Tense and lean, the colour of gypsum,
Behind a vast coal-black beard, Henrik Ibsen.
to whom a statue rises in the grounds. His charming play the Dolls House (1879) was one of the first of his works to gain a reputation through the world, while it started, or stirred, about woman and her place a discussion whose end is not in sight, and also did very much to naturalise all modern drama by abolishing such devices as soliloquies, and attempting to set upon the stage what really happens in the world.[44]
Well worth attention would be those very boats that first explored the wild fjords of the storied North, that pushed their unwelcome dragon-prows into every bay and broad river of Europe from end to end, that caused even the great Charles to weep, that added a petition to the Litany of the Church, that formed the navies on whose power were built kingdoms in Sicily and Russia, in Normandy and amidst the British Isles, that centuries before the days of Columbus sailed through ice-laden seas to the well-favoured American shore. Here they are! Put together with skill and preserved with care, they stand in sheds that form part of the University Museum. That ships will be required beyond the grave to sail on undiscovered seas is the simple opinion of many unsophisticated branches of mankind. The Chinese send vessels to the illustrious dead by burning them on earth. Probably with the same idea the ancient Norse buried them in their barrows or howes. The ship on which a viking had sailed in life became his coffin after death. Thus simply does the Heimskringla in the Story of Hakon the Good describe such burials. "So King Hakon let take all the ships of Eric's sons which had been beached, and let draw them up aland. There King Hakon let lay Egil Woolsark in a ship, and all those of his folk with him who were fallen, and let heap over them stones and earth. Then King Hakon let set up yet more ships, and bear them to the field of battle; and one may see the mounds to-day."[45]
Such a king's howe was heaped up long ago at Gogstad on Sandefjord, where to-day is a prosperous little watering-place, hard by the mouth of the seaway by which Christiania is gained. Here in 1880 a well-preserved viking ship was brought to light and in due course it was reverently deposited in the Museum of the University at the Capital. Its lines are graceful and it is of very shallow draught. The size is quite considerable, just seventy-eight feet from end to end. It is framed with a heavy keel and rather light ribs; the planks are extremely neatly cut and carefully riveted together with iron nails and square washers. It must have possessed some suppleness, which was probably an advantage in a stormy sea. The two ends are very much alike, but by the stern is a steering-board, like a great oar, fixed loosely on the side that we still know as the starboard.
Through the third plank from the top are pierced rowlocks and along the gunwale are ranged the big-bossed shields by which the Northmen sought to ward off blows. They are round, not large, and painted yellow and black.
Compared with those of Chinese junks or Arab dhows, the lines of the viking vessel are strikingly modern in character: this is much less surprising than it otherwise would be when it is recollected that the Bronze Age sculptures on the Scandinavian rocks prove that boats of considerable dimensions had been used by the ancestors of the builders for something like a thousand years.
The dragon prow is no longer to be seen. Such features were clearly detachable, for among the primitive laws and customs of Iceland it is written: "This was the beginning of the heathen laws, that men must not keep a ship at sea with a figure-head on; but if they have, then they must take off the head before they come in sight of land, and not sail to land with gaping heads and yawning jaws to frighten the spirits or wights of the country."[46] Thoughtful precaution!
Near the centre of the boat are remains of the pine mast that rose from a mortice in a log whose either end is fashioned after the pattern of a fish's tail. The square sail, perhaps of painted wool, was hoisted or lowered by a pulley. Aft of the mast in the centre is a log-built house, whose timbers, both at the ends and those that on the sides lean together to form the roof, fit into grooved beams, reminding one of the construction of the stavekirkes. This deckhouse in all probability was constructed to form the tomb.
A well-found boat, suited to the navigation of the fjords! But what courage must have been required of those who sailed across the stormiest of oceans in so frail a craft! Within the howe, but not within the boat, twelve horses, six dogs and one peacock were buried with their lord.[47]