Scandinavia Index

Denmark

"LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls."

Denmark

The Danish History, Books I-IX by Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

Saxo Grammaticus, or "The Lettered", one of the notable historians of the Middle Ages, may fairly be called not only the earliest chronicler of Denmark, but her earliest writer. In the latter half of the twelfth century, when Iceland was in the flush of literary production, Denmark lingered behind. No literature in her vernacular, save a few Runic inscriptions, has survived.

Finland

The Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot. Translated by John Martin Crawford

"THE following translation was undertaken from a desire to lay before the English-speaking people the full treasury of epical beauty, folklore, and mythology comprised in The Kalevala, the national epic of the Finns. A brief description of this peculiar people, and of their ethical, linguistic, social, and religious life, seems to be called for here in order that the following poem may be the better understood."

Iceland

The Story of Burnt Njal By Sir George Webbe Dasent

"Fair is Lithe: so fair that it has never seemed to me so fair; the corn fields are white to harvest, and the home mead is mown: and now I will ride back home, and not fare abroad at all."

Iceland

The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald Kormak's Saga

"Harald Fairhair was king of Norway when this tale begins. There was a chief in the kingdom in those days and his name was Cormac; one of the Vik-folk by kindred, a great man of high birth. He was the mightiest of champions, and had been with King Harald in many battles.

He had a son called Ogmund, a very hopeful lad; big and sturdy even as a child; who when he was grown of age and come to his full strength, took to sea-roving in summer and served in the king's household in winter. So he earned for himself a good name and great riches. "

Iceland

The Children of Odin by Padraic Colum

"ONCE there was another Sun and another Moon; a different Sun and a different Moon from the ones we see now. Sol was the name of that Sun and Mani was the name of that Moon. But always behind Sol and Mani wolves went; a wolf behind each. The wolves caught on them at last and they devoured Sol and Mani. And then the world was in darkness and cold."

Iceland

Viking Tales By Jennie Hall

"They are not learning much. What will make them brave and wise? What will teach them to love their country and old Norway? Will not the stories of battles, of brave deeds, of mighty men, do this? So, as the family worked in the red fire-light, the father told of the kings of Norway, of long voyages to strange lands, of good fights."

Iceland

The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald by Eiríkr Magnússon

There was a man called Thorstein, the son of Egil, the son of Skallagrim, the son of Kveldulf the Hersir of Norway. Asgerd was the mother of Thorstein; she was the daughter of Biorn Hold. Thorstein dwelt at Burg in Burg-firth; he was rich of fee, and a great chief, a wise man, meek and of measure in all wise.

Iceland

The Story Of Frithiof The Bold by Eiríkr Magnússon

Sowstrand was the name of that stead whereas the king dwelt; but on the other side the firth was an abode named Foreness, where dwelt a man called Thorstein, the son of Viking; and his stead was over against the king's dwelling.

Iceland

The Story Of Grettir The Strong by Eiríkr Magnússon

"All seems fair for our hero, his last deed has made him the foremost man in Iceland, and news now coming out of Olaf the Saint, his relative, being King of Norway, he goes thither to get honour at his hands; but Glam's curse works; Grettir gains a powerful enemy by slaying an insulting braggart just as he was going on ship-board; and on the voyage it falls out that in striving to save the life of his shipmates by a desperate action, he gets the reputation of having destroyed the sons of a powerful Icelander, Thorir of Garth, with their fellows. "

Norway

Eirik the Red's Saga, by Anonymous

There was a man named Thorvald, the son of Asvald, the son of Ulf, the son of Yxna-Thoris. His son was named Eirik. Father and son removed from Jadar (in Norway) to Iceland, because of manslaughters, and occupied land in Hornstrandir, and dwelt at Drangar.

Norway

Olaf the Glorious. A Story of the Viking Age by Robert Leighton

"The following narrative is not so much a story as a biography. My hero is not an imaginary one; he was a real flesh and blood man who reigned as King of Norway just nine centuries ago. The main facts of his adventurous career -- his boyhood of slavery in Esthonia, his life at the court of King Valdemar, his wanderings as a viking, the many battles he fought, his conversion to Christianity in England, and his ultimate return to his native land -- are set forth in the various Icelandic sagas dealing with the period in which he lived."

Norway

The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature by Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

"Conrad Hjalmar Nordby was born September 20, 1867, at Christiania, Norway. At the age of four he was brought to New York, where he was educated in the public schools. He was graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1886. From December of that year to June, 1893, he taught in Grammar School No. 55, and in September, 1893, he was called to his Alma Mater as Tutor in English. He was promoted to the rank of Instructor in 1897, a position which he held at the time of his death. He died in St. Luke's Hospital, October 28, 1900. In October, 1894, he began his studies in the School of Philosophy of Columbia University, taking courses in Philosophy and Education under Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, and in Germanic Literatures and Germanic Philology under Professors Boyesen, William H. Carpenter and Calvin Thomas. It was under the guidance of Professor Carpenter that the present work was conceived and executed."

Norway

The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson

"Gunnar, Gunther, or Gunter, King of Burgundy, was probably a real personage of the troubled times with which his name is associated—a period distinguished as much for heroic characters as for tragic events. Gunther represents the best type of kinghood of his age; a man swayed by his affections rather than by ambition, who scrupled at misdeeds, yet yielded to the mastering passions of love; one whose instincts were loyalty to friends and country, and who shrank from cruelties to gain his ends, but who fell a victim to woman's fascinations."

