Of the court poets of the time Sighvat was easily the chief. Canute recognised his importance and was anxious to enroll him among his henchmen. But Sighvat, who had already sworn fidelity to King Olaf, excused himself with the remark that one lord at a time was sufficient. Canute did not press the matter but permitted the poet to depart with a golden arm-ring as the reward for his poem, the Stretch Song, whose ringing refrain, "Canute is the mightiest King under heaven," is high praise from one who had travelled so widely and had probably visited all the more important courts in northern and western Europe.
Did Canute also patronise Anglo-Saxon literature? We do not know, but the chances are that he did not, as during his reign very little was produced in the Old English idiom that could possibly appeal to him. The Anglo-Saxon spirit was crushed; and out of the consciousness of failure and humiliation can come no inspiration for literary effort. Even that fierce patriot, Archbishop Wulfstan, accepted the conquest and came down from York to assist at the dedication of the church at Ashington where Saxon rule had perished. After the appearance of the splendid poem that tells the story of Byrhtnoth's death at Maldon in 991, the voice of Anglo-Saxon poetry is almost silent for nearly two centuries. Early in the eleventh century Saxon prose, too, entered upon its decline. Alfric's best work was done before the close of the tenth century; he seems to have written his last important work, a pastoral letter, just before the accession of Canute to the English throne.[423] In the English cloisters the monks were still at work and valuable manuscripts were produced; but Canute can hardly have taken much interest in grammars, glossaries, Biblical paraphrases, and pastoral letters. It seems evident that he did nothing to encourage the monastic annalist: the entries for Canute's reign in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are extremely meagre and disappointing; it seems probable that they were not written till after the King's death. The disappearance of Old English literature, both prose and poetic, dates from a time more than half a century earlier than the Norman conquest,—from the time when the Danish hosts filled the homes of Wessex with gloom and horror. The coming of the Normans did not put an end to literary production in the speech of the conquered English: it prevented its revival.
It is not to be inferred, however, from this lack of literary originality and productiveness, that the age had lost all appreciation of the poet's art. Two of the greatest monuments of Old English culture, the so-called Vercelli Book and the Exeter Codex, were apparently produced during the earlier decades of the eleventh century, possibly as late as the accession of Canute. In these manuscripts the Anglo-Saxon scribes have preserved to us some of the earliest literary productions of the English race. The Vercelli Book takes us back in the writings of Cynewulf to the eighth century; the Exeter manuscript looks back even farther and introduces us to the singers of heathen or semi-heathen times. Canute may not have shared the enthusiasm of the scribes for the Old English past; but he seems to have appreciated the work of a skilled copyist. In those days the exchange of presents was an essential part of diplomatic negotiations; and good manuscripts made very acceptable presents. Mention has already been made of the beautiful codex, written with golden letters, that made a part of the gift that Canute is said to have sent to Duke William of Aquitaine. As the Duke was renowned as a patron of the literary art, there can be no doubt that the present was properly appreciated. It will be remembered that Canute's gift to the church at Cologne was also in the form of manuscripts.
One of the most important contributions of the West to Northern civilisation was the written book. Writing was not a new art in the Scandinavian lands; but neither the symbols nor the materials in use were such as did service in the Christian lands. The men of the North wrote on wood and stone; they used characters that had to be chiseled into the tablet to be inscribed. These symbols were called runes; and graven into granite the runic inscriptions have defied the gnawing tooth of time. The large number of runic monuments that have come down to us would indicate that the art of writing was widely known, though it also seems likely that it was the peculiar possession of the "rune-masters," men of some education who knew the runes and were skilled in the art of inscribing.
The runes were of divine origin and were taught mankind by Woden himself. The term "run," which probably means "secret," reveals the attitude of the Germanic mind toward this ancient alphabet: thoughts were hidden in the graven lines, but that was not all: the characters were invested with magical properties. Graven on the sword hilt they were runes of victory; on the back of the hand, runes of love; on the palm, runes of help; the sailor cut sea runes into the rudder blade; the leech traced runes on "the bark and on the stock of a tree whose branches lean eastward."[424] There were also ale runes, speech runes, and mind runes, which "thou shalt know if thou wilt be wiser than all other men."[425]
The runic alphabet was originally a common Germanic possession; but among the Scandinavian peoples alone did its use become extensive and long-continued. Some of the Northern inscriptions are of a very early date, the earliest going back, perhaps, to the fourth century or possibly to the third.[426] They are of necessity terse and brief; but to the student of culture and civilisation they give some valuable information. These runes reveal a time when all the Northern tribes spoke the same language and were one people, though clearly not organised into a single state.[427] The inscriptions also show the rise of dialects and the development of these into idioms, though this is a growth of the later centuries. Doubtless the changes in language bear some relation to a parallel political development, a grouping of tribes into states, until in the tenth century three dynasties claimed kingship in the North. In that century the monuments begin to have great value for narrative history. Members of the Knytling dynasty are mentioned on several important stones, as earlier pages of this volume have shown.
The runes that were in use in the tenth and eleventh centuries are the younger series, an alphabet of sixteen characters selected and developed from the older series of twenty-four. As the number of elementary sounds in the language was greater than the number of letters, several of the runes were used to represent more than one sound, a fact that has made reading and interpretation somewhat difficult. The runes were used especially for monumental purposes: a large number of the many hundred extant mediæval inscriptions (Sweden alone has more than fifteen hundred)[428] are epitaphs recording the death of some friend or kinsman. But the runes were also found useful for other purposes. They were used in making calendars; articles of value very often bore the owner's name in runic characters; in early Christian times we find runic characters traced on church bells and baptismal fonts; in later centuries attempts were even made to write books in the runic alphabet. Wherever Northmen settled in the middle ages, inscriptions of this type are still to be found; some of the most interesting Scandinavian monuments were raised on the British Isles; even classic Piræus once had its runic inscription.
Sometimes the scribe did more than chisel the letters. Like the Christian monk who illumined his manuscript with elaborate initials and more or less successful miniatures, the rune-master would also try his hand at ornamentation. In the earlier middle ages, Northern art, if the term may be used, was usually a barbaric representation of animal forms, real and imaginary, the serpent and the dragon being favourite subjects. But in the western colonies the vikings were introduced to a new form of ornamentation, the Celtic style, which was based on the curving line or a combination of curved interlocking lines that seemed not to have been drawn in accordance with any law of regularity or symmetry, but traced sinuously in and out as the fancy of the artist might direct.[429] This form was adopted by the Norse colonists and soon found its way to the mother lands. In the North it suffered an important modification: the Norse artists added an element of their own; the old motives were not entirely abandoned for the winding body of the serpent or the dragon readily fitted into the new combinations. It was this modified form of Irish ornamentation that ruled among the Northmen in the days of Canute and later. It appears wherever decoration was desired: on runic monuments, on articles of personal adornment, and even on the painted walls of the early Scandinavian churches.