16: Epilogue
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Haarfagr's kindred lasted some three centuries in Norway; Sverrir's
lasted into its third century there; how long after this, among the
neighboring kinships, I did not inquire. For, by regal affinities,
consanguinities, and unexpected chances and changes, the three
Scandinavian kingdoms fell all peaceably together under Queen
Margaret, of the Calmar Union (A.D. 1397); and Norway, incorporated
now with Denmark, needed no more kings.
The History of these Haarfagrs has awakened in me many thoughts: Of
Despotism and Democracy, arbitrary government by one and
self-government (which means no government, or anarchy) by all; of
Dictatorship with many faults, and Universal Suffrage with little
possibility of any virtue. For the contrast between Olaf Tryggveson,
and a Universal-Suffrage Parliament or an "Imperial" Copper Captain
has, in these nine centuries, grown to be very great. And the eternal
Providence that guides all this, and produces alike these entities
with their epochs, is not its course still through the great deep?
Does not it still speak to us, if we have ears? Here, clothed in
stormy enough passions and instincts, unconscious of any aim but their
own satisfaction, is the blessed beginning of Human Order, Regulation,
and real Government; there, clothed in a highly different, but again
suitable garniture of passions, instincts, and equally unconscious as
to real aim, is the accursed-looking ending (temporary ending) of
Order, Regulation, and Government;—very dismal to the sane onlooker
for the time being; not dismal to him otherwise, his hope, too, being
steadfast! But here, at any rate, in this poor Norse theatre, one
looks with interest on the first transformation, so mysterious and
abstruse, of human Chaos into something of articulate Cosmos;
witnesses the wild and strange birth-pangs of Human Society, and
reflects that without something similar (little as men expect such
now), no Cosmos of human society ever was got into existence, nor can
ever again be.
The violences, fightings, crimes—ah yes, these seldom fail, and they
are very lamentable. But always, too, among those old populations,
there was one saving element; the now want of which, especially the
unlamented want, transcends all lamentation. Here is one of those
strange, piercing, winged-words of Ruskin, which has in it a terrible
truth for us in these epochs now come:—
"My friends, the follies of modern Liberalism, many and great though
they be, are practically summed in this denial or neglect of the
quality and intrinsic value of things. Its rectangular beatitudes,
and spherical benevolences,—theology of universal indulgence, and
jurisprudence which will hang no rogues, mean, one and all of them, in
the root, incapacity of discerning, or refusal to discern, worth and
unworth in anything, and least of all in man; whereas Nature and
Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern worth from unworth in
everything, and most of all in man. Your main problem is that ancient
and trite one, 'Who is best man?' and the Fates forgive much,—forgive
the wildest, fiercest, cruelest experiments,—if fairly made for the
determination of that.
Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in their sight; yet the
favoring powers of the spiritual and material world will confirm to
you your stolen goods, and their noblest voices applaud the lifting of
Your spear, and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, if only your
robbing and slaying have been in fair arbitrament of that question,
'Who is best man?' But if you refuse such inquiry, and maintain every
man for his neighbor's match,—if you give vote to the simple and
liberty to the vile, the powers of those spiritual and material worlds
in due time present you inevitably with the same problem, soluble now
only wrong side upwards; and your robbing and slaying must be done
then to find out, 'Who is worst man?' Which, in so wide an order of
merit, is, indeed, not easy; but a complete Tammany Ring, and lowest
circle in the Inferno of Worst, you are sure to find, and to be
governed by."(20)
All readers will admit that there was something naturally royal in
these Haarfagr Kings. A wildly great kind of kindred; counts in it
two Heroes of a high, or almost highest, type: the first two Olafs,
Tryggveson and the Saint. And the view of them, withal, as we chance
to have it, I have often thought, how essentially Homeric it
was:—indeed what is "Homer" himself but the Rhapsody of five
centuries of Greek Skalds and wandering Ballad-singers, done (i.e.
"stitched together") by somebody more musical than Snorro was? Olaf
Tryggveson and Olaf Saint please me quite as well in their prosaic
form; offering me the truth of them as if seen in their real
lineaments by some marvellous opening (through the art of Snorro)
across the black strata of the ages. Two high, almost among the
highest sons of Nature, seen as they veritably were; fairly comparable
or superior to god-like Achilleus, goddess-wounding Diomedes, much
more to the two Atreidai, Regulators of the Peoples.
I have also thought often what a Book might be made of Snorro, did
there but arise a man furnished with due literary insight, and
indefatigable diligence; who, faithfully acquainting himself with the
topography, the monumental relies and illustrative actualities of
Norway, carefully scanning the best testimonies as to place and time
which that country can still give him, carefully the best collateral
records and chronologies of other countries, and who, himself
possessing the highest faculty of a Poet, could, abridging, arranging,
elucidating, reduce Snorro to a polished Cosmic state, unweariedly
purging away his much chaotic matter! A modern "highest kind of
Poet," capable of unlimited slavish labor withal;—who, I fear, is not
soon to be expected in this world, or likely to find his task in the
Heimskringla if he did appear here.
__________
(20) Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. Pp. 8-10.
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