powerful family group will be at odds within three years. Thereupon he suggests that he, Vstein, Thorkell, and Thorgrmr, swear an oath of blood brotherhood. But the men qualify their oaths so that Thorgrmr is not bound by an oath to Vstein and Gsli is not bound by oath to Thorgrmr. Gsli remarks that he thinks that fate will have its way in this matter. Subsequently, Aur (Gsli's wife) makes an unguarded remark which reveals that Asgerr (Thorkell's wife) is having an affair with Vstein. This remark is overheard by Thorkell. Thorkell now asks for a division of property, leaves Gsli's homestead, and goes to live with Thrds and Thorgrmr. Aur tells Gsli about her unlucky words and asks him not to be angry with her. But he does not blame her, saying: "Fate's words will be spoken by someone." Vstein having gone abroad, Gsli does all that he can to keep him from returning to the district. But fate thwarts Gsli's efforts: Vstein returns and is slain by Thorgrmr (egged

on by his brother-in-law, Thorkell). Aur tells a thrall to take the weapon out of her brother's corpse, but the thrall is afraid. Then Gsli comes in and removes the weapon which (so the saga writer asserts) obligates him to take vengeance. Subsequently Thorgrmr reveals to Gsli that he is the slayer. Now it is Thorkell who tries to stop the progress of fate by counseling peacefulness, but his friend Thorgrmr will not listen to him and once again insults Gsli by demanding that Gsli send him some tapestries that belonged to Vstein. Gsli sends the tapestries but asks the carrier to slide back the bolts of Thorgrmr's house on that night. Then Gsli takes the spear which slew Vstein and, in the dark of night, he kills Thorgrmr, even though he is lying in bed with his wife, Gsli's sister. Gsli also leaves the weapon in the wound. Gsli's sister, Thrds, now marries her slain husband's brother and proceeds to egg him on to vengeance. The matter is taken to the Thing and Gsli is declared an outlaw. Gsli tries several times to get his relatives and other chieftains to arrange a settlement, but matters always turn out badly for him. This, the saga ascribes to witchcraft, for Gsli had killed a sorcerer who had laid a curse on him-so that no man on the main island would help him. An isolated, hunted man, he flees from hiding place to hiding place. His dreams are haunted by two supernatural women, one gentle and the other bloodthirsty, but neither of these dream creatures helps him. And when his dream women tell him that his time has come, he proceeds to his doom without hesitation, defending himself against fifteen adversaries. Even when his entrails fall out, he ties them up in his kirtle and kills a man with his last blow. So valiant is his defense that the characteristically restrained Icelandic saga writer goes so far as to remark: "And it is everywhere agreed that never in this country has one man put up a more famous defense, so far as such things can be known for certain" (Johnston 1963:59). Gsli's wife, who is portrayed as a loyal and honorable woman, does not urge her husband to avenge her slain brother, though by ancient custom a woman's primary loyalties were to her blood kin. After Gsli's death she goes to Rome to end her days. Thrdis, Gsli's sister, first encourages her second husband to kill Gsli; then, when Gsli has been slain, she tries to kill her husband's cousin, the man who led the party that slew her brother. Vstein's young sons kill Thorkell. Njl's Saga (Bayerschmidt and Hollander, 1955): the events on which this saga is based occurred shortly after the turn of the eleventh century. The saga about Njl is relatively late-around 1300. Njl 's saga is even more complicated than Gsli's. First it tells, step by step, how Gunnar, an honorable but not very astute man and a loyal friend to Njl l, is brought to his doom because of his own impulsive acts and because he follows the well-intentioned and just advice of Njl. Next it tells how the Christian Njl-wise, restrained, and respectful of the law-pursues a path that inexorably brings about his death and the death of most of his kin. Then it tells how Kri, the blood-brother of Skarpein, one of Njl's sons, takes vengeance.

Njl's sons are contentious and jealous of their honor and they make many enemies. When the relatives of the men they have slain approach Njl's homestead, the sons wish to stand outside and fight-and the saga makes it clear that, had they done so, their adversaries might not have attacked. But Njl tells them to go into the buildings, pointing out how well Gunnar defended himself against a great number of men. Skarpein retorts that the men who attacked Gunnar were of "noble mind" whereas the men they are facing are likely to set the house on fire. But Njl has his way. The avengers fire the house and their leader, who does not want to kill Njl, offers the old man permission to leave. But Njl answers in the words of a man of honor, saying, "I will not come out, for I am an old man and little fit to avenge my sons, and I do not want to live in shame." The avengers then ask his wife to come out, but she says, "As a young woman I was married to Njl and vowed that one fate should befall us both." She then notices her little grandson and tells him that he is to go out of the house. But the boy says, "You promised me grandmother, that we two should never part, and that's the way I want it to be." The grandmother says not a word; she picks the boy up and carries him to the bed to die with herself and her husband.

The Emergence of Man as Individual

In magical or mythological literatures man, as an individual or character, often plays a petty role; sometimes he does not appear at all (Wax and Wax 1962). Most of the important actors are Beings who demonstrate their nature and Power by doing wonderful deeds. When humans are introduced they are usually featureless young men who cannot be distinguished from each other by any of the esthetic criteria of a sophisticated society. Judged esthetically, the heroes of most American Indian "hero tales" are monotonously alike, the narrators rarely mention whether the hero is brave or cowardly, tall or short, clever or stupid-since, from their point of view, these individualistic aspects of personality or character are not worthy of comment. What is important is that the young hero establish a proper and advantageous relationship with some Being, thereby gaining Vital Power which he will use to help himself and his relatives. Old Scandinavian mythology retains some of this magical indifference to individuality or personality. The gods are Beings with idiosyncratic Powers rather than strong, resolute, or peculiar characters. Specifically human beings or individuals rarely appear [3] and the gods are not always anthropomorphic: in, for example, is not so much a "human" character or personality as a Great Being who may assume the shape of a serpent or eagle as easily as that of a man. Similarly, the warriors in The First Lay of Helgi the HundingSlayer (Hollander 1962) are not individual characters, but men who are acting so much like proper warriors that without labels one cannot be told from the other. An entirely different phenomenon appears in The Lay of V1und, The Second Lay of Heligi the Hunding-Slayer, The Lay of Atli, and even more dramatically, in the sagas. Here, as Hollander (1962:59) remarks, there are true characters "limned with a few bold strokes" who "stand before us indelibly." V1und, Sigur, Gunnar, Gurn, and Brynhild are distinct personalities, not by reason of their particular magical Power or their particular position in a society, but because they feel and behave differently in the face of

similar crises or dilemmas. It is the intense interest of the poet in the particular pattern of response of his hero (or heroine)-a pattern expressing the personal sense of honor of a distinct individual-that sharply distinguishes these lays and sagas from the Poweroriented myths, the ritual dramas, and the deedencrusted eulogies of the skalds. An obvious but fine example is the account of the burning of Njl. Every person who dies, warrior, old man, woman, or child, meets death bravely. But each meets it in his own way. It is probably no accident that the literary works in which these genuine and unforgettable human characters appear pay scant attention to gods, giants, dragons, and other remarkable Beings. They may be referred to by the human actors, but they no longer show their faces or speak line. [4]

Self-Reliance and Resolution

Another peculiarly sophisticated aspect of the "character structure" of the heroes is their self-reliance and their unfaltering resolution. In a thoroughly magical literature, a hero almost never does any remarkable or virtuous act by himself. Indeed, the more remarkable the deed, the more certain would be its observers that it had been accomplished through the aid of Powerful Beings. While the Iliad is by no means a simple tribal tale, it has retained this particular aspect of the magical world view, for the poet is always careful to point out that any noteworthy deed was accomplished through divine possession or coaching. In marked and even striking contrast, the heroes of the dilemma oriented lays and sagas of Old Scandinavia tend to keep their own counsel, act for themselves, and take the consequences. Gsli is an outstanding example. He makes all of his decisions for himself. No one shelters him but his wife, a bondmaid, and an impoverished cotter. When he asks his brother for aid he is told, "A man is his own company for most of the way" (Johnston 1963:20). At the end of the saga he stands and dies "bereft and robbed of everything but his innate worth and ability" (Sveinsson 1953:52-53). This type of hero would not make sense to persons thoroughly immersed in the enchanted world view. It is the singular self-reliance and resolution of these human beings that makes many of the death scenes described in the sagas so moving. When they know that they are to die, they look for support to no one but themselves. Having made a resolve, they see it through to the end; or, if, as warriors, they have taken a stand, they fight with all their might and main. There was no higher praise than this: "His attackers said that he never gave ground, and they could not see that his last blow was weaker than his first" (Johnston 1963:58).

