THE SAGA OF CORMAC THE SKALD - A Norse & Viking Saga E-Book

Anon E. Mouse

• Herausgeber: Abela Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This is the story/saga of a poet, poor and proud, with all the strength of a Viking and all the weakness of genius. He loves a fine lady, a spoiled child; who bewitches him, and jilts him, and jilts him again. In true Viking style he fights for her, kills for her, writes verse for her, and rises, for her sake, to the height of all that a man in his age could achieve.
Then, after years, he has her at his feet, and learns of her heartlessness and worthlessness. He bids her farewell; but in the end dies with her name on his lips.
The motive of the book is very modern, yet at the same time as ancient as the human race itself. It is dramatic and imaginative in the sense that it is told by one who was an artist in his craft of saga-telling. The diction is of the simplest and there is no fine writing, but the plot is balanced like a Greek play and the action drives along to its close.
The result is conveyed without a word of moralizing. The characters are broadly drawn, and their types are still valid today. Without needless detail, there are touches enough of realism. It reads like a novel, and yet it is a true story.
10% of the net profit from the sale of this book will be donated to Charities.
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Keywords/Tags: ashore, Asmund, battle, beauty, Bersi, blood, brother, Saga of Cormac the Skald, country, Dalla, day, dead, farm, father, fell, field, fight, firth, forth, fought, glory, goddess, gold, good, great, Halldor, Harald, healed, Helga, Holmgang, horse, house, Hrutafiord, Iceland, king, lady, little, Mel, Midfiord, mother, mountains, Narfi, Norway, ocean, Odin, Ogmund, point, riding, ring, sacrifice, Saga, Saurbæ, shame, ship, shore, Skald, Skeggi, Skofnung, slaughter, son, song, Steinar, Steingerd Steinvor, summer, sword, Thambardal, Thorarin, Thord, Thordis, Thorgil, Thorkel, Thorvald, Thorvard, Thorveig, Tinker, Tongue, Tunga, Vali, valley, voyage, weapon, weapons, wedding, Whitting, woman, wounded

Leseprobe

The Saga of Cormac

or

The Life and Death

of

Cormac the Skald

Translation by

W.G. Collingwood

&

J. Stefansson

Originally Published by

W. HOLMES, ULVERSTON

[1901]

Resurrected by

ABELA PUBLISHING, LONDON

[2019]

Cormac’s Saga

or

The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald

Typographical arrangement of this edition

© Abela Publishing 2019

This book may not be reproduced in its current format in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) except as permitted by law without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Abela Publishing,

London

United Kingdom

2019

ISBN-13: 978-X-XXXXXX-XX-X

email

[email protected]

Website

Norse Myths, Legends and Sagas

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Abela Publishing acknowledges the work that

W.G. Collingwood and J. Stefansson

did in translating and publishing

The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald

in a time well before any electronic media was in use.

10% of the net profit from the sale of this book

will be donated to charities.

YESTERDAYS BOOKS

for

TODAY’S CHARITIES

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1

Cormac's Fore-Elders

Chapter 2

How Cormac Was Born and Bred On The Homes Of Cormac And Steingerd

Chapter 3

How Cormac Fell In Love

Chapter 4

How Cormac Liked Black-Puddings

Chapter 5

They Waylay Cormac: And The Witch Curses Him

Chapter 6

Cormac Wins His Bride and Loses Her On Hrutafiord And Saurbæ

Chapter 7

How Steingerd Was Married To Somebody Else

Chapter 8

How Cormac Chased Bersi And His Bride

Chapter 9

Of Another Witch, And Two Magic Swords

Chapter 10

The Fight On Leidarholm On The Scene Of The Fight

Chapter 11

The Songs That Were Made About The Fight

Chapter 12

Bersi's Bad Luck At The Thor's-Ness Thing On The Thing-Stead Of Thor’s Ness

Chapter 13

Steingerd Leaves Bersi

Chapter 14

The Bane Of Thorkel Toothgnasher

Chapter 15

The Rescue Of Steinvor Slim-ankles

Chapter 16

How Vali Fell Before An Old Man And A Boy On Vali’s Fall

Chapter 17

How Steingerd Was Married Again

Chapter 18

Cormac's Voyage To Norway

Chapter 19

How Cormac Fought In Ireland, And Went Home To Iceland; And How He Met Steingerd Again

