Landscape in History, and Other Essays

by Archibald Geikie

Away from the great mountain-tracts of Norway, though the topography was on a diminished scale, there were many features similar in kind, and fitted to awaken like fancies in the minds of those who dwelt among them. The hill groups that rise out of the great Germanic plain, such as the Hartz and the detached heights of central Scotland, though far less imposing than the Scandinavian fjelds abound nevertheless in picturesque details. Along the sides of their cliffs, especially in the narrow valleys by which they are traversed, crags and pinnacles of odd and often imitative shapes rise one above another. Solitary boulders, unlike any of the rocks around, are strewn over the hills and scattered far across the plains. Green, grassy mounds, like gigantic earthworks, or groups of sepulchral tumuli, stand conspicuously on the bare heathy moors. And when to these singular natural features there is added the strangely impressive influence of the clouds, mists, and other meteorological conditions that mark the changeful climate of western Europe, we are presented with such a combination of effective causes as might well stimulate the fancy of an imaginative people, and might, among the members of the great Teutonic family, evoke feelings and superstitions not less characteristic than those of ancient Greece.

The grandeur and ruggedness of the scenery of these western and northern European countries, and the frequent sombreness of the climate are faithfully reflected in the prevalent Teutonic myths and superstitions. Thor and his mallet found a congenial home among the Scandinavian mountains and fjords. There, too, was the appropriate haunt of the Frost-giants. The race of giants, with their fondness for stones and rocks, to whom so much influence in altering the external aspects of nature was ascribed by the Teutonic races, might have had their ancestral abode among the crags and defiles of the north-west, but they readily naturalised themselves among the less rugged tracts of northern Germany and of Britain. The dwarfs, trolls, fairies, and hill-folk who, whether or not they are to be regarded as representatives of a diminutive human population that originally inhabited those regions, were believed to dwell under the earth and in caves, and who were regarded as having played a distinct though subordinate part in changing the surface of the land, would find appropriate haunts wherever the Teutons established themselves. The personification of natural forces and the effects produced by the supernatural beings so pictured to the imagination, certainly bear a marked family likeness all over the west and north-west of Europe.

There is, moreover, one feature that distinguishes the myths and legends of those northern lands—the grim humour which so often lights them up. The grotesque contours of many craggy slopes where, in the upstanding pinnacles of naked rock, an active imagination sees forms of men and of animals in endless whimsical repetitions, may sometimes have suggested the particular form of the ludicrous which appears in the popular legend. But the natural instinct of humour which saw physical features in a comical light, and threw a playful human interest over the whole face of nature, was a distinctively Teutonic characteristic.

A few examples from the abundant collection that might be gathered must here suffice. Some of the most singular features of the landscapes of the north-west of Europe arise from the operations of the ice-sheets, glaciers, and icebergs of that comparatively late geological period to which the name of the Ice Age is given. The perched boulders which stand poised near the verge of cliffs or scattered over the sides and summits of hills, everywhere suggested the working of supernatural agency. In some districts they were looked upon as missiles hurled by giants who fought against each other. In others, they were regarded as the work of giantesses, or 'auld wives,' as they were called in Scotland, who to exhibit their prowess would transport masses of rock as large as hills from one part of the country to another.

This capacity in such supernatural beings to carry huge burdens of stone or earth has furnished an explanation of many islands and mounds along the maritime parts of Britain and the countries bordering the Baltic Sea. Ailsa Craig, that stands so picturesquely in the middle of the Firth of Clyde, was the handiwork of a carline, who, for some object which is not very clear, undertook to carry a huge hill from Scotland to Ireland. Before she had got half-way over, her apron-strings broke and the rock fell into the sea, whence it has projected ever since as the well-known island. In proof of the legend a hollow among the Carrick hills is pointed out as the place from which the mass of rock was removed.