Fate in the Magical World

In that part of the ancient heathen literature which does not emphasize moral dilemmas, a man's fate, doom, or lot is usually bound up with or determined by one or more remarkable Beings. There are the birth-norns or dsir (female beings of Power) who may

appear at the birth of a child and "spin out his fate" (Hollander 1962:180-181), granting him gifts both useful and otherwise. There is a story in Saxo Grammaticus about a Danish king who took his three year old son "to pray to three maidens in the temple," whereupon the first two gave him charm and generosity but the last decreed that he should be niggardly in giving gifts (Ellis Davidson 1964:112). We are told that the heathen held feasts in the winter to honor the dsir (Turville-Petre 1964:221), but whether these particular female beings were honored because they controlled men's fate or for other reasons, we do not know. There are beings called fulgjur (sing. fylgja - "guardian spirit, attendant"), who attach themselves to certain individuals or families and are intimately related with their fate. Sometimes a man's fylgja may warn him of danger and save his life. But when he sees his fylgja leaving him he knows.that his luck is gone or that he is about to die. There are also female beings who control the fate and fortune of warriors in battle; these are called Valkyries (corpse-choosers), or again, not very helpfully, dsir (op. cit.) or battle-norns (Hollander 1962:321). Moreover, like the birth-norns, these choosers weave the spells that protect their favorites and doom those who are to be slain. One of the most fearful of the Eddic poems pictures the battle maidens as weaving a web of men's entrails with blood-spattered spears as treadles and men's heads as weights (Hollander 1936:72-75). By this spell they doom certain brave warriors to death and protect their favorite. Then there are the three grand maidens of the Vlusp who water the world tree, Yggdrasil, and are said to control the fate of men and gods alike. Occasionally we find poems in which the gods (like the divinities in the Iliad) favor a human being or doom him to commit dastardly deeds (Hollander 1936:18-25). The unfortunate man can only say, "I was fated fell things to do." When in covets a warrior's services in Valholl, and causes him to fall in battle, this too is likely to be called his "fate." And finally, when a sorceress lays a curse upon a warrior, he may retort defiantly, "My fate does not lie on your tongue." Fate in this magical or relatively "unheroic" literature is rarely envisaged as truly inexorable or final, for it lies in the hands of Beings who, like human relations or friends, may give welcome or unwelcome gifts, may be bribed or propitiated, or may be thwarted by the power of another Being. In like manner, fate in the magical literature is rarely seen as an a-moral, impersonal force, generating moral dilemmas for unsuspecting human beings. Instead, it is referred to as if it were a kind of immanent justice. For example, when Kormk kills a witch's son she curses him so that he is "fated" never to possess his beloved. When King Fri abuses his giant thralls, they grind out his terrible fate between the millstones. When Hamir and Sorli kill their half-brother (Hollander 1962:316-321), they "doom" themselves to disaster. Men who swear an oath bring their fate on themselves. If they keep to the oath they will prosper. If they break the oath, the gods, before whom they swore, will destroy them. [5] In some of the early lays the idea of fate may be used in a somewhat different and less magical sense-as the ultimate explanation of an event which cannot be blamed on sorcery or attributed to the gods. Fate is described by the characters themselves as the force against which there is no remedy. A good example is the incident in which Helgi tells his

beloved, Sigrn, that he has killed her brothers and asks her not to grieve because it "avails not to fight against fate" (Hollander 1962:196). Again, when Helgi himself is slain, his grieving friends remark that his enemy was able to slay him because "the hour was evil" (Hollander 1962:179). It is possible that fate, defined as the ultimate explanation of misfortune, may fulfill a useful and necessary function in communities which otherwise see the world in magical fashion. When all magical or supernatural devices fail to alleviate suffering or avert calamity, the unfortunate event may be blamed on the mysterious power "against which it avails not to fight." [6]

Fate in the World of Moral Dilemmas

The kind of fate pictured in the classic sagas and some of the heroic lays is an entirely different phenomenon. It is an impersonal, amoral force, pursuing its own fathomless ends, and lacking the attributes commonly associated with beings. Unlike the temperamental and fallible gods, it can be neither placated nor bribed; it does not punish the evil or the ignoble, nor does it reward the good, the noble, or the brave; it does not assist the pious nor afflict the impious; and from its decrees there is no escape. For the saga writer, this idea of fate becomes a marvelously effective device for the organization of material. Every event in a long and intricate story is put into its proper chronological place and portrayed as having contributed its bit to an ordained and inevitable end. It is here, perhaps, that we see the genesis of the Northern writers' emphasis on causality and linear progression. On the other hand, fate is simultaneously seen as a "personal" attribute of the individual human being (Gehl 1939:203-208), an attribute that develops with him as inevitably as a child within the womb. Each character, great or petty, has "his fate" which he is somehow going to act out as part of the great comprehensive, chronological pattern of the saga. In the parlance of psychoanalysis, one might say that in some of the lays and sagas man is seen as having internalized his fate. The chief dramatic interest of the fate-oriented lays and sagas lies in the fact that their heroes or heroines never surrender or meekly submit to the power that determines their doom. They are, so to speak, the very opposite of the common conception of "fatalists." If their fate forces them into a situation where honor demands that they commit an excruciating and even inhuman deed, they do not flinch, but act and commit the deed. If they realize that their time has come, they proceed to die honorably and with steadfast courage. Even the most unsympathetic of readers cannot help but conclude that in these Old Scandinavian characters, the notion of fate or determinism has met as close a match as it is ever likely to meet. For though fate may drive these heroes to commit dreadful deeds, it is never portrayed as having the power to turn them into dastards or cowards. Fate may force a man into a dishonorable or hopeless situation, but it cannot determine how he will feel or how he will act in this situation. His emotions and his deeds are his private responsibility.

Comment and Comparison

This "heroic" literature shows us what no enchanted or magical literature hints at, namely, that a man may be blessed with all manner of excellent gifts and qualities and nevertheless commit a deed which law and custom define as evil. At the same time, however, it shows us that it was fate that put the individual into the position where he was obliged to commit the deed and that, moreover, the deed was demanded by the individual's personal sense of honor. Second, this literature shows us that men and women may suffer extreme misfortune and pain through no fault of their own and through no deficiency in their conduct toward the deities and Beings of Power. It is fate that determines what they are and what they must do. Third, the literature shows that in spite of the abysses into which the ruthless dictates of fate may plunge them, human beings may still behave honorably and keep to the code of excellence. Somewhat less explicitly, it demonstrates that doing right can be painful in and of itself and may yield no reward but the expectation that men will remember the deed. The literature also provides an exaltation of the man or woman who keeps to the ideal of excellence under the most demanding of circumstances-the individual who is put to the ultimate test and does not falter or fail. Both the heroic tradition of the lays and sagas and the magical world view attempt to answer the question (Wax and Wax 1964). How is it that the virtuous man, the man filled with Vital Power, has been brought low? The enchanted view offers a number of answers: he may have been bewitched; he may have offended a deity, or his time may have come. In any event, he has lost his Vital Power, and unless he can regain it, he is as good as dead. In the heroic tradition it is fate that brings the great man low and he retains his manly power until his last breath. In the enchanted view, well-being and happiness are synonymous with virtue and Power. It is doing "good" that has brought happiness; it is doing "bad" that has brought suffering. The idea that being moral or virtuous is a painful process-that doing what is right may hurt not only the doer but his closest kin or the people he loves and admires-does not appear at all. As Lee (1959:414) says of the Trobrianders, "To be Trobriand [to follow the Trobriand pattern] is to be good." In marked contrast, a crucial implication of the fate-oriented lays and sagas is that great virtue and great suffering are inseparable. If a concern with the meaning of existence is philosophical, the "ethic of manly excellence" is probably the Northman's closest approach to a philosophy. Consciously or unconsciously, the poets and some of the saga writers synthesized two mutually inconsistent ideas: the idea that everything was determined by an amoral, impersonal destiny, and the idea that the excellent man could not be compelled to do anything he did not wish to do. With this synthesis, they seem to have produced a kind of naive existentialism, a belief that nothing in life had lasting value except the deeds or actions which brought man fame or good repute: Cattle die and kinsmen die, thyself eke soon wilt die; but fair fame will fade never,

I ween, for him who wins it. (Hvaml, vs. 76; Hollander 1962) In this chapter I have tried to show that the Old Scandinavian literature reflects a significant change in world view. At one extreme we have the enchanted view (as reflected in mythology and folk tales) where we are shown that the universe is a morally responsible realm, in which life, health, and well-being are inextricably related to virtuous or correct social behavior. At the other extreme we have the disenchanted view of the sceptical and reflective Icelandic saga writers, who painstakingly show us that there is no such moral relationship between man, his deeds, and his fate. Between these extremes, we have the heroic poems which exalt and idealize the men and women who conform to the demands of honor-as they see it-and do what they are fated to do, even if this means that they kill their own flesh and blood. Insofar as dates may be ascribed to these views, the magical view seems to be the oldest and the most persistent. The heroic view was already well developed in the poetry of the ninth century. The disenchanted view of men like Snorri Sturluson reached its peak in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. I do not suggest that the heroic literature caused the disenchantment it reflects, nor do I try to explain its genesis. My guess is that the idea of the heroic dilemma, inexorably brought about by fate, had its roots in the barbarian migrations of the fifth century [7] and is connected with the rise of chieftains and kings who drew their followers from different lineages and communities. Warriors of this type would almost inevitably develop a moral code differing from that of the folk who stayed at home. The court poets of the "Germanic invasions" and the Viking Age were themselves likely to be warriors from families of rank. How much this relatively sophisticated ethic, which exalted the heroic virtues over and above the powers of magic and the gods, influenced the ordinary man of the Viking Age, I cannot say. If he was in any way a fighter it certainly had the power to move him, for we know that the Christian King, Saint Olf (Hollander 1964:498-499), asked his skald to intone the Old Lay of Bjarki (which tells how an ancient heathen Danish king's warriors died for him) before the decisive battle of Stiklarstair (1030). On the other hand, the Old Scandinavian literature also suggests that there were at all times different levels of "sophistication" among different classes and in different regions. Warriors of the ninth century, listening to poets exalt the heroic ethic, might themselves be devotees of the warrior-sorcerer in, or friends of Thr, just as, in the eleventh century, they were professing Christians. By the late tenth and early eleventh century there were individual warriors who did not put much trust in any Being of Power (see chapter 8, pp. 107-9). By the twelfth century there were literate men who could compose a work like Kormk's saga, in which an enchanted and a disenchanted interpretation are set side by side. And by the thirteenth century, there had developed an elite class of men who were able to conceive of an entirely disenchanted and impersonalized universe. Meanwhile, the unlettered folk continued to see the world through the spectacles of the more or less enchanted little traditions, trimmed and frosted with selected aspects of Christianity.