Chapter 20

Of A Spiteful Song That Cormac Never Made; And How Angry Steingerd Was

Chapter 21

How Thorvard Would Not Fight, But Tried To Get The Law Of Cormac

Chapter 22 What The Witch Did For Them In Their Fights

Chapter 22

What The Witch Did For Them In Their Fights.

Chapter 23

How Cormac Beat Thorvard Again

Chapter 24

How They All Went Out To Norway

Chapter 25

How They Cruised With The King's Fleet, And Quarrelled, And Made It Up

Chapter 26

How Cormac Saved Steingerd Once More

From Pirates; And How They Parted For Good and All

Chapter 27

The Swan-Song of Cormac

NOTE

This saga was originally written in Icelandic sometime between 1250 A.D. to 1300 A.D., although parts may be based on a now lost 12th century saga.

The author is unknown.

INTRODUCTION.

I

The story of a poet, poor and proud, with all the strength and all the weakness of genius. He loves a fine lady, a spoiled child ; who bewitches him, and jilts him, and jilts him again. He fights for her, hymes for her, and rises for her sake to the height of all that a man in his age could achieve.

Then, after years, he has her at his feet, and learns her heartlessness and worthlessness. He bids her farewell ; but dies in the end with her name on his lips.

This is the motive of the book very modern, we should call it ; dramatic and imaginative, in the sense that it is told by one who was an artist in his craft of saga-telling. The diction is of the simplest. There is no fine writing, but the plot is balanced like a Greek play. The action drives along, in spite of episode, to its close. The ethical result is conveyed without a word of moralizing. The characters are broadly drawn, in types for all time. Without needless detail, there are touches enough of realism. It reads like a novel, and yet it is a true story.

II.

The saga is really a biography of an important historical personage,* the " Life and Works " of one of the greatest among the Viking Skalds.

The following is the chronology given in Vald. Asmundarson's edition of the Saga (Rvk., 1893):

Ogmund emigrates to Iceland (chap, ii.).................................931-34

Cormac born (chap, ii.)…………….....................................about 937

He meets Steingerd (chap, iii.)…........................................about 956

He fights Bersi (chap, x.).................................................................958

His first voyage (chap, xviii.).........................................................959

He goes viking (chap, xviii.) in the summer of...........................960

He stays with Harald Greyfell (chap, xix.)…..........................961-62

He returns to Iceland (chap, xix.) ..................................................962

Fights between Cormac and Thorvard (chap, xxii.)…..........963-64

Cormac's second voyage (chap, xiv.)…........................................964

Harald's expedition to Permia (chap, xxv.)…..............................965

Cormac's death (chap, xxvii.)..............................................about 967

Fight between Bersi and Steinar (chap, xii.)........................circa 976

Bersi slays Thorkel Toothgnasher (chap, xiv.)…before………980

The adventure of Steinvor (chap, xv.) and Vali (chap, xvi.)….985

Cormac is mentioned in the Landnámabók, the "Domesday book of Iceland"; and in the saga of Egil Skallagrimsson his parentage is traced.1

In the list of poets, Skáldatal, of the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson, he is named among the poets of King Harald Greyfell of Norway, who reigned from 960 to 965 A.D., and among those of Earl Sigurd of Hladir, who died 962. It is known that he wrote a poem on Sigurd, the Sigurdardrápa, of which some fragments are preserved ; one stanza in the Heimskringla, and six half stanzas in the Prose Edda. Our saga is not a romance founded on these materials; for it tells at length the story of Cormac's connection with the king, while it makes no mention of his dealings with the earl.