Norway

"No poverty of invention or want of power on the part of translators could entirely destroy the innate beauty of those popular traditions; but here, in England at least, they had almost dwindled out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as home-growths. We had learnt to buy our own children back, disguised in foreign garb; and as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle hour--as to their having any history or science of their own--such an absurdity was never once thought of."

Norway

Weird Tales from Northern Seas by Nisbet Bain

"We rarely, if ever, hear of friendly elves or companionable gnomes there. The supernatural beings that haunt those shores and seas are, for the most part, malignant and malefic. They seem to hate man. They love to mock his toils, and sport with his despair. In his very first romance, "Den Fremsynte," Lie relates two of these weird tales (Nos. 1 and 3 of the present selection). Another tale, in which many of the superstitious beliefs and wild imaginings of the Nordland fishermen are skilfully grouped together to form the background of a charming love-story, entitled "Finn Blood," I have borrowed from the volume of "Fortællinger og Skildringer," published in 1872. The remaining eight stories are selected from the book "Trold," which was the event of the Christmas publishing season at Christiania in 1891."

Scandinavia

Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel by Ignatius Donnelly

""I am not inclined to conclude that man had no existence at all before the epoch of the great revolutions of the earth. He might have inhabited certain districts of no great extent, whence, after these terrible events, he repeopled the world. Perhaps, also, the spots where he abode were swallowed up, and the bones lie buried under the beds of the present seas."-- CUVIER."

Scandinavia

Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouquée

Undine is the name of the water maiden whose story you will read as you turn the leaves of this little book.

Undine is beautiful as the dawn stealing across the waters, beautiful as the spray of the crystal waves. Yet when she comes to earth she comes to seek for that without which her beauty will be for ever cold, cold and chill as the surge of the salt, salt sea.

Scandinavia

Myths of Northern Lands By H. A. Guerber

"As Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Icelanders, Germans, English, and French all came originally from the same stock and worshiped the same gods, so these tales formed the basis not only of their religious belief, but also of their first attempts at poetry. They are the classics of the North, and deserve as much attention at our hands as the more graceful and idyllic mythology of the South.

The most distinctive traits of the Northern mythology are a peculiar grim humor which is found in the religion of no other race, and a dark thread of tragedy which runs throughout the whole woof. These two characteristics, touching both extremes of the scale, have colored Northern thought, and have left their indelible imprint upon all our writings even to this day. "

Scandinavia

Gods and Goddesses of the Northland By Viktor Rydberg

"Even the saga-men, from whom the Roman historian Tacitus gathered the facts for his Germania - an invaluable work for the history of civilisation - knew that in the so-called Svevian Sea, north of the German continent, lay another important part of Germany, inhabited by Sviones, a people divided into several clans. Their kinsmen on the continent described them as rich in weapons and fleets, and in warriors on land and sea. This northern sea-girt portion of Germany is called Scandinavia - Scandeia, by other writers of the Roman Empire; and there can be no doubt that this name referred to the peninsula which, as far back as historical monuments can be found, has been inhabited by the ancestors of the Swedes and the Norwegians. "

Scandinavia

Dictionary Of Norse Gods And Goddesses by Viktor Rydberg

"There are three "clans" of deities, the Aesir, the Vanir, and the Jotun. The distinction between Æsir and Vanir is relative, for the two are said to have made peace, exchanged hostages, intermarried and reigned together after a prolonged war, which the Æsir had finally won. Some gods belong in both camps."

Scandinavia

Asgard and the Gods. Adapted from the work of W. Wagner by M. W. Macdowall

"A complete and popular English account of the religious beliefs and superstitious customs of the old Norsemen, suited to our younger readers, has hitherto been left unwritten. The editor feels sure that our elder children can easily be brought to take a beneficial interest in a subject of such great intrinsic worth to all of us, and has therefore brought out the accompanying book.

Our old ancestors were a hardy, conservative race, and tenaciously held by the treasured relics of their former beliefs and customs long after they had been shattered by the onset of Christianity. They retained their primitive Odinic belief as late as A.D. 800, and we therefore possess it in a very complete state, far more so than any other European system of mythology. "

Scandinavia

Teutonic Myth and Legend by Donald Mackenzie

Teutonic Mythology survives in its most concrete form in Scandinavian literature. On that account it has to be considered from the northern point of view, although much of it is clearly not of northern origin. Our principal sources of knowledge of this great Pagan religious system are the two Eddas of Iceland.

Scandinavia

Folklore And Legends of Scandinavia W. W. Gibbings

"Scandinavian Folklore is well to the front. Its treasures are many, and of much value. One may be almost sorry to find among them the originals of many of our English tales. Are we indebted to the folk of other nations for all our folk-tales? It would almost seem so.

I have introduced into the present volume only one or two stories from the Prose Edda. Space would not allow me to give so much of the Edda as I could have wished. "

Scandinavia

The Oera Linda Book Translated by William Sandbach

For the sake of our dear forefathers, and of our dear liberty, I entreat you a thousand times never let the eye of a monk look on these writings. The monks are very insinuating, but they destroy in an underhand manner all that relates to us Children of Frya.