Be all this as it may, I think it likely that the already well developed and prestigeful heroic tradition, which grappled so courageously with the fact that fate may doom a blameless and talented individual to a terrible end, provided an attractive ideological framework for the disillusioned, sceptical, and reflective saga writers. Living in an age during which the enchanted heathen tradition could no longer be taken seriously by a learned man, and the Christian tradition seemed to bring only increased confusion and disorder, they created works which demonstrate with a relentless consistency that the universe is an a-moral and impersonal establishment and that there is no meaningful relationship between a man's virtues and his victories.

Other Interpretations of the Heroic Ethic and Fate

Phillpotts (1928:23) suggests that the Northmen's emphasis on lasting fame "is an assertion that there is something greater than Fate: the strength of will and the courage of human beings, and the memory which could preserve their deeds. Fame and human character: these were the two things against which Fate could not prevail." Ker (1955) also sees the heroic ethic as an assertion of the power of man's "free will." Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but I feel that our contemporary notions of "free will" or "freedom of the individual" are more formal, self-conscious, and more defensive than the ethic of the Northmen. It is my impression that the Northmen took a free man's right to act without compulsion so much for granted that they did not need to assert it. When the heroes stand and fight their hopeless battles they are most clearly and obviously demonstrating that they are men, and that they cannot be moved, broken, or turned aside from the state of manliness by any force whatsoever. Gehl (1939:182-198) states emphatically that the major Old Scandinavian (and Old Germanic) literature was not concerned with free will or with a tension between man and his fate. He asserts that fate is not seen as a mysterious, hostile power, alien and external to man, but as a "personal" phenomenon, the fate of a particular hero. Since fate is an essential part of a hero's being, from his birth to his death, there cannot (for Gehl) be any conflict. The fact that the characters in the sagas often try to avoid or forestall the events which bring their fate upon them might be cited as evidence for conflict. But for this Gehl has an ingenious explanation. The heroes only try to avoid their fate before it is made clear to them. Once they perceive what they must do in order to maintain their honor, they are united with their fate and accept it courageously and joyfully. Wollen und Mssen (personal wish and inner obligation) become one, and it is this mystical union which explains the almost incredible courage, resolution-and even the laughter-with which the Northern hero meets his death. While I find much of Gehl's analysis very perceptive and would agree that the authors of the Old Scandinavian literature often speak of fate as it it were "personal" (though the heroes themselves often speak of fate as if it were something pushed upon them from the outside), I do not feel comfortable with Gehl's psychological explanation of heroic courage. It seems to me that the Old Scandinavians and their poets and writers took it for

granted that an excellent man or woman would die bravely and would, invariably, prefer death to dishonor. There was no other path open to them, for to die bravely was the final assertion of personal and familiar worth, the ultimate act of honor. Gehl further suggests that the Northern hero's belief in fate was fundamentally devout in character and speaks of his Schicksalsfrommigkeit. He further suggests that the great hero saw his personal fate as an integral part of the all encompassing fate of the cosmos (222240). On this point I think Gehl may have been led astray by his intense interest in integration. For me the disposition to see the fate of the individual as meaningfully related to the fate of the cosmos is much more characteristic of the Old Scandinavian mythology and of the more homely episodes of the family sagas than of the heroic literature. Perhaps the most striking example of a pious or devout life-close, in which individual and "organic" fate are beautifully integrated is the story of the death of Unn, a Christian lady, as described in the Laxdoela Saga (Arent 1964:13-14). Unn, full of years, realizes that her time has come. She puts her house in order, arranges a wedding feast for her grandson, bids the guests enjoy themselves, and then walks "with a firm step" along the hall to her bed. The next morning she is found dead. In contrast, the hero Bjarki, dying on the battlefield, asserts that he will kill ain, the god of battle, because in aided the enemy (Hollander 1936:11). Gehl's depiction of the Old Germanic view of fate as pious and integrated also does not take into account that the essence of the fate-oriented literature is the presentation of a moral dilemma: if the individual man is to be the primary source of "right" or "law," he himself must stand ready to be both the executed and the executioner. Nor does it take into account the poems which depict the god Thr quarreling with the god in. Thr, who along with Frey was a favored god of hereditary landowners and farmers, accuses in, the god of warriors, skalds, and landless men, of oath-breaking and contempt for the bonds of kindred (Hollander 1962:74-82; Hollander 1936:18-28; Turville-Petre 1964:67-70). Needless to say, respect for the bonds of kindred and the oath were the very backbone of the law and moral order of the little community. And, significantly, in the heroic literature, the most noble of the heroes and heroines are depicted as conforming to the demands of honor, even though this means breaking an oath or slaying their kin.

Wax Ch. 10: Conclusions

At the beginning of this book I remarked that I was drawn by a number of interesting problems to the study of the Old Scandinavian literatures. As they had been produced during the period when the Northmen were turning from heathens into Christians, I hoped that their analysis would serve to clarify the process of transformation from the primitive (or enchanted) world view toward more modem views of the world. Further, I hoped to find and describe the fundamental and indigenous northern European assumptions about order (and disorder) and good (and ill), anticipating that if these could be discerned, their influenceor their lack of influenceon such phenomena as the Reformation, the Protestant ethic, and Western science, might more clearly be assessed. And, finally, as an anthropologist, I was interested in the judgment that has been made by scholars of great

reputethat this literature had exhibited a precocious rationalism together with an extraordinary tough-mindedness and freedom from superstition.

Disenchantment and the Process of Transformation

For me, the most significant results of this lengthy study are first, the high relief into which it throws the phenomenon of disenchantment, and second, the suggestion that disenchantment first manifested itself in the literature as a tension between the heroic ethic (or ideal of manly excellence) and the concept of fate. By disenchantment I mean the disintegration of a world view in which life, health, and well-being were inextricably intertwined with virtues or correct social behavior. My emphasis on disenchantment, rather than on secularization, sophistication, intellectualization, science, or civilization is, in itself, a product of the investigation. For when I first began the study and separately examined the various genres of the literature (myths, proverbs, lays, skaldic verse, laws, etc.), I found that all of them reflected some degree of quasi-sophistication, some refinement or development which, if carried to its logical conclusion, might eventually have clashed with the enchanted world view. Yet, of all these potentially "enlightening" phenomena within the literature, only the heroic ethic seems to have been used by the Northmen, and particularly by the saga writers, as a device for highlighting the futility of human forethought and wisdom. There may, of course, have been other quasi-sophisticated phenomena which were not reflected in the literature but yet did contribute to the deterioration of the enchanted world view. Legal practice, for example, took on some relatively secular aspects even in heathen times. Laws were seen as formulated by men, and not as transmitted to priests or favored persons by superhuman beings. The abilities of Lawspeakers and arbitrators seem to have been regarded as innately human, and not as derived either immediately or ultimately from Beings of Power. Honorable men defended their rights by blood revenge or a suit at law and did not try to obtain justice through sorcery, unless the law failed them. No one in late heathen times is reported to have won a case at law by bewitching his opponent. On the other hand, these rather secular notions and practices do not seem to have contributed significantly to the erosion of the magical world view. When Egil Skallagrmsson's rightful claim to his wife's inheritance is denied by King irik BloodyAxe, Egil curses the king in, good conscience and thereby (according to the saga) brings about irik's ultimate ruin. Again, when the revenants in Eyrbyggja saga (see chapter 5) are censured first by heathen law and then by a Christian exorcism, there is no sign that this double treatment is supposed to be viewed as a conflict between a secular (legalistic) heathen view and a moral Christian view. Instead, Snorri goi seems to be following the principle that: when in trouble, take no chances. While we today may feel that the more refined legal practices of the Old Scandinavians are not consistent with the sorcery in which some angry or cowardly men indulged, the stories told by the people of the time do not reflect any consciousness of tension. To turn to the Skaldic verseI have found very little in this verse that is implicitly or explicitly out of tune with a magical world view. Like chess and certain forms of

