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- Herausgeber: Skyline
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
The story of “Ivar the Viking” depicts the actual life of Norse chiefs who ruled at the period therein described, and also gives the customs, religion, life, and mode of thinking which prevailed among the people. My object in writing this story is to give a view, in a popular way, of the life of these early ancestors of the English-speaking peoples, whose seat of power was on the islands situated in the basin of the Baltic and the countries known today as Scandinavia. The reader of this volume will gain a correct idea of the civilization of the Norsemen of that period, the men who came to the gates of Rome, and settled in Britain, Gaul, Germania, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and other countries. I begin the story of my hero with his birth, accompanied by the characteristic ceremonies attending it; then I tell of his fostering, his education, his coming of age, of the precepts of wisdom he is taught, of his foster-brothers, of the sacred ceremony of foster-brotherhood, of his warlike expeditions and commercial voyages, of the death and funeral of his father, of his accession to rule, and other similarly typical Viking events.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Paul Belloni Du Chaillu
Ivar the Viking
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Table of contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I HJORVARD AND GOTLAND
CHAPTER II THE VIKING LAND, AND THE VIKINGS
CHAPTER III HJORVARD CONSULTS THE ORACLE
CHAPTER IV IVAR’S BIRTH AND LIFE FORECAST
CHAPTER V THE FOSTERING OF IVAR
CHAPTER VI IVAR ATTAINS HIS MAJORITY
CHAPTER VII IVAR’S FIRST EXPEDITION
CHAPTER VIII THE YULE SACRIFICE
CHAPTER IX IVAR’S DEFEAT OF THE ROMANS
CHAPTER X IVAR’S VISIT TO BRITAIN
CHAPTER XI THE DAUGHTERS OF RAN
CHAPTER XII ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF SIGURD
CHAPTER XIII A VOYAGE TO THE CASPIAN
CHAPTER XIV HAKI’S BURNING JOURNEY TO VALHALLA
CHAPTER XV DEATH AND BURNING OF HJORVARD
CHAPTER XVI HELGI AND THE VALKYRIAS
CHAPTER XVII THE INHERITANCE FEAST OF HJORVARD
CHAPTER XVIII IVAR SPURNS STARKAD’S INDEMNITY
CHAPTER XIX THE SLAYING OF STARKAD
CHAPTER XX THE SESSION OF THE THING
CHAPTER XXI IVAR’S VISIT TO YNGVI
CHAPTER XXII YNGVI’S POETS AND CHAMPIONS
CHAPTER XXIII Yngvi’s Three Beautiful Daughters
CHAPTER XXIV THE GUESTS OF THE HERSIR OF SVITHJOD
CHAPTER XXV BEGINNING OF THE ATHLETIC GAMES
CHAPTER XXVI GREAT FEATS OF IVAR AND HJALMAR
CHAPTER XXVII THE FOSTER-BROTHERS FALL IN LOVE
CHAPTER XXVIII BETROTHAL OF IVAR AND RANDALIN
CHAPTER XXIX IVAR’S DUEL WITH KETIL
CHAPTER XXX DEATH OF HJALMAR AND ASTRID
CHAPTER XXXI THE WEDDING OF IVAR AND RANDALIN
INTRODUCTION
The
story of “Ivar the Viking” depicts the actual life of Norse
chiefs who ruled at the period therein described, and also gives
the
customs, religion, life, and mode of thinking which prevailed among
the people. My object in writing this story is to give a view, in a
popular way, of the life of these early ancestors of the
English-speaking peoples, whose seat of power was on the islands
situated in the basin of the Baltic and the countries known today
as
Scandinavia.The
reader of this volume will gain a correct idea of the civilization
of
the Norsemen of that period, the men who came to the gates of Rome,
and settled in Britain, Gaul, Germania, on the shores of the
Mediterranean, and other countries.I
begin the story of my hero with his birth, accompanied by the
characteristic ceremonies attending it; then I tell of his
fostering,
his education, his coming of age, of the precepts of wisdom he is
taught, of his foster-brothers, of the sacred ceremony of
foster-brotherhood, of his warlike expeditions and commercial
voyages, of the death and funeral of his father, of his accession
to
rule, and other similarly typical Viking events.I
speak in the narrative of the dwellings of the people; how they
lived; of their “bys,” or burgs; of the different grades making
up society; of their feasts; of their temples; of their worship,
religious ceremonies, and sacrifices; of funerals; of Amazons; of
athletic games; of women and maidens; of love; of duels and sports;
of dress; of men and women; of marriages. In a word, the book is a
life-like picture of the period. The time which I have chosen is
the
epoch when the Norsemen were most surely and swiftly sapping the
power of Rome, and engaged in colonization on the largest
scale.There
is not an object, a jewel, either Norse, Roman, or Greek, or a coin
mentioned, that has not been found in the present Scandinavia, and
is
not seen to-day in its museums, and often in great numbers.The
descriptions of customs interwoven in the narrative are derived
from
authentic records, the sagas, the evidence of graves, and of
antiquities in general. These are more fully, scientifically, and
technically described in my work published three years ago, “The
Viking Age.”The
descriptions of dresses of the women have been most carefully drawn
from the sagas, and from the handles of three keys seen in “The
Viking Age,” where three women in full dress are represented. The
materials and jewels with which I have adorned them are those found
in their graves. The attire of the men is from the garments,
weapons,
and ornaments of that early period, found in graves and bogs, and
from descriptions in the sagas.