At all points it touches real persons and events. The statements are historical, though here and there a little confused, and sometimes heightened or blurred, as we might expect. But even when the tale verges on the marvellous it is rather owing to a superstitious interpretation of natural facts than to the insertion of downright inventions. It is not a work of fiction, romantic as it is.

III.

The book as we have it was put together in the latter half of the thirteenth century, between 1250 and 1300. Not very much later the copy was made which is still to be seen in the famous vellum codex formerly called the Book of Modruvellir, and now known as AM. 132 folio, in the Arna-Magnaean collection of the University Library at Copenhagen. It is a volume of various sagas, beautifully transcribed, with initials and ornaments in red and green, dating from the early part of the fourteenth century.

There is also a fragment on vellum, AM. 162 F folio, consisting of two small pages, very illegible, and apparently later than the Book of Modruvellir. Beside these there are eighteen paper manuscripts of more recent date, in various libraries. The saga was edited with a Latin translation by Thorgrim Gudmundsson, and notes on the verses by Gunnar Pdlsson and Finn Magniisson (published at Copenhagen in 1832). An edition of part was given in "Antiquites Russes'' (Copenhagen, 1850-52) and a Danish translation of that part was printed by N. M. Petersen in his "Historiske Fortæll.nger." In 1886 appeared the edition of Professor Th. Mobius of Kiel. The verses have been discussed and emended by various other scholars, as Dr. Bugge, Dr. Jon Thorkelsson, Dr. Gi'sli Brynjolfsson, Dr. Konrad Gislason, Dr. Bjorn Olsen, Dr. Finnur Jonsson : and the results of their labours are now accessible in the handy edition by Valdimar Asmundarson, published in 1893 at Reykjavik by Sigurdur Kristjansson, for the price of 50 aurar or sixpence three farthings.

There has been no English translation : but in Bohn's well-known volume of "Mallet's Northern Antiquities" (1847) a flippant sketch of the plot was given, in the quizzing style of the day.

IV.

What we have done is to translate the last edition of the fourteenth century copy of a book written some half century earlier.

But even beyond that date we can trace it back ; for the unknown scribe who made our book was not merely writing to dictation : he was compiling from earlier manuscripts.

A late thirteenth-century fragment known as Jslendingadrápa, giving short accounts of sagas then extant, mentions three which relate to the actors in this drama. There was a saga of Cormac, pure and simple : a saga of his rival Bersi, with which our scribe has patched his work, somewhat to the detriment of the unities : and a third saga of Midfirth-Skeggi, Cormac's guardian, who also comes into our story. The gist of the last saga is preserved in Landnáma.

We have reason to believe, therefore, that there was a short saga of Cormac before ours was compiled , and it would seem that the early and rude language of the first was preserved in the later book, which is "the most primitive piece of Icelandic prose-writing that has come down to us. The style is so rough and broken that it is at times hardly intelligible, from

the sudden transitions and want of connection which occur not only in its wording but even in its matter. It is a coarse rough story of coarse rough life." So says the late Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson.2

We may take it then that we have bits of twelfth-century prose, collected somewhat later, and not much re-written, though pieced with other matter.

There were therefore about two hundred years between the events and their committal to writing; during which time the tale was told from mouth to mouth, for sagas were not set down in runes; that would have been far too tedious a business.

But it does not follow that faithful transmission was impossible. In those days, as in the days of which Plato tells, before Thoth invented letters and "destroyed the art of memory," in those primitive days saga-telling was an art and a craft, such as we possess no longer. Local history and family records were matters of importance in each district, and the traditions about them crystallized at an early date into fixed forms, told and retold at the fireside, to an audience always ready to catch the teller in a slip, and to correct the least detail, like children listening to a well-remembered legend.

V.