mathematics, Skaldic verse is a form of playand one of the beauties of play is that it transcends many barriersincluding world views. At an earlier period in the investigation, I entertained the notion that the skalds' interest in fact and precise reporting was somehow unmagical or unprimitive. But this notion, I eventually perceived, sprang from my own incorrect belief that the magical view is somehow illogical and contrary to fact, which, of course, it is not (see chapter 4). Early in the investigation I also wondered whether the skalds' extraordinary obsession with their own rights and their disinterest in the rights of others was somehow anti-social, and by extension, unmoral and unmagical. Later, when I began better to understand the principles of the old heathen law and social organization (see chapter 5), the skalds' interest in their personal rights seemed entirely proper. To be moral and uphold the law a man had first to see that no one took advantage of him. If men did not do this, there was no law. Perhaps I have swung too far to the other extreme, but I think I could now make a fairly strong case that the skalds, on the whole, regarded themselves as the most moral of men. When I first read the Hvaml I was much impressed by the appearance of so instrumental and cynical a philosophy in verses which some authorities considered the oldest that we possess. If this tough-minded, irreverent, and self-interested point of view, which saw man's most valuable possession as his wits, accurately reflected the view of the Vikings, then, I reasoned, it ought to be considered as a possible source of disenchantment. Against this reasoning is first the fact that the Hvaml contains some very pious verses and many others that concern professional-sounding magical practices. Moreover, it is not, strictly speaking, a poem, but a collection of originally discrete spells, proverbs, aphorisms, and recipes, few of which can be assigned an accurate date. Faced with these difficulties, I have contented myself with commenting on certain of the more interesting aspects of the Hvaml, comparing its philosophy with that of the heroic ethic, and suggesting (as have other scholars before me), that the most hard-bitten and ruthlesssounding of the verses may well reflect the view of warriors who had spent long years away from their kith and kin and the ceremonies and protective Powers of their home communities. It is quite possible that we have in these verses a reflection of a little tradition of disenchantment. But whether this tradition, if it existed, contributed significantly to the disenchantment of other folk, and what relationship, if any, it bore to the ethic of manly excellence, I hesitate to say. In fine then, if all of the different genres of literature produced during the late heathen or late Viking age are set side by side with the literatures of the hunting and gathering peoples of the world, they seem, all in all, to be relatively sophisticated. Preferred legal practice is carried on without sorcery, "fact" and accurate observation are respected, individualism is admired and emphasized, and some persons, at least, exhibit an astonishing instrumentalism and scepticism. More often than not, this relative sophistication is native to the heathen point of view; indeed, some of the indigenous Old Scandinavian notions seem less naive and less magical than those introduced by the Christian missionaries. On the other hand, the literature itself does not contain any convincing evidence that these indigenous developments tended to erode or shake the basic assumptions of the enchanted world view: the belief that life, health, success, and

joy sprang from correct relationships with Beings of Power and that death, illness, bad luck, and misery sprang from the alienation or dissolution of such relationships.

The Heroic Ethic

From the beginning of my investigations, and indeed long before, my husband and I had worked out our version of the ideal typical definition of the enchanted world view, [l] I was inclined to regard the heroic lays as the most "unmagical" of all the heathen literature. If I remember correctly, the first thing that impressed me was that in most of these poems the activities of the gods, trolls, witches, or other Beings of Power had little significance. [2] They might, on occasion, be blamed for some misfortune, and they might, even more rarely, appear in bird form and address the hero, but they, and the Powers they controlled, were rarely ever essential to the plot. For example, the myth about the theft of Thr's hammer remains magical whether it is related in verse or in prose, because the plot is firmly based on the belief that Thr's hammer has tremendous Power. In contrast, the magical swords, helmets, curses, and what not that appear in the heroic lays are usually mere trimmingthe real plot is concerned with the fact that peerless heroes and heroines cannot escape their fate. Later I began to perceive that the Beings of Power and their magical gifts were ignored for good reason: they were props or adjuncts to the major protagonists, fate and the hero. I also became aware that the emphasis on the struggle between man and fate, which manifests itself in some of the very early lays, was continued, developed, and used as an organizational framework by the authors of the most notable of the family sagas and the histories. This suggested that the heroic tradition, in some form or other, had existed over a long period. Some of the lays may date from the ninth century (though the stories on which they are based are much older), whereas some of the finest fate-oriented sagas were not composed until the thirteenth. Very early in the investigation I applied my own moral notions to the lays and I wondered why poets and writers should devote themselves for centuries to memorializing men and women who had first committed detestable and inhuman deeds and then stubbornly insistedto the invariably bloody endthat they had done only what was right. Further study, and especially an appreciation of the Old Scandinavian law and social organization, brought me to my present conclusion, which is that the heroic ethic represents a highly moral tradition, by which the poets show that a man may be blessed with all manner of excellent gifts and qualities and nevertheless commit what folk would call a terrible wrong, that man may suffer misery and pain through no fault of his own and no deficiency in his conduct toward the deities or Beings of Power, and, finally, that despite the abysses into which the ruthless dictates of fate may plunge him, he may still behave honorably and keep to the code of excellence. The poets also suggest, less explicitly, that doing right can be painful in and of itself and may yield no reward but the expectation that men will remember the deed. And, further, they exalt the man or woman who keeps to the ideal of excellence under the most demanding of circumstancesthe individual who is put to the ultimate test of courage and loyalty and does not falter or fail.

This ethic, which probably developed among the warriors of early heathen times, flourished during the Viking Age and continued to fascinate the aggressive and disenchanted Icelandic chieftains and learned men of the 12th and 13th centuries. Indeed, one might argue that the heathen heroic ethic provided the chieftains with a most useful instrument. If they were greedy and ruthless men, they could use these exaltations of individualism and uncompromising pride to sanction their self-aggrandizement and their impatience with the claims of kinship, fair-dealing, and other ancient scruples. If they were reflective, like the author of Njl's saga, they could use it to make some sense out of the complex and threatening times, when both honest and honorable warriors like Gunnar, and wise and considerate elders, like Njl, could be destroyed by men who also had "right on their side." One additional point should be emphasized. While many of the heathen traditions maintained themselves in attenuated or altered form after the Christian conversion, and while some, like the Skaldic verse, were revived for a period, the ethic of manly excellence not only survived, but flourished. [3] It is the one heathen tradition which the sophisticated but sensitively provincial learned men of Iceland did not, in some instance or other, hold up to ridicule or apologize for. They satirized the tricky Icelandic legal procedures and the venality and selfinterest of the chieftains, pointed out that the ancient gods were oath-breakers, censured the naive miracle tales of the more credulous Christian scholars, and made wryly humorous comments about the stupendous cosmic destruction depicted in the Vluspnoting the problem of them Mgar-worm (the worldencircling serpent) who, on the day of judgment, will gape from earth to heaven, but would open his jaws even further if there were room. But never, under any circumstances, did they exhibit anything but respect for the man who stubbornly maintains his honor and manliness in the face of his fate. On the basis of these data I think it reasonable to suggest that the heroic ethic, with its implicit emphasis on character and implacable fate, represented a significant step toward disenchantment. It enabled the warrior to view the death of a loyal fighting man not as a sign of his loss of enchanted virtue but as a supremely admirable phenomenon. Further, it presented the learned but stubbornly "nativistic" Icelanders with a prestigeful, barbaric, ideological structure for their highly sophisticated works.

The Process of Disenchantment in Other Cultures

The question arises: did the processes of transformation which culminated in other Great Traditions (like Judaism, Buddhism, Islam or Hellenic philosophy), follow much the same pattern as that reflected in the Old Scandinavian literature? In answer, I would say that on the whole the patterns of change by which various enchanted world views become more sophisticated (though still relatively enchanted) or become disenchanted (and more or less anti-magical) were often very different indeed. For example, let us compare the Northmen with the Hebrews. The Hebrews developed a Great Tradition by vesting all Power in God, and, for the most part, ignoring fate. The Northmen, judging by their literature, began to develop a Great Tradition by relating human honor and character with fateand letting the gods stand around in the background. By the same token, the

Hebrew tradition, very early in its development, withdrew all personality and independent life from nature and vested it in God. (The last animal who gets to speak his mind in the Bible is Balaam's ass, and even he is only temporarily given the power by Yahweh.) In contrast, the Old Scandinavian heroic tradition withdrew all personality from fate and vested it in man, while the magical or little traditions continued to see animals and other "natural phenomena" as "people." On the other hand, both the Hebrews and the Old Scandinavians tried to reconcile the existence of a moral universe with the fact that virtuous and blameless men must suffer and die. (In the Old Testament the outstanding examples of this reconciliation are Job and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, who was later to be seen as Jesus. The Great Tradition of Greece also had its blameless suffererSocrates) Both also developed a linear perspective of time and a remarkable sense of history. But the conclusions or resolutions they reached with these conceptions were entirely different and, to a considerable degree, I would say, they have remained different to this day. Before leaving this topic I would like to remark that the literature of many of the Great or at least moderately elite Traditions contains examples and sometimes whole genres of tales which deal with the matter of conflicting loyalties: there is Abraham commanded by God to slay his son; Brutus, who, according to law, must order his sons to be executed; Antigone, who must choose between death and the shame of leaving her brother unburied; not to mention the numerous bloodcurdling tales of the conflicts of loyalty to which the Japanese samurai were subjected. Interestingly, most of these literary elaborations of the dilemma of choice differ from the Old Scandinavian in that they provide the listener with an answer: God, the law, or one's feudal overlord are to be served rather than one's blood kin. The northern poets, in contrast, give no answer and prefer to emphasize, not that the ideal man makes the "right" choice, but that the ideal man acts and stands by his decision. [4]

Old Scandinavian Ideology and the Reformation

Fate and Calvinism
In turning to the question of what, if any, influence, the culture of the Old Scandinavians or other indigenous and closely related people might have had on the shape and structure of the Reformation, let us first consider the intriguing similarities between the Northmen's notion of fate and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Fate, as defined by the more sophisticated Old Scandinavian poets and prose writers, seems to be identical with the Calvinist notion of predestination. In both systems fate is seen as immutable, inexorable, and impersonalas a force whose decrees and goals are and always will be beyond the comprehension of man. Neither fate nor the Calvinist God are or ever will be approachable; neither has sympathies, love, hate, honor, nor a sense of justiceat least as these qualities are ordinarily understood by human beings. To use an overworked contemporary termthey are thoroughly and utterly "alienated."

