From “Northern Antiquities.”

MANKIND, everywhere essentially the same, have been always led to poetical composition prior to that of prose. This seems at present the reverse of the natural order; but we think so either through our prejudices, or for want of putting ourselves in the place of a people who are ignorant of the art of writing. Pleasing sounds and the attractions of harmony would strike at first every ear; but song could not long subsist without poetry. No sooner was it observed how these two united powers fixed and impressed those images on the mind, which the memory was desirous of retaining, than they acquired a new degree of esteem, especially among such as aspired to a lasting fame. Verse was made use of to preserve the memory of remarkable events and great actions. The laws of a people, their religious ceremonies and rural labors were also recorded in numbers, because these are subjects which, consisting of a great variety of particulars, might easily fall into oblivion. Hence it was that Greece could already boast of a Homer, a Hesiod, and of many other poets, several ages before Pherecydes had written in prose. Hence among the Gauls and other Celtic nations there were poems composed on all subjects from the earliest ages, which the Druids, who were appointed to educate the youth, frequently employed twenty years in teaching them to repeat. This custom, rendered sacred by its high antiquity, which ever commands respect from the people, was in force many ages after the art of writing had pointed out a more perfect method of preserving the memorials of human knowledge. In like manner the Scandinavians for a long time applied their Runic letters only to the senseless purposes above mentioned; nor did they, during so many years, ever think of committing to writing those verses with which their memories were loaded; and it is probable that they only wrote down a small quantity of them at last. The idea of making a book never entered into the heads of those fierce warriors, who knew no medium between the violent exercises and fatigues of war or hunting and a stupid lethargic state of inaction. Among the innumerable advantages which accrued to the Northern nations from the introduction of the Christian religion, that of teaching them to apply the knowledge of letters to useful purposes is not the least valuable. Nor could a motive less sacred have eradicated that habitual and barbarous prejudice which caused them to neglect so admirable a secret. The churches and monasteries were at least so many asylums where this secret was preserved, while the ferocity of manners which prevailed in the Dark Ages tended again to consign it to oblivion.

  So long as paganism prevailed in the North, the use of letters being very limited, it is no paradox to say that verse was a necessary medium of knowledge, and the poet an essential officer of the state. And if it requires a peculiar and uncommon genius to excel in this art, the professors of it would, of course, acquire a very high degree of esteem and respect. All the historical monuments of the North are full of the honors paid this order of men, both by princes and people; nor can the annals of poetry produce any age or country which reflects more glory and lustre upon it. The ancient chronicles constantly represent the kings of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as attended by one or more Skalds; for this was the name they gave their poets. They were more especially honored and caressed at the courts of those princes who distinguished themselves by their great actions and passion for glory. Harold Harfagr, for instance, placed them at his feasts above all the officers of his court. Many princes intrusted them both in peace and war with commissions of the utmost importance. They never set out on any considerable expedition without some of them in their train. Hakon, Earl of Norway, had five celebrated Skalds along with him in that famous battle, when warriors of Jomsburg were defeated; and history records that they sung each an ode to animate the soldiers before they engaged. But they enjoyed another advantage, which would be more the envy of the poets of these days. They were rewarded for the poems they composed in honor of the kings and heroes with magnificent presents; we never find the Skald singing his verses at the courts of princes without being recompensed with golden rings, glittering arms, and rich apparel. Their respect for this order of men often extended so far as to remit the punishment of crimes they had committed, on condition they sued out their pardon in verse. In a word, the poetic art was held in such high estimation that great lords and even kings did not disdain to cultivate it with the utmost pains themselves. Ragnvald, earl of the Orkney Islands, passed for a very able poet; he boasts himself in a song of his which is still extant, that he knew how to compose verses on all subjects. Ragnar Lodbrok was no less distinguished for his skill in poetry than in war and navigation. Many of his poems were long preserved in the North, and may be found inserted in the history of his life; and it is well known that he died no less like a poet than a hero.

