This is the woman that the girl has grown to be; and she is still at the beginning of her mischief. Such narrative art discloses both in the tale-teller and the audience an intelligence which sees the essential fact and is impatient of encumbrance. It is the same intelligence that made these Vikings so efficient in war, and in peace quick to seize cogent means.
Truthfulness is another quality of the Sagas. Indeed their respect for historical or biographical fact sometimes hindered the evolution of a perfect story. They hesitated to omit or alter well-remembered incidents. Nevertheless a certain remodelling came, as generation after generation of narrators made the incidents more striking and the characters more marked, and, under the exigencies of storytelling, omitted details which, although actual, were irrelevant to the current of the story. The disadvantages from truthfulness were slight, compared with the admirable artistic qualities preserved by it. It kept the stories true to reality, excluding unreality, exaggeration, absurdity. Hence these Sagas are convincing: no reader can withhold belief. They contain no incredible incidents. On occasions they tell of portents, prescience, and second sight, but not so as to raise a smile. They relate a very few encounters with trolls—the hideous, unlaid, still embodied dead. But those accounts conform to the hard-wrung superstitions of a people not given to credulity. So they are real. The reality of Grettir’s night-wrestling with Glam, the troll, is hardly to be matched.[197] Truthfulness likewise characterizes their heroes: no man lies about his deeds, and no man’s word is doubted.
While the Saga-folk include no cowards or men of petty manners, there is still great diversity of character among them. Some are lazy and some industrious, some quarrelsome and some good-natured, some dangerous, some forbearing, gloomy or cheerful, open-minded or biassed, shrewd or stupid, generous or avaricious. Such contrasts of character abound both in the Sagas of Icelandic life and those which handle the broader matter of history. One may note in the Heimskringla[198] of the Kings of Norway the contrasted characters of the kings Olaf Tryggvason and St. Olaf. The latter appears as a hard-working, canny ruler, a lover of order, a legislator and enforcer of the laws; in person, short, thick-set, carrying his head a little bent. A Viking had he been, and was a fighter, till he fell in his last great battle undaunted by odds.
But the other Olaf, Norway’s darling hero, is epic: tall, golden-haired, peerless from his boyhood, beloved and hated. His marvellous physical masteries are told, his cliff-climbing, his walking on the sweeping oars keeping three war-axes tossing in the air. He smote well with either hand and cast two spears at once. He was the gladdest and gamesomest of men, kind and lowly-hearted, eager in all matters, bountiful of gifts, glorious of attire, before all men for high heart in battle, and grimmest of all men in his wrath; marvellous great pains he laid upon his foes. “No man durst gainsay him, and all the land was christened wheresoever he came.” Five short years made up his reign. At the end, neither he was broken nor his power. But a plot, moved by the hatred of a spurned heathen queen, delivered him to unequal combat with his enemies, the Kings of Denmark and Sweden, and Eric the great Viking Earl.
Olaf is sailing home from Wendland. The hostile fleet crouches behind an island. Sundry of Olaf’s ships pass by. Then the kings spy a great ship sailing—that will be Olaf’s Long Worm they say; Eric says no. Anon come four ships, and a great dragon amid them—the Long Worm? not yet. At last she comes, greatest and bravest of all, and Olaf in her, standing on the poop, with gilded shield and golden helm and a red kirtle over his mail coat. His men bade to sail on, and not fight so great a host; but Olaf said, “Never have I fled from battle.” So Olaf’s ships are lashed in line, at the centre the Long Worm, its prow forward of the others because of her greater length. Olaf would have it thus in spite of the “windy weather in the bows” predicted by her captain. The enemies’ ships close around them. Olaf’s grapplings are too much for the Danes; they draw back. Their places are taken by the ships of Sweden. They fare no better. At last Earl Eric lays fast his iron-beaks to Olaf’s ships; Danes and Swedes take courage and return. It is hand to hand now, the ships laid aboard of each other.
At last all of Olaf’s ships are cleared of men and cut adrift, save the Long Worm. There fight Olaf’s chosen, mad with battle. Einar, Olaf’s strong bowman, from the Worm aft in the main hold, shot at Earl Eric; one arrow pierced the tiller by his head, the second flew beneath his arm. Says the Earl to Finn, his bowman, “Shoot me yonder big man.” Finn shot, and the arrow struck full upon Einar’s bow as he was drawing it the third time, and it broke in the middle.
“What broke there so loud?” said Olaf.
“Norway, king, from thine hands,” answered Einar.
“No such crash as that,” said the king; “take my bow and shoot.”
But the foeman’s strength was overpowering. Olaf’s men were cut down amidships. They hardly held the poop and bow. Earl Eric leads the boarders. The ship is full of foes. Olaf will not be taken. He leaps overboard. About the ship swarm boats to seize him; but he threw his shield over his head and sank quickly in the sea.