It is precisely this uncompromising conception of predestination that makes Calvinist doctrine and the fate-dominated Old Scandinavian literature so a- or anti-magical. For, carried to its ultimate logical conclusion, the idea of fate is incompatible with the conception of the cosmos as an on-going social system. Magic can operate only in an environment where deities or beings of Power are sensitive to sanctions, where they can be moved, impressed, bribed, or even threatened by the prayers, repentance, good deeds, offerings, or sacrifices of men. If the supreme Power is conceived of as absolutely impersonal and immutable, magic of any variety becomes a futility. In certain other respects, however, the Old Scandinavian and the Calvinist world views differ markedly. The Old Scandinavian poets exalt the brave and determined individual to a degree surpassing any other literature, and give him every opportunity to exhibit the strength of his character. What the Northmen desired above all else was fame, and the poets gave the greatest fame to the man who stood fast against hopeless odds. Fate offered no odds at all, so the man who made his choice and then strove valiantly and unfalteringly against hopeless doom, attained the ultimate pinnacle of fame. In contrast, Calvinist doctrine, by allocating all power and virtue to God, reduced man to a mere tool or instrument, whose existence had no personal or social significance except that which had been assigned to it by God from all eternity. In respect to the place that they assign to the gods, the Old Scandinavian poets appear to have been more hard-headed and rationalistic than Calvin. Having defined fate as the ultimate force, they placed it over and above the gods. Thus, most of the heroic poems and sagas deal primarily with the struggle between the hero and his fate; gods and other beings of Power are relegated to the background. In the relatively sophisticated Vlusp, the gods themselves meet their fate, resisting to the end in grand, heroic style. Calvin, on the other hand, defined predestination as an attribute of God, and by so doing he transformed the passionate, compassionate, legal minded, bargaining deity of the Hebrews into an austere monstrosityan omnipotent Being outside all human experience. In a number of other respects, however, the phenomena involved in the two ethics exhibit some uncanny similarities. Admittedly, men like Gsli, Gunnar, and Grettir have little in common with the self-centered, unctuous Christian of Pilgrim's Progress. But when we recall that the northern hero is brought to a state where he has nothing left but his own strength and determination so that he must, in consequence, fight all alone, and we compare this with Weber's assertion that Calvinism tended to isolate man from all the usual social ties and forced him to go his way alone, we sense a similarity of pattern, fugitive though it may be. A more obvious similarity lies in the fact that both the heroic ethic, with its emphasis on inexorable fate, and the Protestant Ethic with its emphasis on the Predestination of the Elect, seem to have functioned to screw men up to the utmost activity of which they were capable. If Weber is correct, the Calvinist worked like the very devil to convince himself that he was among the elect. The Northman, on the other hand, fought like the very devil to demonstrate, even with his last breath, that he was a man and a hero.

This striking similarity in function is well exemplified in Sverrir Sigurarson's (11841202) pre-battle address to his men. Sverrir, an anti-clerical and anti-aristocratic rebel, is facing King Magnus and his knights with a following composed mostly of small farmers and poor folk. He encourages his "Birchlegs" (so-called because of their poverty) with an anecdote about a farmer advising his son before battle: "The farmer counselled his son to be brave and bold, for, 'Fame lives far longer than man.' He then asked his son, 'How would you bear yourself in battle if you knew beforehand that you were doomed to be slain?' 'What else but to hit them right and left,' answered the son. The father then asked, 'And what if you were absolutely sure that you could not fall?' 'I'd charge them with everything I've got!' said the son. The father said: 'In any battle only one of two things can happen: either you get killed or you come out alive. So be brave. Since fate determines all, he who is not fated to die does not go to Hel, whereas he who is fated to die cannot escape. And remember, "The fleeing man dies the worst death." ' " [5] Emboldened by these words, Sverrir's men carry the field and after further victories he becomes King of Norway. In his well known discussion of the Protestant Ethic and Calvinism, Weber points out how uniquely "hostile to magic" was the Calvinist doctrine. The Calvinist, he asserts (1958:104-105) "was forced to follow his path alone to meet a destiny which had been decreed for him from eternity." Neither priests nor sacraments could help him. "There was not only no magical means of attaining the grace of God for those to whom God had decided to deny it, but no means whatever." This hostility to magic Weber considers essential to the development of capitalism, and he traces it to the Old Testament Hebrew prophets. What Weber does not assert, though he seems to be aware of it, is that Calvinist predestination and Calvinist "hostility" to magic and to human social norms, are not discrete ideological notions, but aspects of the same phenomenon. A doctrine that conceives of God in the uncompromising fashion of Calvin, cannot have any use for magic or for supplications, or for good works. The Hebrew prophets' hostility to magic was something very different. By their Great Traditional teachings, the prophets tried to make a distinction between carrying on social relations with Yahweh (religion) and carrying on social relations with other Beings (idolatry or magic). Pious, God-fearing folk did the first, whereas evil and foolish folk did the second. The dictum: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" was, of course, hostile to magic, but only in the sense that the practitioner of magic behaved toward other Beings in the way that the pious man was supposed to behave only toward God. It is on the basis of these data that I would assert, most emphatically, that it is highly unlikely that Calvin's anti-magical view is to be derived from the Old Testament. I would assert, with equal emphasis, that the Protestant form of "disenchantment" was an integral part of the Protestant Doctrine of Predestination. Calvin, apparently, derived his predestinarianism from Augustine and Paul. Indeed, a doctrine very like Calvin's was put forward by the English heretic John Wycliffe in 1378

(McFarlane 1952:100), who in turn was influenced by Thomas Bradwardine, the archbishop of Canterbury (died 1349). Long before this, Gottschalk (ca. 835), a Saxon monk of noble family, had insisted on a specific predestination of the individual to salvation or damnation, pressing the doom of his opponents "with fanatical violence" (Poole 1920:44 ff.). Gottschalk, it is interesting to note, had been placed in a monastery as a child by his father, but as an adult had denied the obligation of his father's vow. After several hearings he was condemned for life to the rule of Saint Benedict. Thereafter he devoted his energies to study, and as others were to do later, found what he wanted in Augustine. In the face of this chain of intellectual influence, even I would not be so bold as to suggest that Calvin derived his anti-magical doctrine from the Icelandic traditions. On the other hand, I think a good deal might be learned about the process of disenchantment by trying to answer the question of how it came about that a warlike Old Scandinavian gentry trying to keep from being overwhelmed by an alien Great Tradition, a Saxon youth, striking at the authority which would not let him go free, a learned doctor attacking the authority of the Pope, and a French-Swiss reformer trying to reshape the Christian tradition to his own ethical and logical demands, developed doctrines resting on an absolutely ruthless and deterministic definition of fate.

Indigenous North European Traditions and the Reformation

My husband and I have long been convinced that the Reformation was not merely a peculiar extension of the Great Judeo-Christian Traditionstimulated or sparked on the one hand by access to the classics, and on the other by access to the Scripturesbut, rather, an eruption of accumulated tensions between the political and moral notions of the indigenous North European populations and the notions of the Roman ecclesiastical establishment. What we have suggested is that the political and religious leaders of the Reformation in England, Germany, and the Netherlands behaved toward the Church of Rome and the Emperor very much as the political and religious leaders of Tanzania and Ghana are today behaving toward the great establishment of western power. This is not to say, of course, that the Reformation represented a revival of the ancient Teutonic Traditions or that the developments of African and Asian nations represent a reinstitution of archaic tribal life. What we are saying is that a proselyted people do not commonly abandon all of their indigenous values and patterns of social organization. Instead, and especially if they remain numerous, vigorous, and relatively independent, they adopt those parts of the doctrine which please them. Should they come to take the doctrine really seriously, they take hold of it and reformulate it in their own terms. There is, so far as we know, no case on record in which the original disseminators of the Great Tradition greeted these reformulations with pleasure and appreciation. I do not have the space here to pursue this question at length. But I would like to point out that the Icelandic goar (the chieftain-priests) put up a long and bitter struggle to keep control of the churches they had erected on their lands, and the Christian kings of Norway (though some of them were most zealous in converting the heathen and bringing them under their rule), fought a long battle against the encroaching power of the bishops.

