Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Start |||
The
Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness ||| EU News
Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield |
|
From Hutton Webster's, Early European History (1917); edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS
XIV. THE NORTHMEN AND THE NORMANS TO 1066 A.D.
» Contents of this Chapter
Page 5
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE SAGAS
The sagas belong to different classes. The oldest of them relate the deeds of Viking heroes and their families. Others deal with the lives of Norwegian kings. Some of the most important sagas describe the explorations and settlements of the Northmen and hence possess considerable value as historical records.
THE NORTHMEN AS SEEN IN THE SAGAS
The sagas throw much light on the character of the Northmen. Love of adventure and contempt for the quiet joys of home comes out in the description of Viking chiefs, who "never sought refuge under a roof nor emptied their drinking-horns by a hearth." An immense love of fighting breathes in the accounts of Viking warriors, "who are glad when they have hopes of a battle; they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the oar-thongs and cracking the tholes." The undaunted spirit of Viking sailors, braving the storms of the northern ocean, expresses itself in their sea songs: "The force of the tempest assists the arms of our oarsmen; the hurricane is our servant, it drives us whithersoever we wish to go." The sagas also reveal other characteristics of the Northmen: a cruelty and faithlessness which made them a terror to their foes; an almost barbaric love of gay clothing and ornament; a strong sense of public order, giving rise to an elaborate legal system; and even a feeling for the romantic beauty of their northern home, with its snow-clad mountains, dark forests of pine, sparkling waterfalls, and deep, blue fiords.
EDDAIC POEMS
It is to the Viking Age also that we owe the composition of the poems going by the name of the Elder Edda. These poems, as well as the prose sagas, were collected and arranged in Iceland during the later Middle Ages. The Elder Edda is a storehouse of old Norse mythology. It forms our chief source of knowledge concerning Scandinavian heathenism before the introduction of Christianity.
THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY: Table of Contents
url: www.ellopos.net/politics/european-history/default.asp
Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * Western Medieval Europe * Renaissance in Italy
