Eric Brighteyes | Page 5

and
goddesses, and to bring their supernatural agency to bear directly on the
personages of his chant, and that far more freely than any Norse
sagaman. A word may be added in explanation of the appearances of
"familiars" in the shapes of animals, an instance of which will be found
in this story. It was believed in Iceland, as now by the Finns and
Eskimo, that the passions and desires of sorcerers took visible form in

such creatures as wolves or rats. These were called "sendings," and
there are many allusions to them in the Sagas.
Another peculiarity that may be briefly alluded to as eminently
characteristic of the Sagas is their fatefulness. As we read we seem to
hear the voice of Doom speaking continually. "/Things will happen as
they are fated/": that is the keynote of them all. The Norse mind had
little belief in free will, less even than we have to-day. Men and women
were born with certain characters and tendencies, given to them in
order that their lives should run in appointed channels, and their acts
bring about an appointed end. They do not these things of their own
desire, though their desires prompt them to the deeds: they do them
because they must. The Norns, as they name Fate, have mapped out
their path long and long ago; their feet are set therein, and they must
tread it to the end. Such was the conclusion of our Scandinavian
ancestors--a belief forced upon them by their intense realisation of the
futility of human hopes and schemings, of the terror and the tragedy of
life, the vanity of its desires, and the untravelled gloom or sleep,
dreamless or dreamfull, which lies beyond its end.
Though the Sagas are entrancing, both as examples of literature of
which there is but little in the world and because of their living interest,
they are scarcely known to the English-speaking public. This is easy to
account for: it is hard to persuade the nineteenth century world to
interest itself in people who lived and events that happened a thousand
years ago. Moreover, the Sagas are undoubtedly difficult reading. The
archaic nature of the work, even in a translation; the multitude of its
actors; the Norse sagaman's habit of interweaving endless side-plots,
and the persistence with which he introduces the genealogy and
adventures of the ancestors of every unimportant character, are none of
them to the taste of the modern reader.
"Eric Brighteyes" therefore, is clipped of these peculiarities, and, to
some extent, is cast in the form of the romance of our own day,
archaisms being avoided as much as possible. The author will be
gratified should he succeed in exciting interest in the troubled lives of
our Norse forefathers, and still more so if his difficult experiment

brings readers to the Sagas--to the prose epics of our own race. Too
ample, too prolix, too crowded with detail, they cannot indeed vie in art
with the epics of Greece; but in their pictures of life, simple and heroic,
they fall beneath no literature in the world, save the Iliad and the
Odyssey alone.

ERIC BRIGHTEYES

I
HOW ASMUND THE PRIEST FOUND GROA THE WITCH
There lived a man in the south, before Thangbrand, Wilibald's son,
preached the White Christ in Iceland. He was named Eric Brighteyes,
Thorgrimur's son, and in those days there was no man like him for
strength, beauty and daring, for in all these things he was the first. But
he was not the first in good-luck.
Two women lived in the south, not far from where the Westman
Islands stand above the sea. Gudruda the Fair was the name of the one,
and Swanhild, called the Fatherless, Groa's daughter, was the other.
They were half-sisters, and there were none like them in those days, for
they were the fairest of all women, though they had nothing in common
except their blood and hate.
Now of Eric Brighteyes, of Gudruda the Fair and of Swanhild the
Fatherless, there is a tale to tell.
These two fair women saw the light in the self-same hour. But Eric
Brighteyes was their elder by five years. The father of Eric was
Thorgrimur Iron-Toe. He had been a mighty man; but in fighting with a
Baresark,[*] who fell upon him as he came up from sowing his wheat,
his foot was hewn from him, so that afterwards he went upon a wooden
leg shod with iron. Still, he slew the Baresark, standing on one leg and
leaning against a rock, and for that deed people honoured him much.

Thorgrimur was a wealthy yeoman, slow to wrath, just, and rich in
friends. Somewhat late in life he took to wife Saevuna, Thorod's
daughter. She was the best of women, strong in mind and