ART. III. THE EDDAS.

Die Edda, die ältere und jüngere, nebst den mythischen Erzählungen der Scalda, übersetzt und mit Erläuterungen begleitet. Von Karl Simrock. The Edda, Elder and Younger, with the Mythic Tales of the Skalda, translated and furnished with explanations, by Karl Simrock. Stuttgart and Tübingen. 1851. Second Notice.

In a former notice we gave some account of the history of the Icelandic Eddas, and indicated briefly the contents of the Mythological Poems. Some description of those, which for want of a better name we may call Heroic, will suffice to complete such a superficial survey as we proposed

of these remains of ancient art.

The Heroic Poems of the Elder Edda were collected at the same time as the Mythological, and coincide with them in all broad characteristics of form and aspect. But they have something of greater finish in them-a larger element of art; the genius of the Poet has had freer play in moulding them. Religious poems, especially when, like the Voluspa, they partake of the character of hymns, enjoy a veneration that increases with their antiquity; every pains is taken to preserve with exactness the ancient words and phrases. But the heroic lays, and probably also, many of the mythological songs that only recount adventures of the gods, were poems sung at feasts and festivals, in the recital of which the minstrel would unavoidably, within certain limits, follow the promptings of his own taste, and improve or injure as the case might be, the traditionary verses handed down to him by his predecessors. This process, too, may have gone on even after the general introduction of Christianity, an event which would at once deprive the old heathen hymns of vitality, and leave them either to perish utterly, or, if preserved, to be preserved in their old form as literary relics. Still, the date at which these Icelandic heroic songs were collected was sufficiently early to take them up before they had undergone any considerable modification;

and in the form of the verse, and still more remarkably in intrinsic merit, they differ widely from the later productions of the Skalds. In what age they were first produced it is impossible to say with even approximate precision. They were written down some time between the end of the tenth and the end of the fourteenth century; probably existed in their present form some time before the tenth century (different ones dating from different times); and, as their original germ is certainly not Icelandic, so there is every probability that it had already received some poetic embodiment before the peopling of Iceland, and that from Norway, and perhaps even from Denmark, originally came some of these ancient songs, in a form not very different from that in which we now possess them.

At a later period they underwent a new and retrograde development, being melted together into continuous prose narrative. The earlier prose chronicles, which form so remarkable a feature in Icelandic literature, were based, as the writers themselves tell us, on songs commemorative of the achievements of chiefs and families; and in like manner these more ancient heroic lays served as the basis for connected prose stories. The earlier among these reproductions retained much of the simplicity of their prototypes; the mass of them, however, soon, in prolixity, in disregard of anachronism, and in abundance of marvellous incident, assumed all the features of regular middle-age romances. The most important which have been preserved are the Volsunga Saga, and the Wilkina and Niflunga Saga. The former of these is of the simpler class, and bears much the same relation to the heroic portion of the Elder Edda, that the Younger Edda does to the mythological portion. It is a prose narrative, gathered partly from lost ancient songs, but chiefly from those preserved in the Edda, and affording some additional evidence of their genuineness, as well as some further materials for the better comprehension of them. The Wilkina Saga, though not without value for the elucidation of some portions of ancient heroic tradition, stands quite within the verge of romantic literature, and gathers itself around the great centre of early romance, Dietrich of Bern, or Theodoric of Verona. It is remarkable too, from its being palpably, both by its own confession and

from abundant internal evidence, derived from German not Scandinavian sources.

We call these Songs heroic in distinction from mythological, but the word does not very accurately express their main character. Some of them there are, indeed, which occupy the borderland between the divine and human, and commemorate supernatural events and superhuman achievements; but the mass of them, and the finest of them, are occupied with interests purely human, and the heroes whose tragic destinies they record rise above the level of their race only in the elevation of their characters, the superiority of their achievements, or the strength of their passions.

The Poems, as collected in the Elder Edda, resolve themselves into at least three tolerably distinct sets. The first of these consists of only a single Poem, the Volundar quitha, the hero of which, though his achievements occupy but a limited space in the traditional literature, bears a name widely disseminated through Europe in forms easily identified, such as Volund, Wieland, Valland, Galland, Wayland. He is the most skilful of smiths and jewellers, unrivalled in the cunning both of his art and his disposition. The prose introduction to the Eddaic Poem calls him and his brothers sons of the Fin King; and in the Poem itself he is called companion of the Elves, Elf, and Elf King. By these and other traces the tradition seems to connect itself closely with the pre-occupant race which made way for the Scandinavians. It may have been a tradition of theirs adopted by the conquerors, or one of which some striking incident in the relations between the two races was the kernel. It is difficult in either way to account for its great universality. There is a Latin poem made at St. Gall, in the tenth century, where the author speaks of the armour of one of his heroes as Vuelandia fabrica; and, in England, King Alfred's translation of Boethius speaks of him as already half lost in antiquity. "Where," he asks, "are now the bones of the wise Weland, the goldsmith, that was of yore renowned ?" And in

