4 NORSE STORIES

BY THOMAS CARLYLE

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881): A British essayist, historian, and philosopher. He protested against all forms of sham and hypocrisy, and preached the “gospel of work,” truth, duty, and force,—force without which all virtues are of no avail. His chief works are “The French Revolution,” “Heroes and Hero Worship,” “Life of Oliver Cromwell,” and “Life of Frederick the Great.”

This selection, about Norse character and Norse mythology, is from “Heroes and Hero Worship.”

Among the Norsemen the main practical belief a man could have was probably not much more than this: of theValkyrs and theHall of Odin ; of an inflexible destiny; and that the one thing needful for a man was to be brave. The Valkyrs are choosers of the slain; a destiny inexorable, which it is useless trying to bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain. These choosers lead the brave to a heavenly Hall of Odin; only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms ofHella , the death-goddess: I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse belief. They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favor for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave.

Consider, too, whether there is not something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. Valor is still value. The first duty for a man is still that ofsubduing fear. We must get rid of fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man’s acts are slavish, not true but specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks, too, as a slave and coward, till he have got fear under his feet. Odin’s creed, if We disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and must be valiant; he must march forward and quit himself like a man, trusting imperturbably in the appointment and choice of the upper powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all. Now and always, the completeness of his victory over fear will determine how much of a man he is.

The Norsemen thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh, that Odin might receive themas warriors slain. Old kings about to die, had their body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth with sails set and slow fire burning it, that once out at sea it might blaze up in flame andin such manner bury worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in the ocean! Wild bloody valor; yet valor of its kind; better, I say, than none. In the old sea kings, too, what an indomitable, rugged energy; silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things:—progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons.Rollo,Duke of Normandy , the wild sea king, has a share in governing England at this hour.

The old Norse heart finds its friend inThor , the thunder god; it is not frightened away by his thunder, but finds that summer heat, the beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder withal. The Norse heart loves this Thor and his hammer bolt; sports with him. Thor is summer-heat; the god of peaceable industry, as well as thunder. He is the peasant’s friend; his true henchman and attendant is Thialfi, manual labor. Thor himself engages in all manner of rough manual work; scorns no business for its plebianism; is ever and anon traveling to the country of the Jotuns, harrying those chaotic frost monsters.

One of Thor’s expeditions to Utgard, the outer garden, central seat of Jotun-land, is remarkable. Thialfi was with him,andLoki . After various adventures, they entered upon giantland; wandered over plains, wild, uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which, indeed, formed one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there.

Suddenly, in the dead of the night, loud noises alarmed them. Thor grasped his hammer, stood in the door prepared for fight. His companions within ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall; they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither had Thor any battle; for, lo! in the morning it turned out that the noise had been only the snoring of a certain enormous but peaceable giant, the giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by, and this that they took for a house was merely his glove thrown aside there; the door was the glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was the thumb. Such a glove! I remark, too, that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a thumb, and the restundivided: a most ancient, rustic glove!

Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had his own suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to put an end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down into the giant’s face a right thunderbolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The giant merely awoke, rubbed his cheek and said, “Did a leaf fall?”

Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before, but the giant only murmured, “Was that a grain of sand?” Thor’s third stroke was with both his hands,—the “knuckles white,” I suppose, —and seemed to dint deep into Skrymir’s visage; but he merely checked his snore, and remarked, “There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I think; is that a feather they have dropped?”

At the gate of Utgard, a place so high that you had to strain your neck bending back to see the top of it, Skrymir went his ways. Thor and his companions were admitted, invited to share in the games going on.

To Thor, for his part, they handed a drinking horn; it was a common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and fiercely, three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a weak child, they told him; could he lift that cat he saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up the creature’s back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot.

“Why, you are no man,” said the Utgard people; ‘there is an old woman that will wrestle you!” Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard old woman, but could not throw her.

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief giant, escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor: “You are beaten, then; yet be not so much ashamed, there was deception of appearance in it. That horn you tried to drink was the sea; you did make it ebb, but who could drink that, the bottomless! The cat you would have lifted, why, that is the Midgard-snake, great world-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin! As for the old woman, she was time, old age, duration; with her what can wrestle? And then those three strokes you struck, look at these three valleys; your three strokes made these!”

Thor looked at his attendant Jotun; it was Skrymir; it was the old chaotic rocky earth in person, and that glove-house was some earth cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its sky-high gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the giant’s voice was heard mocking, “Better come no more toJotunheim .”