Bjornstjerne Bjornson | Page 6

has been seen that during the fifteen years which made Bj?rnson in so peculiar a sense the spokesman of his race, he wrote no less than five saga dramas. The first two of these works, "Between the Battles" and "Halte-Hulda," are rather slight performances, and the third, "King Sverre," although a more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy. The grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, and the poet has not freed himself from the influence of Oehlenschlaeger. But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject entirely worthy of his genius, and produced one of the noblest masterpieces of all modern literature. This largely planned and magnificently executed dramatic trilogy was written in Munich, and published in 1862. The material is found in the "Heimskringla," but the author has used the prerogative of the artist to simplify the historical outline thus offered into a superb imaginative creation, rich in human interest, and powerful in dramatic presentation. The story is concerned with the efforts of Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain the succession to the throne of Norway during the first half of the twelfth century. He was a son of King Magnus Barfod, and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally make this claim. The secret of his birth has been kept from him until he has come to manhood, and the revelation of this secret by his mother is made in the first section of the trilogy, which is a single act, written in blank verse. Recognizing the futility of urging his birthright at this time, he starts off to win fame as a crusader, the sort of fame that haloed Sigurd Jorsalfar, then king of Norway. The remainder of the work is in prose, and was, in fact, written before this poetical prologue. The second section, in three acts, deals with an episode in the Orkneys, five years later. Sigurd has not even then journeyed to the Holy Land, but he has wandered elsewhere afar, thwarted ambition and the sense of injustice ever gnawing at his heart. He becomes entangled in a feudal quarrel concerning the rule of the islands. Both parties seek to use him for their purposes, but in the end, although leadership is in his grasp, he tears himself away, appalled by the revelation of crime and treachery in his surroundings. In this section of the work we have the subtly conceived and Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in whose interest Frakark, a Norse Lady Macbeth, plots the murder of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald himself the terrible death that she has planned for his brother. Here, also, we have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the loveliest of all Bj?rnson's delineations of womanhood, a figure worthy to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, who remains sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after. With the mutual love of Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour of sunshine in both their lives, but the love is destined to end in a noble renunciation and to leave only a hallowed memory in token of its brief existence.
Ten more years as a crusader and a wanderer over the face of the earth pass by before we meet with Sigurd again in the third section of the trilogy. But his resolution is taken. He has returned to his native land, and will claim his own. The land is now ruled by Harald Gille, who is, like Sigurd Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and who, during the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won the recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed the chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother. When the king died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been his successor, but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and imprisoned that he might himself occupy the throne. The five acts of this third section of the trilogy cover the last two years of Sigurd Slembe's life, years during which he seeks to gain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards, maddened by the base treachery of the king and his followers, by assassination and violence. He has become a hard man, but, however wild his schemes of revenge, and however desperate his measures, he retains our sympathy to the end because we feel that circumstances have made him the ravager of his country, and that his underlying motive all along has not been a merely personal ambition, but an immense longing to serve his people, and to rule them with justice and wisdom. The final scene of all has a strange and solemn beauty. It is on the eve of the battle in which Sigurd is to be captured and put to death by his enemies. The actual manner