Viking Tales of the North
By George Stephens. (Abridged.)
Tegnér, whom a Swedish author has magnificently denominated “that mighty genie who organizes even disorder,” has in no production more distinguished himself than in the work of which the following pages are a translation. If his fame is to be measured by the rule of Madame de Staël, “ translations are a present immortality,: then it will not soon perish from the records of the great.
Fully aware of the horror every distinguished poet must feel at having mangled versions of his finest lays sent out from distant lands, the translator early resolved not to publish this work unless it met with approbation of the author himself. This he has been fortunate enough to obtain, accompanied by corrections explanations indispensable for the understanding the original design of the poem. It would be superfluous to add that we express our deepest gratitude for both the kindness itself, which the bishop has hereby shown us, and for the manner in which it was done,— to an unknown and undistinguished student.
As to the “Fridthjof” of Bishop Tegnér, we cannot do better than quote from a beautiful notice of the bishop’s poem inserted in the “North American Review,: No. XCVI. The author is, we believe, the learned and talented Professor Longfellow, (1) whom we remember having seen in this capital during his northern tour: “We consider the ‘Legend of Fridthjof’ as one of the most remarkable productions of the age. It seems to us a very laudable innovation, thus to describe various scenes in various metre, and not employ the same for a game of chess and a storm at sea. . . . The reader must bear in mind that the work before him is written in the spirit of the past; in the spirit of that old poetry of the North in which the same images and expressions are oft repeated, and the sword is called the lightning’s brother; a banner, the hider of heaven; gold, the daylight of dwarfs; and the grave, the green gate of paradise. The old skald smote the strings of his harp with as bold a hand as the Berserk smote his foe. . . . He lived in a credulous age; in the dim twilight of the past. He was
The sky-lark in the dawn of years,
The poet of the morn!
. . . . We must visit, in imagination at least, that distant land (Scandinavia), and converse with the genius of the place. It points us to the past, the great mounds, which are the tombs of kings. Their bones are within: skeletons of warriors mounted on the skeletons of their steeds, and vikings sitting gaunt and grim on the plankless ribs of their pirate ships. . . . In every mysterious sound that fills the air the peasant still hears the tramping of Odin’s steed, which many centuries ago took fright at the sound of a church bell. The memory of Balder is still preserved in the flower that bears his name, and Freyja’s spinning-wheel still glimmers in the stars of the constellation Orion. The sound of the strömkarl’s (merman’s) flute is heard in tinkling brooks, and his song in waterfalls. In the forest, the skogsfrun of wondrous beauty leads young men astray, and tomtgubbe (little Puck) hammers and pounds away all night long at the peasant’s unfinished cottage. Almost primeval simplicity reigns over this northern land, almost primeval solitude and stillness.
In translating the work thus commented upon, we have preserved the same metre and the same number of lines in twenty-two (or strictly twenty-three, for the second canto differs little from the Swedish, if printed in four lines instead of eight) out of the twenty-four cantos. (2) Willingly would we have done so in the two remaining songs also, but found it impossible without sacrificing the spirit to the form. We wish any future translator better success. The translation was commenced and almost finished before we met with any one of the versions which have preceded it; and notwithstanding their general merit, the present pages will perhaps be acceptable to all who wish to examine Tegnér in faithful echoes, instead of in a paraphrase; though the latter is, of course, a far easier task for the versifier.
. . . . Lastly, if this work has any merit, let the honor fall where it is due. It is to my dear and distinguished brother, the Rev. J. R. Stephens, the Tribune of the Poor, that I am indebted for having my attention turned
From sounds to things;
and he it was who recommended to my eager study the literature of the North in general, and “Fridthjof’s Saga” in particular, which he unrolled before me by an oral translation, at a time when far away from the shores of the North, and when the work was altogether unknown in England.
ENDNOTES:
1. This interesting essay on Fridthjof’s Saga will be found rewritten and enlarged in Longfellow’s prose works, Vol. I (Boston, 1864); and translated extracts conclusively vindicate the statement that has often been made, that Longfellow is preëminently the poet who ought to give us a complete translation of Tegnér’s poem. (American editors.) [Back]
2. “There are,” says Göthe, “two maxims of translation: the one requires that the author of a foreign nation be brought to us in such a manner that we regard him as our own; the other, on the contrary, demands of us that we transport ourselves over to him and adopt his situation, his mode of speaking, his peculiarities.” We recognize only one of these maxims of translation, —the last. [Back]
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