“
The
Viking Age” had hardly been published in England, when a storm of
protests and adverse criticisms arose from many quarters of that
conservative country; for it is there that the old belief in the
Angle and Anglo-Saxon descent of the modern English-speaking
peoples
is most rooted, having indeed become a religion with many
Englishmen.I
fully expected opposition to the new views I propounded. Had not my
former accounts of African travels been received with incredulity?
Did not the people laugh when I told that I had seen a race of
pigmies and been in their villages? Did they not doubt my
descriptions of the great equatorial forest, of gorillas,
cannibals,
etc.? I was before the time. I was too young; and these
circumstances
were against me. But then, as in the case of “The Viking Age,” I
found warm supporters and defenders in England itself.I
knew that it was bold on my part to attack the Saxon idol which had
been worshipped so long among Englishmen, and to try to destroy the
faith in which they and their fathers had believed. Was the
glorious
Anglo-Saxon name which the people had been shouting for so long,
even
in America, to be overthrown? What, then, would become of the
sturdy
qualities claimed as inherited from the so-called Anglo-Saxon race?
The qualities are there, only the name of Anglo-Saxon ought to be
changed to that of Norse.Nothing
but absolute conviction made me take this bold step. I had never
been
satisfied with the assertions of historians, and could see no
evidence in their writings for the conclusions at which they had
arrived in regard to the name Anglo-Saxon and as to who were the
conquerors and settlers of Britain.When
I travelled in the Norselands, to the northern part of which I gave
the name of “The Land of the Midnight Sun,” a name which has been
generally adopted since, I became convinced that the conquerors of
Britain were Norse; for while visiting their museums, which
contained
the Norse antiquities, I saw that these objects were the same as
those called in England by antiquarians, Angle, Anglo-Saxon,
Anglo-Roman, and in France, Frankish. These facts set me thinking,
and ultimately produced “The Viking Age.”As
soon as I brought before the public the evidence I had collected,
many voices rose and exclaimed: “Woe to him who tries to dispel our
belief and destroy our faith!” The world is full of such examples
in the treatment of new ideas. How could I escape hostility when I
proclaimed that the antiquities called in England by archæologists
and others, and classified in the museums as Angle, Anglo-Saxon,
Anglo-Roman, are Norse, consequently that the ancestors of the
English-speaking people are from the basin of the Baltic and
present
Scandinavia, and that it is only there that one sees the
antiquities
of a most warlike and sea-faring race of the period of the
so-called
Saxon maritime
expeditions?Many
apply the name of Anglo-Saxon to the people who settled in Britain,
without knowing why, except that they had been taught to believe it
from their school and college days, or because the majority believe
so. I maintain that the earlier England, popularly placed at the
southern part of the peninsula of Jutland, is mythical; that such
antiquities pointed out as Angle are not found there; that the word
“eng” (Swedish äng) is a common appellation all over
Scandinavia; that “england,” or “äng land,” to this day, is
the name given to flat, grassy land by the Norse people, as it was
in
earlier times. The probability is, that the Norsemen, seeing the
flat
shores of Britain on the North Sea, called it “England,” or Land
of Meadows; and the people, in the course of time, were called
meadow-men, as we say mountaineers, in speaking of people
inhabiting
mountainous regions.Some
of my critics took up the question of language. The reason they
gave
for not agreeing with me was, that the English had the definite
article “the,” and the Icelandic saga-writings did not possess
it; this was, according to them, the most positive proof that the
earlier English people were not Norse. One might as well have
argued
that the French language was not derived in great part from the
Latin, as it has the definite article, and the Latin had not. Who
can
ever tell when the definite article was dropped or added in those
languages?I
never expected that the appearance of “The Viking Age” would
convert to my views men who had spent their lives in trying to
prove,
or in maintaining the belief in, the Anglo-Saxon myth, and who
believed in the diffuse, contradictory, and often incomprehensible
writings of Bede and Nennius, or in the earlier English chronicles,
the authorship of which cannot be traced. But I have often wondered
why no one has compared thoroughly the Norse archæology of that
period with that of Britain, which is claimed as that of the Angle,
Anglo-Saxon, as being the early settlers of Britain; and the only
reason I could discover that anyone had for calling these
antiquities
by those names was because of blind confidence that these settlers
were what the historians claimed them to be.Those
who cling to the Anglo-Saxon belief point to here and there a few
graves in the ancient Friesland, similar to those found in England,
as a proof that the earlier settlers of Britain did not come from
the
Baltic. As if it were possible that none of these Norsemen, who
used
to visit Friesland as far back as before the time of Tacitus, could
have failed to die there during several centuries! They forget,
also,
