The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature | Page 2

character that lay behind his gentle
and almost retiring demeanor. It was easy to recognize that here was a
man, self-centered and whole.
In a discourse pronounced at a memorial meeting, the Rev. John
Coleman Adams justly said: "If I wished to set before my boy a type of
what is best and most lovable in the American youth, I think I could
find no more admirable character than that of Conrad Hjalmar Nordby.
A young man of the people, with all their unexhausted force, vitality
and enthusiasm; a man of simple aims and honest ways; as chivalrous
and high-minded as any knight of old; as pure in life as a woman; at
once gentle and brave, strong and sweet, just and loving; upright, but
no Pharisee; earnest, but never sanctimonious; who took his work as a
pleasure, and his pleasure as an innocent joy; a friend to be coveted; a
disciple such as the Saviour must have loved; a true son of God, who
dwelt in the Father's house. Of such youth our land may well be proud;
and no man need speak despairingly of a nation whose life and
institutions can ripen such a fruit."
L.F.M. COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, May 15, 1901.

INTRODUCTORY.
It should not be hard for the general reader to understand that the
influence which is the theme of this dissertation is real and explicable.
If he will but call the roll of his favorite heroes, he will find Sigurd
there. In his gallery of wondrous women, he certainly cherishes
Brynhild. These poetic creations belong to the English-speaking race,
because they belong to the world. And if one will but recall the close
kinship of the Icelandic and the Anglo-Saxon languages, he will not
find it strange that the spirit of the old Norse sagas lives again in our
English song and story.
The survey that this essay takes begins with Thomas Gray (1716-1771),
and comes down to the present day. It finds the fullest measure of the
old Norse poetic spirit in William Morris (1834-1896), and an
increasing interest and delight in it as we come toward our own time.
The enterprise of learned societies and enlightened book publishers has
spread a knowledge of Icelandic literature among the reading classes of
the present day; but the taste for it is not to be accounted for in the
same way. That is of nobler birth than of erudition or commercial pride.
Is it not another expression of that changed feeling for the things that
pertain to the common people, which distinguishes our century from
the last? The historian no longer limits his study to camp and court; the
poet deigns to leave the drawing-room and library for humbler scenes.
Folk-lore is now dignified into a science. The touch of nature has made
the whole world kin, and our highly civilized century is moved by the
records of the passions of the earlier society.
This change in taste was long in coming, and the emotional phase of it
has preceded the intellectual. It is interesting to note that Gray and
Morris both failed to carry their public with them all the way. Gray, the
most cultured man of his time, produced art forms totally different from
those in vogue, and Walpole[1] said of these forms: "Gray has added to
his poems three ancient odes from Norway and Wales ... they are not
interesting, and do not, like his other poems, touch any passion.... Who
can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys and
glories they could conceive--the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of
the skull of an enemy in Odin's Hall?"
Morris, the most versatile man of his time, found plenty of praise for

his art work, until he preached social reform to Englishmen. Thereafter
the art of William Morris was not so highly esteemed, and the best poet
in England failed to attain the laurel on the death of Tennyson.
Of this change of taste more will be said as this essay is developed.
These introductory words must not be left, however, without an
explanation of the word "Influence," as it is used in the subject-title.
This paper will not undertake to prove that the course of English
literature was diverted into new channels by the introduction of Old
Norse elements, or that its nature was materially changed thereby. We
find an expression and a justification of our present purpose in Richard
Price's Preface to the 1824 edition of Warton's "History of English
Poetry" (p. 15): "It was of importance to notice the successive
acquisitions, in the shape of translation or imitation, from the more
polished productions of Greece and Rome; and to mark the dawn of
that æra, which, by directing the human mind to the