This is high praise; but who, after studying the play, will doubt that it is deserved? The powerfully moving events of the story indeed lead up to the climax in a forthright and exciting manner. The terror of the house-women and the thrall, the fearful love of Gunnar's mother Rannveig, and the caution of Kolskegg his brother, who "sailed long ago and far away from us" in obedience to the doom or sentence of the Thing—all these bring out sharply the quite reckless daring of Gunnar himself, who braves the decree. A mysterious and epic touch is added by the three ancient hags-evidently of these minor Norns who watch over individual destinies and announce the irrevocable doom of the gods. It was Hallgerd who broke their thread, representing, of course, Gunnar's span of life.
The centre of interest, as well as the spring of the action, is clearly Hallgerd, descendant of Sigurd Fafnirsbane and of Brynhild—
… a hazardous desirable thing,
A warm unsounded peril, a flashing mischief,
A divine malice, a disquieting voice.
She, and not any superstitious belief in "second-sight" and death decreed, is the cause of Gunnar's remaining outlawed. She wrangles about the headdress, not because she particularly wants it, but to send her husband on a perilous mission to secure it. She says openly that she has "set men at him to show forth his might … planned thefts and breakings of his word" to stir him to battle. Mr. Abercrombie believes that "She loves her husband Gunnar, but she refuses to give him any help in his last fight, in order that she may see him fight better and fiercer." We should, then, have to suppose that her amazing speech at his death—
O clear sweet laughter of my heart, flow out!
It is so mighty and beautiful and blithe
To watch a man dying—to hover and watch—
is not for the blow Gunnar had given her when she "planned thefts and breakings of his word," but is rather, as the lines powerfully indicate, the exultation of a descendant of the Valkyrie watching above the battlefields.
Really poetical plays—plays which are both poetic and strongly dramatic—are indeed exceedingly rare. Mr. Bottomley is one of the few who have produced such drama in English. For many years he printed his work privately, in beautiful editions for his friends; but of late several of the plays have been made available—King Lear's Wife in Georgian Poetry, 1913-15, and in a volume of the same title, including Midsummer Eve and The Riding to Lithend, published in London last year.
Those who want more stories of this sort will find them in Thorgils and other Icelandic stories modernized by Mr. Hewlett; in the Burnt Njal, translated by Sir George Dasent, from which this story itself springs; and in the translations by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris, the Saga Library—particularly the stories of the Volsungs and Nibelungs, and of Grettir the Strong.
louvre—a smoke-hole in the roof
thrall—a captive or serf