that the Romans never mentioned the people of that country as
sea-faring. On the contrary, the maritime tribes that harassed them
“were living on the most northern shores of the sea—in the ocean
itself.” The antiquities left by these sea-faring tribes are those
that must give us light on the subject.One
might just as well assert one thousand years from now that the
people
of English descent of the present time living at the Cape of Good
Hope were the ones that held sway over India, because they were
nearer than England to India, or that the solitary graves or little
English cemeteries found between England and India were those of
the
people who governed India. A little more research would prove to
them
that the great seat of power was in England. We learn from
archæology
where Egypt, Greece, Rome, and many other fallen empires held their
sway. So we may know, from the traces left, where the Norsemen held
theirs also, and that nowhere did they hold it more firmly than in
Britain.The
controversy, to me, seems very plain. I have maintained in “The
Viking Age,” and shall continue to do so, until I am shown to be
mistaken, that: It is in the basin of the Baltic, and in the
Norselands, that we see incontestable proofs as to who were the
sea-faring people whom the Romans called first Sueones and then
Saxons, as shown by the tens of thousands of graves of that period
still existing; that these graves and their antiquities are the
same,
and of the same type, as those of a similar period in England; that
in these Norse graves a great many Roman coins of gold and silver,
and many Roman and Greek objects are found, showing that these
sea-faring people had intercourse with Rome, Greece, and the
Mediterranean. Nay, do not the coins antedating the Roman Empire,
when patrician families of Rome coined their own money, tell the
tale
of how early Norsemen went into the Mediterranean? Are not Norse
graves often seen on its shores, by the side of the graves of the
Etruscans?I
also maintain that neither at the mouth of the Elbe, nor anywhere
else out of the Norselands, do we see the remains of a dense,
warlike, and maritime population—a population which has left traces
in the number of its graves far greater than has Rome
itself.How
could the host miscalled Saxon by the later Romans, which overran
Europe, till the downfall of the empire, for four centuries, avoid
leaving such traces? Their population must have been very dense in
order to allow them to send forth such vast fleets to fight and
conquer the Romans. How is it that the Saxons, whom we know as
Saxons, were not a sea-faring people in the time of Charlemagne, as
we know they were not? Simply because they never had been. How is
it
that in Charlemagne’s time, on the other hand, the Sueones who must
have been the Saxons of the later Romans were dreaded by him as
powerful at sea, just as they are described by Tacitus?Have
not the races which have disappeared in America or elsewhere left
traces, and must we make an exception of the so-called Saxons of
the
Romans? This would be against the evidence of everything before
us.It
is by comparing the graves and antiquities of the Norselands with
those of England that we have the proof that the early settlers of
Britain were Norsemen. The scene in this volume, of Ivar going to
visit his kinsmen on the banks of the River Cam, in England, has
been
described, because there is a cemetery there whose antiquities show
its Norse origin, and the Roman coins buried with them, of
Trajanus,
98-117 A.D.; of Hadrianus, 117-138; Faustina, wife of Antoninus
Pius,
138-161; Marcus Aurelius, 161-180; of Maximianus, 286-305, show how
early Norse settlements began.What
are the objects found in that cemetery, and described in the
beautiful work of the Honorable R. C. Neville, “Saxon Obsequies,
Illustrated by Ornaments and Weapons Discovered in a Cemetery near
Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire,” printed in 1852? Swords, axes,
umbos, cinerary urns with burned bones, wooden buckets with bronze
hoops, bronze tweezers, spear and arrow heads of iron, ear picks,
iron knives, iron shears, brooches, beads of glass, and other
material fired by cremation.I
will quote the words of Mr. Neville himself: “That so large a
number of urns containing human remains should have been discovered
in conjunction with skeletons, affords a remarkably satisfactory
confirmation of the coexistence of these two modes of burial. My
experience enables me to state with confidence that the urns now
discovered differ entirely from any [Roman] I had before
encountered,
and resemble closely those usually met with in Anglo-Saxon
burying-grounds, etc.”If
the reader opens “The Viking Age,” and looks over its thirteen
hundred and sixty illustrations, he will see the same objects as
those described and illustrated by Mr. Neville, and the same
descriptions of graves.It
is time that the views of antiquarians and historians of the old
school should be entirely set aside or remodelled; and that the old
England, placed popularly as existing in the southern part of the
peninsula of Jutland, and comprising a territory of a few square
miles, be considered a myth that had no reality, except in the
brain
of its inventors. When I say that the antiquities found in England
are the same and of the same type as those found in the Norselands,
I
call this a fact and not a theory; and when I say also that these
are
not found in the Saxon lands, I call this a fact and not a theory.