Not only is the story true, but, according to the testimony of the critics, the verses in it are genuine songs of the Viking age ; corrupt and puzzling as Pindar, but still such as may have been the real utterances of Cormac and Bersi and the rest. Their language is not the mediaeval Icelandic of the literary age. They contain genuine tenth-century forms, such as glikr for likr (song 36); goll for gull (in 63 and 76); rinna for renna (in 9, 19, and 70); and batra for betra (in 30).

It adds greatly to the interest of the book when it is found to bring us face to face with the life-story and the mind's work of a once-celebrated poet, so removed from us, and yet in some ways so nearly akin. In bodily features, in mental structure, in the language he used, he was not so different from us as any poet of the Greeks, or Hebrews, or Orientals. In material civilization and habits of life he was not at all unlike an old English countryman, say one of the eighteenth century sea-captains, and fought abroad. He is actually said to have been the founder of Scarborough, Skardaborg, in England, though we do not vouch for the fact that he was the first builder of a castle on that particular site which Turner painted so peaceful and sunny, with the cockle-girl paddling in the fringe of the ripple, and the starfish gleaming on the beach, where now the trippers crowd and the bands play. Some burg, somewhere on our shores, he and his brother Skardi (the nickname for Thorgils) may well have built : and somewhere in Ireland he died and was buried,3 he only of the great Viking Skalds haunting our islands, except Hallfred, whose tomb was in the churchyard at lona.

And yet there is one fact that removes him from us, far more distantly than Csedmon or Cynewulf. They were Christians; their thoughts ran in grooves familiar to ours ; their poetical ideas and images arose more or less out of the Bible, and the literature associated with Christian teaching ; while Cormac was a heathen, a pagan of the pre-mediaeval type, quite alien in his mental environment from any Irish bard or Saxon singer whose "Life and Works " we can read. It is this great difference, in the midst of much resemblance to ourselves, that makes Cormac so interesting a study, and suggests the question, how far may we take these verses as representing his own utterances?

VI.

There is no need to be very sceptical about it, strange though it seems that the rhymes, often extemporized in the heat of action or of passion, should be remembered and set down ; not to say that verse, elaborate as this in structure, was composed in an age we call dark and rude, and by one who was himself a typical Viking.

But the real poet does not need pen and paper, nor the midnight oil; and real verse, with the true note in it, rings in the ear, easier to remember than forget. The Skaldic gift, the power of the lyrical cry, is common to all races and ages: commoner, perhaps, among folk who are not burdened with scholarly aims and methods. It may be heredity from Viking ancestors that has given our Lake district peasantry some touch of Skaldship. It has been a great feature in the inner life of our dalesfolk, in the old days before the school board and the cheap magazine came in. There were many rough uneducated rustics whose more passionate speeches went out in verse ; not lengthy or literary, indeed, but often with neat form, and always with point and force. Their names and their verses are still remembered in the gossip of the countryside, even after the best part of two centuries has passed. There was John Audland, who lived at Crosthwaite by the Lyth, early in the 18th century.

They tell you he used to frequent "The Sign of the Dog," in Dalton-gate, at Ulverston it would not be hard to write these names as Old Norse and once, turning homeward penniless, gave his promissory note by word of mouth in these terms :

“I, John Audland,

Before I gang hence,

Awe Betty Woodburn

Just six and twea-pence,

And Thorsda' com' sennet

I'll pay t' aid score,

And wha kens but I may

Spend twice as mich more."

But he rhymed better when he lost a law-suit ; for these descendants of the Northmen, like the Norman peasants of France, are litigious ; and he spoke this song, punctuating, no doubt, with his holly-staff:

"God mead men,

And men mead money ;

God mead bees,

And bees mead honey ;

But t' Divil himself

Mead lawyers and 'tornies,

And pleaced 'em i' U'ston [Ulverston]

And Dalton i' Forness."

This is very nearly the old Edda metre, and its emphasis and parallelism and metaphor suggest more than a chance resemblance to the ancient Skalds. We are i [...]