  The respect, however, which the Northern nations paid to their Skalds was not owing to the nobility of their extraction. A people whose object was glory could not fail of showing a great deference to those who both published it abroad and consigned it to futurity, let their origin be what it would. A prince or illustrious warrior oftentimes exposed his life with so much intrepidity, only to be praised by his Skald, who was both the witness and judge of his bravery. It is affirmed that this kind of men, although poets, were never guilty of flattery, and never lavished their praises on heroes and kings themselves, unless their gallant exploits were quite incontestable. Hence arose the custom of always bringing them into the scene of action: Olaf, king of Norway, placing three of them one day around him in battle, cried out with spirit: “You shall not relate what you have only heard, but what you are eyewitnesses of yourselves!” The same poets usually recited their verses themselves at solemn festivals and in great assemblies. But the subject of these poems was not confined to one single event, such as a victory or some generous action; it was frequently a genealogical history of all the kings of the country, deduced down from the gods to the reigning prince, who always derived his origin from them. These poems were, according to Tacitus, the only annals of the Germans. They had great numbers of them, which were not wholly forgotten in the eighth century; since Einhard relates that Charlemagne caused them to be committed to writing. “And even learnt himself,” adds the historian, “the rude and ancient songs in which the exploits and the wars of the first princes were celebrated.” In poems of the same kind consisted for many ages all the history of the Scandinavians. A bard named Thiodolf celebrated in his verses the exploits of Harold and thirty of his predecessors; another called Eyvind composed an historical poem which went back as far as Odin. Such are the sources whence Saxo drew his materials for the first six or seven books of his “History,” and he might doubtless have derived great assistance from them, if he had not happened to live in an age wholly destitute of that exact skill in criticism which knows how to separate facts from the fictions with which they are blended.

  The necessity there was for poets, the natural attractions of the art itself, and those it derived from the manners of the age, greatly multiplied the number of Skalds. An ancient Icelandic manuscript has preserved a list of all such as distinguished themselves in the three northern kingdoms, from the reign of Ragnar Lodbrok to that of Valdemar II. They are in number two hundred and thirty, among whom we find more than one crowned head. But what is not less remarkable is, that the greatest part of them are natives of Iceland. The reader has, doubtless, by this time, observed that we are indebted to that island for almost all the historical monuments of the northern nations now remaining. It cannot easily be accounted for how it came to pass that a people, disjoined from the rest of the world, few in number, depressed by poverty, and situated in so unfavorable a climate, should be capable, in those Dark Ages, of manifesting such a taste for literature, and should even rise to the perception of the more refined mental pleasures. While they were heathen, the Icelandic annalists were always deemed the best in the North. After they had embraced the Christian faith, they were the first who thought of unraveling the chaos of ancient history, who collected the old poems, digested the chronicles into a regular form, and applied themselves to rescue from oblivion the traditions of their pagan theology. Were we better informed of certain particulars relating to the state of the North during those remote ages, we might possibly find the cause of this phenomenon either in the poverty of the inhabitants of Iceland, which drove them to seek their fortune at the neighboring courts, or in the success of their first bards, which excited their emulation, and at the same time prepossessed strangers in their favor; or lastly, in the nature of their republican government, in which the talent of oratory and the reputation of superior sense and capacity are the direct roads to respect and preferment.

  The style of these ancient poems is very enigmatical and figurative, very remote from the common language, and for that reason, grand, but tumid; sublime, but obscure. If it be the character of poetry to have nothing in common with prose, if the language of the gods ought to be quite different from that of men, if everything should be expressed by imagery, figures, hyperboles, and allegories, the Scandinavians may rank in the highest class of poets; nor is this unaccountable. The soaring flights of fancy may possibly more peculiarly belong to a rude and uncultivated than to a civilized people. The great objects of nature strike more forcibly on rude imaginations. Their passions are not impaired by the constraint of laws and education. The paucity of their ideas and the barrenness of their language oblige them to borrow from all nature images fit to clothe their conceptions in. How should abstract terms and reflex ideas, which so much enervate our poetry, be found in theirs? They could seldom have been met with in their most familiar conversations. The moment the soul, reflecting on its own operations, recurs inwards, and detaches itself from exterior objects, the imagination loses its energy, the passions their activity, the mind becomes severe, and requires ideas rather than sensations; language then becomes precise and cautious, and poetry, being no longer the child of pure passion, is able to affect but feebly. If it be asked what is become of that magic power which the Ancients attributed to this art, it may be well said to exist no more. The poetry of the modern languages is nothing more than reasoning in rhyme, addressed to the understanding, but very little to the heart. No longer essentially connected with religion, politics, or morality, it is at present, if I may so say, a mere private art, an amusement that attains its end when it has gained the cold approbation of a few select judges.