Berkshire there is, or was in 1738, the tradition of an invisible smith, who shod travellers' horses, and was called Wayland Smith. The story of Wieland appears in its fullest form in the Wilkina Saga, before mentioned, which

records his descent from a mermaid and his education among the dwarfs, and gives a full account of his adventures, coinciding, when it touches the same ground, pretty closely with the Eddaic Poem. This last has, as usual, a prose introduction by the Collector, which informs us that the three brothers, Šlagfid, Egill, and Volund, were sons of the Fin King, who hunting on their skates (or more probably snow-shoes), came to Wolfdale, and there built themselves a house; and that they one morning, by the shore of a lake in their neighbourhood, found three maidens, Valkyries, whom they made their wives. This part of the story is but slightly connected with the main portion, which tells how Volund was taken into bondage by Nidud (whom the introduction calls King of Sweden), and how he revenged the mutilation he suffered.

"The maids," begins the song, "flew from the South, through the dark wood, to fulfil the Fates." Among them was Alvitur (All-witting), the young. (Simrock insists her name should be All-white.) They sat on the shore of the lake to rest, and spun the precious thread. One of them took Egill to her arms. The second was Swanwhite; the third, their sister, embraced the white neck of Volund. Seven winters they stayed, the eighth, however, grew restless, and, on the ninth, flew away through the dark wood again. The brothers came home, and found the hall empty; went in and out, and gazed about them. East turned Egill to seek Aulrune; South, Slagfid, to seek Swan-white. But Volund sat alone in Wolfdale, and made rings, and strung them on limebast, awaiting thus the return of his fair wife. Nidud heard of him-by night his men went forth, their shields gleaming against the crescent moon (the "clipped moon" the poet calls it); they entered the hall of Volund, and saw his seven hundred strung rings, of which they took one. Home came the hunter; he set to broiling bear steaks, and, seated on his bear-skin before the blazing wind-dried firewood, the Elf-man took to counting his rings, and, when he missed one, he thought the young Alvitur had come back again, and taken it. He waited for her till he fell asleep, and awoke to find himself bound hand and foot. Nidud, by the advice of his queen, hamstrings him, and confines him in an island. There he sat, sleepless,

working with his hammer, and meditating his scheme of revenge. It is Eastern in its cruelty and malignity. He strikes off the heads of the king's two little sons, as they are looking into his chest of precious things. Their skulls he set in silver, and sent them to Nidud; of their eyes he made pearls, and sent them to their mother, the crafty wife of Nidud; and of their teeth he made a necklace for their sister Baudvild; this last, having broken her ring, ventures into Volund's smithy to have it set; and, by the aid of a sleeping-draught, he betrays the maid, and then raises himself laughing in the air, on wings he had made himself, while Baudvild goes weeping home. Hanging in the clouds, he addresses Nidud as he stands at the threshold of his palace, relates and exults in his vengeance, and flies away, leaving the unhappy king to digest his accumulated griefs. It is a rude story, told briefly and inartificially, but it is full of flashes of poetic imagination, which no prose skeleton can preserve. Quite remarkable is the union of conciseness and completeness in the pictures. The three maidens spinning by the lake side; the weary hunter sitting by his fire of blazing pine; the children peeping about the smithy, are set before us in brief felicitous words, and antiquity, while it excuses the meagreness and naked horror of the story, gives a zest to the beauties with which it is adorned. Brief and pregnant is the conclusion: "Laughing, Volund soared into the air; but sadly Nidud gazed after him.”

The next three poems embrace what was probably originally a distinct set of traditions, though, in later developments, as in the Volsunga Saga, they are knitted on to the great cycle of the Niebelungs. Their hero is Helgi; perhaps there is more than one of the name. He is of the race of the Volsungs, and surnamed Hundings Bana, the slayer of Hunding, who, we are told, was a mighty king after whom Hundland is named. The characteristics of these poems are a less personal set of incidents than prevails in the others. Helgi is, in the main, a great warrior, and the songs recount not individual feats so much as battles in which he was victorious. There is nothing of the simplicity of the better poems; the narrative is crowded and confused with the names of numerous kings or chiefs. It is ballad poetry on the edge of poetical chronicle, and,