Letters From High Latitudes [105]
illumination, to which the "Foam" contributed some blue lights.
We got under way early this morning, and without a pilot--as we had entered--made our way out to sea again. I left Throndhjem with regret, not for its own sake, for in spite of balls and illuminations I should think the pleasures of a stay there would not be deliriously exciting; but this whole district is so intimately associated in my mind with all the brilliant episodes of ancient Norwegian History, that I feel as if I were taking leave of all those noble Haralds, and Olafs, and Hacons, among whom I have been living in such pleasant intimacy for some time past.
While we are dropping down the coast, I may as well employ the time in giving you a rapid sketch of the commencement of this fine Norse people, though the story "remonte jusqu'a la nuit des temps," and has something of the vague magnificence of your own M'Donnell genealogy, ending a long list of great potentates, with "somebody, who was the son of somebody else, who was the son of Scotha, who was the daughter of Pharaoh!"
In bygone ages, beyond the Scythian plains and the fens of the Tanais, in that land of the morning, to which neither Grecian letters nor Roman arms had ever penetrated, there was a great city called Asgaard. Of its founder, of its history, we know nothing; but looming through the mists of antiquity we can discern an heroic figure, whose superior attainments won for him the lordship of his own generation, and divine honours from those that succeeded. Whether moved by an irresistible impulse, or impelled by more powerful neighbours, it is impossible to say; but certain it is that at some period, not perhaps very long before the Christian era, under the guidance of this personage, a sun-nurtured people moved across the face of Europe, in a north-westerly direction, and after leaving settlements along the southern shores of the Baltic, finally established themselves in the forests and valleys of what has come to be called the Scandinavian Peninsula. That children of the South should have sought out so inclement a habitation may excite surprise; but it must always be remembered that they were, probably, a comparatively scanty congregation, and that the unoccupied valleys of Norway and Sweden, teeming with fish and game, and rich in iron, were a preferable region to lands only to be colonised after they had been conquered.
Thus, under the leadership of Odin and his twelve Paladins, --to whom a grateful posterity afterwards conceded thrones in the halls of their chief's Valhalla,--the new emigrants spread themselves along the margin of the out-ocean, and round about the gloomy fiords, and up and down the deep valleys that fall away at right angles from the backbone, or keel, as the seafaring population soon learnt to call the flat, snow-capped ridge that runs down the centre of Norway.
Amid the rude but not ungenial influences of its bracing climate, was gradually fostered that gallant race which was destined to give an imperial dynasty to Russia, a nobility to England, and conquerors to every sea-board in Europe.
Upon the occupation of their new home, the ascendency of that mysterious hero, under whose auspices the settlement was conducted, appears to have remained more firmly established than ever, not only over the mass of the people, but also over the twelve subordinate chiefs who accompanied him; there never seems to have been the slightest attempt to question his authority, and, though afterwards themselves elevated into an order of celestial beings, every tradition which has descended is careful to maintain his human and divine supremacy. Through the obscurity, the exaggeration, and the ridiculous fables, with which his real existence has been overloaded, we can still see that this man evidently possessed a genius as superior to his contemporaries, as has ever given to any child of man the ascendency over his generation. In the simple language of the old chronicler, we are told, "that his countenance was so beautiful that, when sitting among his friends, the spirits
We got under way early this morning, and without a pilot--as we had entered--made our way out to sea again. I left Throndhjem with regret, not for its own sake, for in spite of balls and illuminations I should think the pleasures of a stay there would not be deliriously exciting; but this whole district is so intimately associated in my mind with all the brilliant episodes of ancient Norwegian History, that I feel as if I were taking leave of all those noble Haralds, and Olafs, and Hacons, among whom I have been living in such pleasant intimacy for some time past.
While we are dropping down the coast, I may as well employ the time in giving you a rapid sketch of the commencement of this fine Norse people, though the story "remonte jusqu'a la nuit des temps," and has something of the vague magnificence of your own M'Donnell genealogy, ending a long list of great potentates, with "somebody, who was the son of somebody else, who was the son of Scotha, who was the daughter of Pharaoh!"
In bygone ages, beyond the Scythian plains and the fens of the Tanais, in that land of the morning, to which neither Grecian letters nor Roman arms had ever penetrated, there was a great city called Asgaard. Of its founder, of its history, we know nothing; but looming through the mists of antiquity we can discern an heroic figure, whose superior attainments won for him the lordship of his own generation, and divine honours from those that succeeded. Whether moved by an irresistible impulse, or impelled by more powerful neighbours, it is impossible to say; but certain it is that at some period, not perhaps very long before the Christian era, under the guidance of this personage, a sun-nurtured people moved across the face of Europe, in a north-westerly direction, and after leaving settlements along the southern shores of the Baltic, finally established themselves in the forests and valleys of what has come to be called the Scandinavian Peninsula. That children of the South should have sought out so inclement a habitation may excite surprise; but it must always be remembered that they were, probably, a comparatively scanty congregation, and that the unoccupied valleys of Norway and Sweden, teeming with fish and game, and rich in iron, were a preferable region to lands only to be colonised after they had been conquered.
Thus, under the leadership of Odin and his twelve Paladins, --to whom a grateful posterity afterwards conceded thrones in the halls of their chief's Valhalla,--the new emigrants spread themselves along the margin of the out-ocean, and round about the gloomy fiords, and up and down the deep valleys that fall away at right angles from the backbone, or keel, as the seafaring population soon learnt to call the flat, snow-capped ridge that runs down the centre of Norway.
Amid the rude but not ungenial influences of its bracing climate, was gradually fostered that gallant race which was destined to give an imperial dynasty to Russia, a nobility to England, and conquerors to every sea-board in Europe.
Upon the occupation of their new home, the ascendency of that mysterious hero, under whose auspices the settlement was conducted, appears to have remained more firmly established than ever, not only over the mass of the people, but also over the twelve subordinate chiefs who accompanied him; there never seems to have been the slightest attempt to question his authority, and, though afterwards themselves elevated into an order of celestial beings, every tradition which has descended is careful to maintain his human and divine supremacy. Through the obscurity, the exaggeration, and the ridiculous fables, with which his real existence has been overloaded, we can still see that this man evidently possessed a genius as superior to his contemporaries, as has ever given to any child of man the ascendency over his generation. In the simple language of the old chronicler, we are told, "that his countenance was so beautiful that, when sitting among his friends, the spirits