Indeed, if one is familiar with developments in Iceland and Norway in the llth, 12th, and 13th centuries, the great contentions that took place in England, Normandy and France from the late llth to the end of the 13th century look, not so much like "new developments," as the continuation of a long and intermittent conflict that was joined as soon as the church at Rome tried to dictate terms to the native chieftains who were either controlling or administering the local churches. [6] Speaking as an amateur in the field, I would say that the first wave of tension involved the attempt of the Roman establishment to remove the churches from the control of the great and powerful native families. The device used was the insistence on the celibacy of the clergy (which transformed the numerous, family-run, religious patrimonies into a centralized bureaucracy) and the insistence that certain activities, like fighting and the pursuance of lay cases at law, were incompatible with the religious way of life. In this reforming effort, the church was ultimately successful, so that the upper clergy no longer formed a normal part of the aristocracy and duke's sons no longer fulfilled simultaneously the duties of counts, archbishops, and the fathers of legitimate families. (We have already seen how the same conflict took place in Iceland, Chapter 2). But in the thirteenth century (Strayer 1964; McFarlane 1966), the aristocratic families of England and France made a highly successful counter-attack, insisting that secular law was entirely independent of the church and that, moreover, the royal government had the right to define the powers of the church courts. It is unlikely that the kings and nobles of France and England invented these notions out of hand, for we recall that the recently Christianized Icelanders of the late twelfth century, despite the scandalized protests of Rome, took the question of lay jurisdiction over ecclesiastics as a matter of course and were themselves shocked by the "unlawfulness" of a bishop who dared to forbid a secular court to pass judgment on a priest (see Chapter 2). White (1933) has suggested that in England the survival and elaboration of traditional Saxon legal practices may be intimately related to the administrative genius of the Norman conquerors. The Norman kings commanded the local communities, on pain of fine or imprisonment, to perform all manner of legal and judicial duties which otherwise would have had to be performed by paid hirelings of the king. Since most of this legal work followed the precepts of Saxon law, the Norman kings compelled the freeholders to do a great deal of the legal work which, as responsible men, they would have done voluntarily according to the traditional law. But whether the king's subjects served him voluntarily or not, the result was that the backbone of the traditional law was preserved. (While this practice may have been energetically pursued by the Norman rulers, it was not original with them. Svein Forkbeard, the Danish king, followed the same policy with English subjects in 1013, and when the English kings brought back under their rule the areas settled by Danes, they did not interfere with the Danelaw [Whitelock 1952:69, 1361.]) In a recent discussion of the laicization of French and English society, Professor Strayer (1964) has pointed out that the definition of the rights of the lay authorities forced many men to choose between loyalty to the state and loyalty to the church, and he has added that the theory of lay authority implicit in this system cannot be reconciled with the old

medieval system. I would agree, but would comment that the anti-medieval theory may have drawn much of its vitality from the social structure and ideology that preceded Christianity. Indeed, the marked disharmonies between the indigenous social structure of the northern European peoples and the old medieval system do not seem to be appreciated by some historians. For example, to the medievalist, the idea of choosing between loyalty to the king and loyalty to the church was unthinkable. But to the north European, the making of a difficult choice, between lord and kin or between death and shame, was the apotheosis of manliness or human worth. The man who chose thereby demonstrated that he was a free being. Moreover, the personal and voluntary association between chieftains and young warriors characteristic of the social organization of the ancient Germanic tribes (and the later Vikings) was carried on and developed in the relationship between the feudal lord and his vassal (La Monte 1949:39). [7] That the North European princes of the fifteenth century took, like ducks to water, to the notion of uniting in one person the headship of church and state, of appropriating state property, and appointing the clergy, is in no way surprising. This is what their high-born ancestors had done, both in heathen and in the early Christian times. Indeed, in this particular aspect of Protestantism, there is a curious reincarnation of the office of the goi, the able leader of men, who built, maintained and officiated in a temple he had built for his favorite god.

Old Scandinavian Empiricism and Western Science

The Northman's interest in practical skills, his hard-headed respect for "facts," and his inclination (Larson 1917:101) "to be suspicious and think everything fiction that he has not seen with his own eyes" has not been exaggerated by the commentators. And when one adds to works like Landnmabk, Heimskringla, and Konungsskuggsj, the chronicles written by other Europeans and works of certain of the English scholars of the same period, one can understand why recent investigators (Gibb 1954; L. White 1963) have suggested that the European attitude toward the sciences (as contrasted with that of Islam) was from the first conditioned by a practical approach. Europe, these scholars assert, had a distinctive and developing native system of experiment and thought of a highly pragmatic bent. The men who had been reared in this system of thought accepted and integrated into it new concepts of scholarship and new craft techniques, and this yeasty mixture gradually developed into what we today call western science. Whitehead (1948) earlier made a similar point when he ascribed to the western Europeans "a widespread instinctive conviction" that simple natural objects and events merited the careful attention of even the ablest and most intelligent of men. The reader may object here that I equate too casually the hardheadedness and respect for fact characteristic of some of the Old Scandinavian learned men with the attitudes and world views that specialists in the history of science have ascribed to Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon (Crombie 1963). In reply, I suggest that he read the works of these men and see for himself whether their ideas, aims, and point of view are not far more like each other than they are like those of the learned Arabs or the learned Greeks of antiquity.

In any case, I would like to complicate the question of North European empiricism by pointing out that the very qualities and attitudes ascribed by historians of science to the early or proto-European scientists (and by the Old Scandinavian specialists to the learned men of Old Scandinavia) are also characteristic of most of the peoples whom anthropologists once called primitive. Many ethnographers and social anthropologists have remarked that the so-called non-urban, tribal, or folk peoples are often thoroughly pragmatic in their outlook on life, that their knowledge of concrete matters, contracts, ownership of property, genealogies, and degrees of relationship may be extremely accurate and that they are, more often than not, peerless observers of the world about them. Similarly, field investigators (myself included) have been impressed by the scrupulous accuracy of certain native informants and by their skill and efficiency in gathering data (Lowie 1960). Ethnographers who have worked among the warrior peoples of the North American Plains have reported that their scouts, sent to spy on the enemy, or young men announcing war exploits, were expected to be absolutely factual in their statements. Moreover, the Northmen, in common with the early or proto-scientists of north Europe and with many relatively "underdeveloped" peoples, had a great deal of confidence in and respect for common bodily sense experience. A man's eyes, ears, and hands, were, for them, reliable instruments of perception, and a man trusted and acted upon the information given by his senses. The notion that man was capable of perceiving a factually true picture of every natural object or human event, and that he could communicate this factually true picture to other men if he chose to do so, was essential to the conception of proper legal evidence and proper Skaldic description of a raid or battle. It also helped to produce some fine reports on the flora and fauna of Greenland and North America. This particular point, namely, that "savage" or "early" people possess a particular variety of "science" characterized by "intellectual application and methods of observation" of phenomenal accuracy and by a systematization of what is "immediately presented to the senses" has recently been independently and far more eruditely asserted by Lvi-Strauss in The Savage Mind (1966: ch. 1). But even if one is willing to take seriously the probability that western science (for all its subsequent borrowings, accretions, and stimulating prods from the south), was rooted in an indigenous or native north European point of view, one is still obliged to face the "hard fact" that the world view of most modern scientistsnd especially the physical scientistss very different from the world view of the Old Scandinavian historians and the proto-scientists of the 13th century. These differences began to manifest themselves as early as Galileo. For Galileo, if I read him correctly, was not nearly so interested in the systematization of "plain facts" or the things man could perceive with his senses, as in the wonderful fact that man, by using the proper instruments, could perceive hitherto unknown things which his ordinary senses were incapable of perceiving: "In this little treatise I am presenting to all students of nature great things to observe and to consider. Great as much because of their intrinsic excellence as of their absolute novelty, and also on account of the instrument by the aid of which they have made themselves accessible to our senses.

"It is assuredly important to add to the great number of fixed stars that up to now men have been able to see by their natural sight, and to set before the eyes innumerable others which have never been seen before and which surpass the old and previously known (stars) in number more than ten times." (Quoted from Koyr1958:88-89.) (As anyone who has taken a rote introductory course in the sciences knows, Galileo's excitement over the phenomena revealed by his instruments has undergone some ironic transformations.) The sophisticated European man, before he was influenced by the Great Tradition of Science, defined Man as an observer of nature. Today he defines Man as a being who has made nature his servant or slave, yet simultaneously the pious disciple of science is obliged to define his human perceptions, his emotions, and even his moral convictions, as untrustworthy, biased, fallible, and misleading. (Few students today get through introductory courses in the sciences without being subjected to some form of pseudo-experiment, designed to "demonstrate" that their senses and emotions are thoroughly untrustworthy, and that instruments are essential to accurate observation.) It would seem, then, that the more closely a man's relationship to nature came to resemble that between an impersonal master and an impersonal slave, the more man lost of his trust in and respect for his self. This development, I venture to suggest, would have appeared odious to the Vikings or the Icelanders. The world view of the physical scientists of today is in many other ways quite alien to that of the Old Scandinavians. One obvious and striking contrast is that the Northmen, even at their most sophisticated, lived within a closed universe where all phenomena were mysteriously and intricately ordered by fate. Indeed the most learned and disenchanted of the saga writers seem to have taken delight in their ability artfully to arrange numerous complicated events, so that the alert reader could perceive that each event influenced those that followed it. The physical scientists, after centuries of struggle and doubt, have come to conceive of the universe as indefinite and infinite, and, as Koyr (1958:4) puts it: "bound together by the identity of its fundamental components and laws, and in which all these components are placed on the same level of being. This, in turn, implied the discarding by scientific thought of all considerations based upon valueconcepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim, and finally the utter devalorization of being, the divorce of the world of value and the world of facts." Perhaps one might say that the Northmen, in their ethic of manly excellence, also ventured to face a world in which value had been divorced from fact. But their response to this terrible eventuality was to exalt man's indomitable determination to hold to his values in despite of their irrelevance to the hard fact of fate.

