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SIGURD THE DRAGON-SLAYER, E.M. Smith-Dampier
THE RIME OF NORNAGEST
NORNAGEST'S THÁTTR (episode) is found, not in Heimskringla, but in the Long Saga of Olaf Tryggvason (Flateyjar Bók, and Codex Arn. Magn.), and exists independently in a fifteenth-century paper MS.
This Tháttr (fourteenth century) shows the true and inimitable Northmen blend of realism, legend, and fairy-story. The mysterious, high-bred old man, who arrives at the court of Trondhjem, and accepts baptism as a condition of entering the Household, is as living a character as King Olaf himself. With his recollections of Sigurd—elicited by a wager, not the ridiculous Oxen business—we enter the region of legend; and that of Folk-tale with the account of the three Norns who attended his birth, and the candle with which his life was bound up. Nornagest is the Norse Meleager, plus some affinity with Ogier le Danois.
Why the scene of his death (Trondhjem in the Tháttr) should be transferred by the Ballad to 'Frankland,' was best known to the minstrel, though perhaps Faroëse ship-mania was partly responsible. The diving (v. 41) implies that the object containing the vital essence had been sunk in the water for the sake of security. (See Frazer's 'Golden Bough' for practices associated with the Separable Soul.)
This home-spun Ballad has been, to my mind, unjustly decried. Some rather wistful charm clings to
154 SIGURD THE
DRAGON-SLAYER
the affectionate picture of Sigurd and his companions, while the repetitions of phrase and rhyme graphically suggest the garrulity of and Agèd Carle.
Høgni's foulness of face (v. 15), which seems to have been traditional, is mentioned more than once in Nibelungenlied.
BURDEN
GOOD rede indeed dost thou need in peril:
When a swain doeth so.
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