Along the Baltic coasts many similar tales are told. Thus the island of Hven was dropped where it stands by the giantess Hvenild, who wished to carry some pieces of Zealand over to the south of Sweden. Sex seems to have counted for little in the nature or amount of work accomplished, for witches and warlocks, giants and giantesses, were equally popular and equally powerful. A mighty giant in the Isle of Rugen, vexed that, as his home stood on an island, he had always to wade from it when he wished to cross over to Pomerania, resolved to make a causeway for his greater convenience. So, filling his apron with earth, he proceeded to carry out his purpose, but soon the weight of his burden broke an opening in the apron, and such a quantity of stuff fell out as to form the nine hills of Rambin. Stopping the hole, however, he went on until another bigger rent was torn open, from which earth enough tumbled to the ground to make thirteen of the other little hills that now appear in that district. But he succeeded at last in reaching the sea with just enough of earth left in the apron to enable him to make the promontory of Prosnitz Hook and the peninsula of Drigge. There still remained, however, a narrow passage between Pomerania and Rugen which he had no material left to bridge over, and so in a fit of rage and vexation he fell dead, and his undertaking still remains incomplete.[18] The geologist who has studied the singular forms and distribution of the 'glacial drift' can best appreciate this and similar attempts to account for the shapes and grouping of these still enigmatical mounds and ridges.

The progress of Christianity extirpated the pagan gods and giants, but failed to destroy the instinctive craving after a supernatural origin for striking physical features. This surviving popular demand consequently led to gradual modification of the older legends. In Catholic countries the deeds of prowess were not infrequently transferred to the hands of the Virgin or of saints. Thus at Saintfort, in the Charente region, a huge stone that lies by the river Ney is said to mark where the Virgin dropped from her apron one of four pillars which she was carrying across. In Britain, and especially in Scotland, the devil of the Christian faith appears to have in large measure supplanted the warlocks and carlines of the earlier beliefs, or at least to have worked in league with them as their chief. All over the country 'devil's punchbowls,' 'devil's cauldrons,' 'devil's bridges' and other names mark how his prowess has been invoked to account for natural features which in those days were deemed to require some more than ordinary agency for their production.

These popular efforts to explain physical phenomena which, from the earliest days of human experience, have appealed most forcibly to the imagination, have survived longest in the more rugged and remote regions, partly, no doubt, because these regions have lain furthest away from the main onward stream of human progress, but partly also because it is there that the most impressive topographical features exist. The natural influence of mountain-scenery upon the mind is probably of an awe-inspiring, depressing kind. We all remember the eloquent language in which Mr. Ruskin depicts what he calls the 'mountain gloom.' Man feels his littleness face to face with the mighty elemental forces that have found there their dwelling-place. Even so near our own time as the later decades of the eighteenth century men of culture could hardly find language strong enough to paint the horrors of that repulsive mountain-world into which they ventured with some misgivings, and from which they escaped with undisguised satisfaction. After we have made every allowance for the physical discomforts inseparable from such journeys at that time, when neither practicable roads nor decent inns had been built, it is clear that mountain-scenery not only had no charm for intelligent and observant men, but filled them with actual disgust. Not until the nineteenth century did these landscapes come into vogue with ordinary sightseers. Only within the last two or three generations have mountains begun to attract a vastly larger annual band of appreciative pilgrims than ever crowded along what used to be called the 'grand tour.' For this happy change we are largely indebted to the Alpine ascents and admirable descriptions of the illustrious De Saussure on the Continent, and to the poetry of Scott and Wordsworth in this country.

It is interesting to inquire how, after the popular feeling has thus been so entirely transformed, mountainous scenery now affects the imagination of cultivated people who visit it, whether impelled by the mere love of change or by that haunting passion which only the true lover of mountains can feel and appreciate. Even under the entirely changed conditions of modern travel and general education, we can detect the working of the same innate craving for some explanation of the more salient features of mountain-landscape that shall satisfy the imagination. The supernatural has long been discarded in such matters. Even the most unlearned traveller would demand that its place must be taken by scientific observation and inference. But the growth of a belief in the natural origin of all the features of the earth has grown faster than the capacity of science to guide it. Nowhere may the lasting influence of scenery on the imagination be more strikingly recognised than in the vague tentative efforts of the popular mind to apply what it supposes to be scientific method to the elucidation of these more impressive elements of topography. The crudest misconceptions have been started and implicitly accepted, which, though supposed to be based on observation of nature, are in reality hardly less unnatural than the legends of an older time. They have nevertheless gained a large measure of popular acceptance, because they meanwhile satisfy the demands of the imagination.