When I say that the antiquities found in England are not found in
the
so-called earlier England of the historian, I call this a fact and
not a theory; and if I am wrong it can be easily disproved.But
let me add, that after the appearance of “The Viking Age,”
everybody was far from being against me in England. I found there
many adherents to my views, and some even went so far as to write
to
me, that after the publication of the work, and upon seeing its
illustrations, they did not believe that Stonehenge was Druidical,
but was simply of Norse origin, for there were many graves
containing
Viking remains in the country round about.The
Roman records are correct. No countries but the islands of the
Baltic
and Scandinavia correspond to their description. It is there that
we
find a great number of Roman objects. Coins are there found from
the
time of the foundation of the empire—those of Augustus 29 B.C. to
14 A.D., of Tiberius 14-37, Claudius 41-54; then in increased
number
those of Nero 54-68, Vitellius 69, Vespasian 69-79, of Titus 79-81;
in still greater number those of Trajan 98-117, Antoninus Pius
138-161, of Faustina the elder, wife of Antoninus Pius, of Marcus
Aurelius 161-180, of Faustina his wife, of Commodus 180-192; then
in
decreasing quantities the coins of the subsequent emperors. By the
side of these coins and other Roman objects are Norse objects, and
these Norse objects are, as I have said, similar to those found in
the England of a corresponding period. The mode of burial is also
identical in both countries. These facts tell plainly who were the
people who settled in Britain before and after the time of Ivar the
Viking and of the Roman occupation.While
the controversy was going on in England, knowing the receptive and
impartial mind of Mr. Gladstone, and having been several times the
recipient, in years past, of his kind hospitality, and remembering
the interest he had taken in my African travels, I took the liberty
of addressing to him a request for his opinion in regard to the
position I had taken. Mr. Gladstone, who was then in Oxford for the
purpose of delivering a lecture on Homer, replied the same day. I
append his letter:Dear
Mr. Du Chaillu:You
have done me great honor by appealing to me, but I fear your appeal
is to a person prepossessed and ignorant.My
prepossessions are on your side. But I have not yet been able,
although very desirous, to examine the argument on your side as it
deserves, nor that of your adversaries.I
am a man of Scotch
blood only, half Highland, and half Lowland, near the Border. A
branch of my family settled in Scandinavia, in the first half, I
think, of the seventeenth century.When
I have been in Norway, or Denmark, or among Scandinavians, I have
felt something like a cry of nature from within, asserting
(credibly
or otherwise) my nearness to them. In Norway I have never felt as
if
in a foreign country; and this, I have learned, is a very common
experience with British travellers.The
love of freedom in combination with settled order, which we hope is
characteristic of this country, is, I apprehend, markedly
characteristic of Norway and of Denmark. I have not spoken of
Sweden,
simply because I have not been there.The
ethnography of northern and insular Scotland, down even to the Isle
of Man, and the history, seem to show a very broad and durable
connection.Still
I cannot call these more than feeble generalities. I earnestly
hope,
when I am a little more free, that I may be able to get some real
hold of the subject.I
think a good deal of the argument suggested by our fishing
population, and by the
curious persistency
with which, in some districts, Scandinavian terminations have been
preserved.Yours
faithfully,W.
E. Gladstone.
CHAPTER I HJORVARD AND GOTLAND
The mariner sailing in the Baltic, as he skirts the shores of Gotland, sees on a promontory of that island several large cairns and mounds overlooking the sea, and the country that surrounds them. This promontory was the burial place of a family of great Vikings and rulers who held sway over the whole island a few centuries before and after our era. Among the most conspicuous cairns two are pointed out to the stranger, those of Hjorvard and his son Ivar, the hero of the present narrative.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
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