Were the Old Scandinavians Precociously Rationalistic?

The hard-mindedness of the most admired of the Old Scandinavian writers, their disinclination to believe either in Christian miracles or heathen old wives' tales, their general restraint and seeming "respect for fact," could not but impress the progressive and liberal minded westerners of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here were a people who, though they lived in the "Dark Ages," had to see and touch a thing to believe in it,

who weighed sources and evidence and disliked tall tales; meanwhile, on the continent, their learned contemporaries were writing about fabulous monsters and miracles, or, on more intellectual levels, trying to reconcile Christian doctrine with Greek philosophy. But if one looks at the Icelandic writers' "freedom from superstition" in the context of the transformation of their indigenous world view, it becomes not a manifestation of a precocious, proto-scientific enlightenment, but rather a terminal expression of an extraordinary disenchantment. The elite Icelanders of Snorri's time could not have been so casual about wonders and miracles had they not reached an ultimate point in a profound moral transformation. To be superstitious, pious, or religious, man must see himself as living in a moral universe, in which good is rewarded and evil punished. The men who wrote the most admired of the sagas and histories no longer lived in such a world, but had substituted for it an austere, proto-existential, warrior philosophy, within which a man's brave and honorable deeds were the most valuable and lasting of all things. Indeed I would say that Snorri Sturluson and the author of Njl's saga were more sceptical men than either Mark Twain or Ingersoll. The latter were thoroughly moral men, who wished to do away with superstitions because they thought them harmful to mankind. To the much more disillusioned Snorri, the credulous beliefs of the folk, be they heathen or Christian, were merely amusing. I wish I had been able to learn more about the process by which some of the elite Scandinavians became, for a short period at least, so "super-civilized." But the best I can do is suggest, as many investigators have done before, that the processes of change and development are infernally complicated. If I were asked to put my finger on crucial elements I would opt, first of all, for the development of the warrior aristocracy, with their pride, independence, and urge for "putting other men and their lands under their rule." During the ninth and tenth centuries (and perhaps even before), this aristocracy and their poets developed the remarkably disenchanted ethic of manly excellence. The cosmopolitan experiences of the widely travelling warriors and traders, and their long absence from the ceremonies of their home communities, may also have contributed to a little tradition of disillusionment, a phenomenon which we have touched on in the chapter on the Hvaml. In Iceland, an additional impetus toward disenchantment might reasonably be the fact that the chieftains were, for so long, able to hold off the power and influence of Rome and to keep control of the new Christian church in their own hands. Competent and powerful men who, on the one hand, had come to see their indigenous gods as backward or dclass, and, on the other hand, were busy trying to keep the benefits of controlling a new religion (about which they know relatively little), were not likely to find it easy to relate their behavior to a moral universe. In addition, these newly converted Icelanders had not dropped or discarded the heroic poetic tradition of their ancestors with its implicit challenge to the logic of moral behavior - and this tradition, I suggest, provided a splendid and untarnished ideological framework for ambitious, aggressive, disillusioned, and sceptical men.

Notes
Chapter 1. Introduction
1 ... The Vikings were not precisely preliterate, since they used runic letters for memorial stones and magical spells. But, so far as we know, they did not use the runes to record their literature. 2 ... One of the disadvantages of modern scholasticism is that people who do not fit accepted definitions are either classified incorrectly or are treated as if they do not exist. 3 ... Turville-Petre (1953) suggests that the Norsemen may have gotten the idea from Irish poets. 4 ... See the excellent article by Cecil Wood. 5 ... Holmbk and Wessn (1933-45) have translated a great body of medieval Swedish laws into modern Swedish but I have not been able to consult this valuable source.

Chapter 2. Social and Cultural Background

1 ... Archeological investigations and the narrative accounts of those literate Christians or Moslems who encountered the Vikings on their travels, together with the poetry composed by the Northmen and preserved by their descendants, provide us with what we know about the society and culture of the Old Scandinavians during the Viking Age. I am myself but an educated and interested amateur in the technical arts by which the secrets of Viking life are extracted from these materials. Thus, the brief summary that follows is, for the most part, based on the writings of those considered competent. Three works are easily available to the English reader: The Vikings, Johannes Brndsted; The Vikings, Holger Arbman; The Norsemen, Count Eric Oxenstierna. The last work is somewhat anecdotal but contains materials on the Vikings in the East which are difficult to obtain elsewhere in English translation. Less available but very useful is Viking Enterprise, Sven Axel Anderson. 2 ... An English translation of Ibn Fadln's remarkable observations on the Vikings was made by Albert Stanburrough Cook and published in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XXII (1923), pp. 56-63. This translation has recently been reprinted in Dundes (1968, pp. 14-22). According to Turville-Petre another translation by C. Waddy was published in Antiquity, 1934, 58 ff. Translations of the account of the Viking ship burial may be found in Turville-Petre (1964) and Oxenstierna (1965). A Swedish translation appears in Arbman and Stenberger (1935). 3 ... The voluntary nature of the bond between the Old Scandinavian farmer and his chieftain stands in sharp contrast to feudal social organization, where the serfs were bound to their lords by heredity. For an interesting discussion of "peasant independence" in areas settled by Northmen, see Bloch 1964:49-50.

4 ... A number of interesting books have recently been published on the Greenland settlements and the Old Scandinavian explorations of the North American continent, Jones (1964), Ingstad (1966). Magnsson and Plsson (1965) give us complete translations of the relevant sagas. At its height the total Norse population of Greenland was something like 3,000. The colonies disappearedsometime in the middle of the fifteenth century. Flexible as they might be in other respects, the Norse Greenlanders were not willing or able to adopt an Eskimo way of life. Had they done so they might have survived. 5 ... Most scholars use "godord" and "godi" in English orthography. 6 ... The most informative and thorough work on the change from heathendom to Christendom is Ljungberg (1938). For a brief discussion see Bloch 1964:31-35. 7 ... The account that follows is based on slendingabk (ca. 1100), attributed to Ari Thorgilsson the Learned. This work has been translated by Vigfsson and Powell (1905) and Hermannsson (1930). The incident about the volcanic explosion is taken from Kristni saga, which, in its present form, was written in the thirteenth century. Kristni saga is translated in Vigfsson and Powell (1905). 8 ... An ancestor of Snorri Sturluson.

Chapter 3. Motion, Substance, and Play

1 ... A part of this section is derived from Phillpotts 1931:27-30. 2 ... Many scholars believe that the Vlusp's reference to a time "when nothing existed" represents the adoption of a Christian concept. 3 ... Vili and V may be hypostases of Oin.. 4 ... Loki of gar, the outer world of giants, appears only in this tale. He should not be confused with Loki, the trickster who lives in sgar.

Chapter 4. The Ideal Typical Enchanted Point of View

1 ... Readers wishing to familiarize themselves with what is known about the heathen religious practices should consult 'I'urville-Petre (1964) and Ellis Davidson (1964). They should not overlook Ibn Fadln (Cook, trans.) or the poems and comments in Hollander (1936). 2 ... For a general discussion of the magical world view see Wax and Wax (1962). For excellent descriptions of particular magical world views see Evans-Pritchard (1937), Tempels (1959), Hallowell (1960), de Angulo (1950). Gluckman (1944) and Winans and Edgerton (1964) provide very helpful expositions of the philosophy or logic of the magical world view. 3 ... According to this perspective the dead are "living beings" so long as they possess Vital Power and can influence other beings. Perhaps, in this world view a phenomenon is never completely "dead" until all its Vital Power is irrevocably gone. 4 ... [Missing]

Chapter 5. Some Principles of Old Scandinavian Law

1 ... Students interested in a general study of Old Scandinavian law should consult Holmbck and Wessn's modern Swedish translation of medieval Swedish laws, published with extensive commentaries. 2 ... Certain deeds classified a person as a ningr: cowardice in battle or single combat, abominable manslaughter (such as the killing of women, children, or relatives), oathbreaking, treason, passive homosexuality, bestiality, and exceptional inhospitality and avarice. As Almqvist (1965:212) puts it, the word was the very essence of everything low and detestable. It resembles the almost obsolete English epithet "dastard," since it insulted a person by implying that he was the committer of a dishonorable and utterly unmanly deed. 3 ... In cases where other means of proof were lacking, accused individuals sometimes could attest their innocence by swearing on a sacred ring kept in the temple of a god. If subsequently they suffered misfortune, it was taken for granted that they had perjured themselves. Complicated forms of compurgation were used in Norway (Larson 1935:16), and among the ancient Germans (La Monte 1949:39), but in Iceland, oath-taking with oath helpers does not seem to have been accepted as a substitute for a trial. 4 ... In the original: "like kinsmen." 5 ... The references to Christian belief and practices are later accretions. 6 ... The notion that kings ruled by "divine right" did not begin to gain ground in the north of Europe until the late fourteenth century. It was related to the English and French kings' successful attempts to secularize the law and diminish the power of the pope. 7 ... See, for example, the case of a woman who laid a conditional curse on a king who threatened to kill her foster son (Hollander 1936:76-79). 8 ... See also the literature on the Pueblo Indians.

