The period which the Sagas would delineate commences when the Norse chiefs sail to Iceland with kith and kin and following to be rid of Harold Fairhair, and lasts for a century or more on through the time of King Olaf Tryggvason who, shield over head, sprang into the sea in the year 1000, and the life of that other Olaf, none too rightly called the Saint, who in 1030 perished in battle fighting against overwhelming odds. Following hard upon this heroic time comes the age of telling of it, telling of it at the mid-summer Althing, telling of it at Yuletide feasts, and otherwise through the long winter nights in Iceland. These tellings are the Sagas in process of creation; for a Saga is essentially a tale told by word of mouth to listeners. Thus pass another hundred years of careful telling, memorizing, and retelling of these tales, kept close to the old incidents and deeds, yet ever with a higher truth intruding. They are becoming true to reality itself, in concrete types, and not simply narratives of facts actually occurring—if indeed facts ever occur in any such unequivocal singleness of actuality and with such compelling singleness of meaning, that one man shall not read them in one way and another otherwise. And the more imaginative reading may be the truer.
This century of Saga-growth in memory and word of mouth came to an end, and men began to write them down. For still another hundred years (beginning about 1140) this process lasted. In its nature it was something of a remodelling. As oral tales to be listened to, the Sagas had come to these scribe-authors, and as such the latter wrote them down, yet with such modification as would be involved in writing out for mind and eye and ear that which the ear had heard and the memory retained. In some instances the scribe-author set himself the more ambitious task of casting certain tales together in a single, yet composite story. Such is the Njála, greatest of all Sagas; it may have been written about the year 1220.[194]
As representative of the Norse personality, the Sagas, like all national literature, bear a twofold testimony: that of their own literary qualities, and that of the characters which they portray. In the first place, a Saga is absolute narrative: it relates deeds, incidents, and sayings, in the manner and order in which they would strike the eye and ear of the listener, did the matter pass before him. The narrator offers no analysis of motives; he inserts no reflections upon characters and situations. He does not even relate the incidents from the vantage-ground of a full knowledge of them, but from the point of view of each instant’s impression upon the participants or onlookers. The result is an objective and vivid presentation of the story. Next, the Sagas are economical of incident as well as language. That incident is told which the story needs for the presentation of the hero’s career; those circumstances are given which the incident needs in order that its significance may be perceived; such sayings of the actors are related as reveal most in fewest words. There is nothing more extraordinary in these stories than the significance of the small incident, and the extent of revelation carried by a terse remark.
For example, in the Gisli Saga, Gisli has gone out in the winter night to the house of his brother Thorkel, with whom he is on good terms, and there has slain Thorkel’s wife’s brother in his bed. In the darkness and confusion he escapes unrecognized, gets back to his own house and into bed, where he lies as if asleep. At daybreak the dead man’s friends come packing to Gisli’s farm:
“Now they come to the farm, Thorkel and Eyjolf, and go up to the shut-bed where Gisli and his wife slept; but Thorkel, Gisli’s brother, stepped up first on to the floor, and stands at the side of the bed, and sees Gisli’s shoes lying all frozen and snowy. He kicked them under the foot-board, so that no other man should see them.”[195]
This little incident of the shoes not only shows how near was Gisli to detection and death, but also discloses the way in which Thorkel meant to act and did act toward his brother: to wit, shield him so long as it might be done without exposing himself.
Another illustration. The Njáls Saga opens with a sketch of the girl Hallgerda, so drawn that it presages most of the trouble in the story. There were two well-to-do brothers, Hauskuld and Hrut:
“It happened once that Hauskuld bade his friends to a feast, and his brother Hrut was there, and sat next to him. Hauskuld had a daughter named Hallgerda, who was playing on the floor with some other girls. She was fair of face and tall of growth, and her hair was as soft as silk; it was so long, too, that it came down to her waist. Hauskuld called out to her, ‘Come hither to me, daughter.’ So she went up to him, and he took her by the chin and kissed her; after that she went away. Then Hauskuld said to Hrut, ‘What dost thou think of this maiden? Is she not fair?’ Hrut held his peace. Hauskuld said the same thing to him a second time, and then Hrut answered, ‘Fair enough is this maid, and many will smart for it; but this I know not, whence thief’s eyes have come into our race.’ Then Hauskuld was wroth, and for a time the brothers saw little of each other.”[196]
The picture of Hallgerda will never leave the reader’s mind throughout the story, of which she is the evil genius. It is after she has caused the death of her first husband and is sought by a second, that she is sent for by her father to ask what her mind may be:
“Then they sent for Hallgerda, and she came thither, and two women with her. She had on a cloak of rich blue woof, and under it a scarlet kirtle, and a silver girdle round her waist; but her hair came down on both sides of her bosom, and she had turned the locks up under her girdle. She sat down between Hrut and her father, and she greeted them all with kind words, and spoke well and boldly, and asked what was the news. After that she ceased speaking.”