Chapter 6. Skaldic Verse

1 ... Expert discussions of Skaldic verse may be found in Hollander (1945), TurvillePetre (1953), and Einarsson (1957). 2 ... Skaldic poetry first appears in Norway in the early part of the ninth century. The Icelanders, however, soon appropriated the art and brought it to its climax. Some scholars suggest the style of Skaldic verse may be derived from the highly artificial Irish verse, which also used kennings (Turville-Petre 1953:36-38). Others trace it to the memorial stones of ancient Scandinavia (Einarsson 1957:44-45). 3 ... Hollander suggests that this expression refers to the poetic ability to weigh and choose words for song. 4 ... Kenning for poetry, which Oin, according to mythology, stole from a giant. 5 ... According to heathen belief, Oin learned sorcery from the hanged. See chapter 4. 6 ... Kenning for Oin.

7 ... Thr is the kinsman of Ull. 8 ... Hrungnir was a giant, and Thr is the foe of the giants. 9 ... The "troll of tree-trunks" and the "wolf of the forests" is the wind; the "bull of bowspirits" and the "swan of the sea-god" is the ship. The waves of the sea are depicted as a huge file, cut with the wind's chisel. 10 ... Linden-board is a shield. This excerpt is from Egil's "Head Ransom" and describes a battle won by King Eirk Bloodyaxe. 11 ... The expert in Scandinavian studies will note that this question differs from the one that has intrigued a number of scholars, namely, did Skaidic verse originate in incantations?

Chapter 7. The Hvaml

1 ... Literally, this line reads: "Wits are a means of existence to the destitute," though I would prefer the more colloquial: "A man can live by his wits when he's hard up." 2 ... Literally, "wish to get good out of him" (vill u af hnom gott geta). 3 ... The quip, "A dull wit will do at home," does not necessarily denigrate farming.

Chapter 8. The Sagas

1 ... Einarsson (1957:96-178) has a helpful discussion of the sagas and other literature of this period. See also Hallberg (1962), Koht (1930), and Turville-Petre (1953). 2 ... This translation is an excerpt from Hallberg (1962:39). For original text see Vigfusson and Powell, 1905, I:294. An English translation of slendingabk, edited and translated by Halldr Hermannsson appears in Islandica, Vol. 20. 3 ... The citation is from Einarsson (1957:129) who has inserted illustrative examples into the original text. 4 ... Other cosmic and mythological orientations through space and distance may be found in Griaule (1965) and Carpenter, et. al. (1959). 5 ... The reader will note that I differ with Kroeber (1948:299) who suggests that it is a characteristic of "primitive" people to value the "unreal" above the "real," to consider a hawk seen in a vision as more important than a physical hawk that can be touched and handled. Against Kroeber, I would put Snorri Sturluson, remarking, somewhat snobbishly, that his backward heathen ancestors "understood everything in a material sense since they had not been given spiritual understanding, and so they thought that everything had to be made from some substance" (Young 1964:24-25). 6 ... Should a man walk after death his character remains unchanged or is intensified. An ill natured man becomes an extremely ill natured walker.

Chapter 9. The Process of Disenchantment

1 ... While the philosophy here described is implicit in many sensitively written monographs about "primitive" people, it is most explicitly expressed in Gluckman 1944; Winans and Edgerton 1964; de Angulo 1950, and, of course, Evans-Pritchard,

1937. 2 ... Kormk's saga bears a curious resemblance to a situation recently observed among the Ojibwa Indians. An able, educated Indian and member in good standing with the Christian church, suffered an inordinate amount of ill luck. Pagan Indian neighbors told an anthropologist that the man had been bewitched by his wife and implied that he was a fool and a laughing-stock. Struck by this seeming callousness, the anthropologist asked an Indian friend, "But why is he foolish? " The friend replied: "He should go hire a doctor (medicine man) and get himself un-witched." But for all of its rough-hewn "primitiveness," Kormk's saga is sophisticated in that it tells its story in such a fashion that Kormk's frustrations may as easily be ascribed to fate as to witchcraft. Indeed, this saga contains a faint premonition of the technique used in Dreyer's motion picture, The Day of Wrath, with its unsurpassed double image of witchcraft and fate. 3 ... In the lay of Hyndla, Ottar is a human being in the shape of a boar. Gylfi, of course, is genuinely human, but he is an invention of Snorri. Perhaps in this respect, the most archaic and magical sounding of all the lays is that of Regin (Hollander 1962:216222). 4 ... Giants and dragons play major roles in some of the dialogue poems of the Elder Edda, e.g. Brynhild's Ride to Hel and The Lay of Ffnir. But they do not appear in the old narrative lays where the heroes are depicted as acting out their fate. Virtually no supernatural beings are given "speaking roles" in the classic family sagas. But they reappear in the late and popular fornaldar sgur and in the late Grettis saga. 5 ... Other examples of a magical use of fate may be found in Ames' (1964) account of the paralyzed woman or in the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty, where the enchanted world view is nicely accommodated to the idea of destiny. 6 ... It is interesting to compare the mixture of magical practices tempered with fatalism that appears in some of the heroic lays with the situation that is reported today from communities in Ceylon (Obeyesekere 1963:147-148): "Ego's horoscope may read that during a certain specified period, Ego will be under the malevolent influence of the planet Saturn, but no specific incident that may befall him can be predicted. . . If during this period some specific misfortune does in fact happen to Ego, one can, after the event, retrospectively relate it to the astrological prediction. "However, such an explanation does not exhaust other explanations of the same misfortune - for example in demonological terms. The demonological theory of causality states that adverse fortune may be the result of the action of demons. If Ego falls ill suddenly, this is because he has been possessed by the demon Mahasona, or if Ego's property is lost to him, this is because of sorcery, i.e., the enlisting of demonological aid to cause harm to a person. The same event can also be interpreted within another frame of referencecausality attributed to divine intervention. One can with equal justification say that Ego's illness or loss of property is a result of a

violation of taboo, which brought upon him the wrath of the gods. "Thus, it is possible to interpret the same event within three frames of reference, astrological causality, demonological causality, divine causality. Ultimately however it is possible to explain the event as a consequence of karma [ fate] good or bad, in a past birth. The frames of reference are mutually inclusive." Ames (1964) puts it this way: "The successful cure specifies the cause: If medicine cures, then sickness was caused by organic disorder; if magical ritual, then spirit possession (the particular ritual cure identifies the class of spirit who 'caused' the trouble). If there is no success with any remedy, it must then be due to the inexorable workings of Karmaya. " By comparing the function of fate among the somewhat magically oriented Sinhalese with the expressions that appear in some of the Old Scandinavian lays, I do not wish to do more than suggest that both views seem to use fate as a kind of residual category in the diagnosis of man's good or evil fortunes. 7 ... Weber (1958b:99) suggests that the migrations of the Teutonic peoples, their enlistment in foreign legions, and their adventurous expeditions under self-elected heads, must have formed barriers to the intensification of totemic ties and the "magical bonds of the extended family." He further suggests that Christianity helped to dissolve the clan associations. He does not, however, seem to be aware that the heroic ethic is an expression of an anti- or a-magical point of view. The strength of the bond between the Germanic warrior and his chieftain is emphasized by Tacitus. "It is a lifelong infamy and reproach to survive the chief and withdraw from the battle." (Whitelock 1952:29).

Chapter 10. Conclusions

1 ... The enchanted world view as here defined is an ideal typical picture derived, in large part, from the works of Redfield, Evans-Pritchard, Hallowell, de Angulo, and many other investigators (see chapter 4, page 47 ff.). 2 ... I was also impressed by the curiously "unmagical" answers, given by the hero Sigur to the dragon Ffnir, where Sigur seems to be insisting that he accomplished his great deeds not with the help of Vital Power but with his own hand, heart, and sword (Hollander 1962:224, 226, vers. 5, 6, 16, 17). Unfortunately, it is not possible to assign a date to this lay. 3 ... Though the poet who wrote the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf was a Christian, the poem reflects the heathen heroic ethic. The persistence of the ethic in England is again suggested by the fact that a tenth century churchman uses it to explain what is meant by the deadly sin of pride (Whitelock 1952:27). 4 ... In England after the conversion the idea gradually became established that duty to the lord took precedence over duty to the kin (Whitelock 1952:37). 5 ... Freely translated from a German translation of Sverris saga (Niedner 1925). An

English translation may be found in Sephton (1899). 6 ... For interesting contemporary data on the disposition of little traditional people to try to control, use, and reinterpret the materials provided by an alien Great Tradition, see the reports of missionaries in Practical Anthropology. 7 ... For a short, but rich, discussion on the more immediate influences of the Viking invasions on England and France, see Bloch 1964:39-56.