"Norse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Saxon loved dearly. The door of the hall was usually open, and thither came the bards and gleemen, who used to delight the company with their songs and stories of the gallant deeds of their ancestors, the weird legends of their gods Woden and Thor, their Viking lays and Norse sagas, and the acrobats and dancers astonished them with their ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... Norse are to be found in our vulgar sayings, Jasper; for example—in that particularly vulgar saying of ours, "Your mother is up," {62b} there's a noble Norse word; mother, there, meaning not the female who bore us, but rage and choler, as I discovered by ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... on [1] your languages, German and Norse! Let me have the song of the kettle; And the tongs and the poker, instead of that horse That gallops away with such fury and force On this [2] dreary dull plate of black metal. 5 [3] See that Fly, [4]—a disconsolate ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... ten I had the tales of the ingenious Mr. Edgar Poe and of Charlotte Bronte "put into my hands" by a cousin who had served as a Bashi Bazouk, and knew not the meaning of fear. But I DID, and perhaps even Nelson would have found out "what fear was," or the boy in the Norse tale would have "learned to shiver," if he had been left alone to peruse 'Jane Eyre,' and the 'Black Cat,' and the 'Fall of the House of Usher,' as I was. Every night I expected to wake up in my coffin, having been prematurely buried; or to hear sighs in the area, followed by ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... serve as a text for my whole lecture. Not only does it smack of the sea-breeze and the salt water, like all the finest old Norse sagas, but it gives a glimpse at least of the nobleness which underlay the grim and often cruel nature of the Norseman. It belongs, too, to the culminating epoch, to the beginning of that era when the Scandinavian peoples had ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Two thousand years before the Conquest the fierce warrior Northmen lived by the might of the halbert, fighters one and all from the days when the war-inspired mother croned of the battle-axe to her babe. And in the Normans was that Norse spirit dormant; but one night of such hardship as yet undreamt of had ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... who have done most, by untiring, laborious search among old parish registers, etc., and dusty old records, to bring to light interesting social ordinances, details of ancient parish government, and gems of Norse literature and archaeological research, there have been none in the last century who have by patient work attained more knowledge of their country's inner history ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Somewhat of goodness, something true From sun and spirit shining through All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, Attests the presence everywhere Of love and providential care. The faith the old Norse heart confessed In one dear name,—the hopefulest And tenderest heard from mortal lips In pangs of birth or death, from ships Ice-bitten in the winter sea, Or lisped beside a mother's knee,— The wiser world hath not outgrown, And the All-Father ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the part and interest of Brynhild, he has lifted Kriemhild to a higher, a more thoroughly expounded, and a more poetical position, and has made her one of the greatest heroines of epic, if not the greatest in all literature. The Gudrun of the Norse story is found supplying the loss of one husband with the gain of another to an extent perfectly consonant with Icelandic ideas, but according to less insular standards distinctly damaging to her interest as a heroine; and in revenging ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... his father, he found Erik the Red directing the building of one of the great Norse galleys, nearly eighty feet long and seventeen wide and only six feet deep. The boat had twenty ribs, and the frame was fastened together by withes made of roots, while the oaken planks were held by iron rivets. The oars were twenty feet long, and were put through ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Her face was red, and the glint of blue ice was in her eyes. Her eyelashes and eyebrows, as well as the almost imperceptible down that edged her cheek when she turned against the light, were blond almost to whiteness. What beauty she had was of the fine, hardy Norse type. Her hands were red and hard, and even beneath the coarse sleeve of the oilskin coat one could infer that the biceps and deltoids were large and powerful. She was coarse-fibred, no doubt, mentally as well as physically, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... golden-bearded man come to foregather with a woman who wore such robes and ornaments as these? And that sword hilt, worn smooth by handling and with an amber knob? Whence came it? To my mind—this was before expert examination confirmed my view—it looked very Norse. I had read the Sagas and I remembered a tale recovered in them of some bold Norsemen who about the years eight or nine hundred had wandered to the coast of what is known now to be America—I think a certain Eric was their captain. Could the fair-haired ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... optimism which in fiction we call poetic justice. The harsh and unsentimental logic of reality is emphasized with a ruthless disregard of rose-colored traditions. The peasant lad Wold, who, like all Norse peasants, has been brought up on the Bible, has become deeply impressed with the story of Jacob, and God's persistent partisanship for him, in spite of his dishonesty and tricky behavior. The story becomes, half unconsciously, the basis of his philosophy of life, and ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... bring various evils on their enemies; the favorable averted misfortune. Some were medicinal, others employed to win love, etc. In later times they were frequently used for inscriptions, of which more than a thousand have been found. The language is a dialect of the Gothic, called Norse, still in use in Iceland. The inscriptions may therefore be read with certainty, but hitherto very few have been found which throw the least light on history. They are mostly epitaphs ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... does his best. Seneca observes that "no one saith the three hundred Fabii were defeated, but that they were slain," and if you have done your best, you will, in the words of an old Norse ballad, have gained ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... following: A gentleman called at the White House one day, and introduced to him two officers serving in the army, one a Swede and the other a Norwegian. Immediately he repeated, to their delight, a poem of some eight or ten verses descriptive of Scandinavian scenery, and an old Norse legend. He said he had read the poem in a newspaper some years before, and liked it, but it had passed out of his memory until their visit had recalled it. The two books which he read most were the Bible and Shakespeare. With these he was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... can only arise in that early period of a nation's history when political combination is as yet imperfect, and scientific knowledge has not begun to mark off the domain of historic fact from the cloudland of fancy and legend. Of this class are the Homeric poems, the Nibelungen Lied, the Norse ballads, the Edda, the Kalewala, the legends of Arthur, and the poem of the Cid: all these, whatever their differences, have this in common, that they sprang at a remote period out of the earliest traditions of the several peoples, and neither did nor could have ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... trees. Here Brian of the Tribes held his sway; and still the peasant in Munster, wishing to express his welcome, says in Gaelic—"Were mine the boire of the Dane or the wine of Kincora, it would be poured for you." Here it was that the Norse King, Magnus, wintered early in the twelfth century, and found a wife for his son, Sigurd, in the house of Brian. M'Laig, the bard of Brian Boru, after the death of his king in 1014, made a lamentation, which ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... the plaint of the Norse mother in my ears, I knew. The tie was too strong to fight. I loved my ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... blood-stained bandage around his head, and the straining, glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodies and aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... meaningless sensation to know nobody and to discover myself equally unknown amid that matchless companionship. We were like a mixed bunch of gods, Greek, Norse, Hindu, Hottentot—all gathered on Olympus, having never heard of each other but taking it for granted that we were all gods together and ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... relief from those which precede and follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming. Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would look as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the varnish-brush of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of the mighty men of a wild age, here and there, it has not succeeded in effacing, or even in seriously obscuring, the essential characteristics of the theology traditionally ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... fights, notwithstanding the rubbish she talked about the chief, Rezu, who according to her account of him, must resemble one of the fabulous "trolls," half-human and half-ghostly evil creatures, of whom I have read in the Norse Sagas, who could only be slain by some particular hero ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... of Claudius to have been favoured by the lingering influence of the old Norse custom of succession, by which not the son but the brother ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... campaigns against Napoleon of 1792 and 1813, but during the long interval between devoted himself actively to intellectual culture and literary pursuits. He began his career as an author by translating the "Numancia" of Cervantes, but his admiration of the ancient Norse sagas and the old German legends led him into the composition of exquisitely beautiful and tender, though exceedingly fantastic, romances which speedily gained immense popularity. In these productions fairy and magical elements predominate. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Colum's rich, musical voice captures all the magic and majesty of the Norse sagas in his retellings of the adventures of the gods and goddesses who lived in the Northern paradise of Asgard before ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... stories enough left, and it is hoped that some in the Red Fairy Book may have the attraction of being less familiar than many of the old friends. The tales have been translated, or, in the case of those from Madame d'Aulnoy's long stories, adapted, by Mrs. Hunt from the Norse, by Miss Minnie Wright from Madame d'Aulnoy, by Mrs. Lang and Miss Bruce from other French sources, by Miss May Sellar, Miss Farquharson, and Miss Blackley from the German, while the story of 'Sigurd' is condensed by the ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... so masterful a fashion by one who is not first of all a philologist excites our wonder and admiration. And let us not forget that it was above all else a labor of love, such as probably never was undertaken elsewhere, unless the work of Ivar Aasen in the Old Norse dialects be counted as such; and there is something that appeals strongly to the imagination in the thought of this poet's labor to render imperishable the language so dear to him. Years were spent in journeying about among all classes of people, questioning ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... occasionally have assumed was all thrown to the winds upon this great occasion. The far-famed pagan battle flag, the Raven Standard, was unfurled, and floated freely over the host. The War-arrow had been industriously sent round to all the neighbouring shores, peopled largely at that time with men of Norse blood. As the fleet swept south it had gathered in contingents from every island along the Scotch coast, upon which Viking settlements had been established. Manx men, too, and men from the Scandinavian settlements of Angelsea, Danes under Carle Canuteson, representatives, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... fallen into oblivion, so long, indeed, that its existence was unknown to the learned editors of the new Oxford Dictionary. This is to be the more regretted as its etymology is very obscure. It may, however, be traced with little doubt to the old Norse 'grein,' a branch or prong, surviving in the word 'grains,' a pronged harpoon or fish spear. From its meaning, 'branch,' it might seem to be akin to 'stem' and to 'bow,' which is only another spelling of'bough.' But this is not likely. The older meaning of 'bows' was 'shoulders,' and this, it ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... Fitz-Stephens, were famous men of war; nor were the children of her daughter, who had married William de Barri, behind them in valour. No less than eighteen knights of this extraordinary family took part in the conquest, where in feats of war they renewed the glories of their ancestors both Norse and Welsh; a son of Nesta's, David, the Bishop of St. David's, gave his sympathy and help; while her grandson, Gerald de Barri, became the famous historian of ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... found in almost every country of which we have a record. In Egypt Ra was the supreme sun god where there was very elaborate worship conducted in his honor. In Greece, Apollo was attended with similar festivities. In the Norse mythology, many of the myths deal with the worship of the sun in one form or another. In England, Stonehenge and the entire system of the Druids had to do with solar worship. In Central America and Peru, ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... Scandinavian in Russia Rurik Oleg Igor Olga's Vengeance Olga a Christian Sviatoslaf Russia the Champion of the Greek Empire in Bulgaria Norse Dominance ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... some that so anomalous a system of government should have persisted as late as the eleventh century, in other words for a period of over 500 years. But we must take account of the Danish—or as we should rather call it, the Norse—invasion of Ireland. Danish ships first appeared off the Irish coasts about the year 800. From that time for two centuries Ireland was to a large extent cut off from intercourse with the rest of Europe. The aim of the northern hordes, as it seems, was not mere pillage, but the extinction ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... sea-birds, screaming and flickering from the ruined crags, alone disturb the silence and the sunshine. One such place has impressed itself on my memory beyond all others. On a rock by the water's edge, old fighting men of the Norse breed had planted a double castle; the two stood wall to wall like semi-detached villas; and yet feud had run so high between their owners, that one, from out of a window, shot the other as he stood in his own doorway. There is something in the juxtaposition of these ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out of the house by a special opening, which is afterwards closed up, has not been confined to Fiji; on the contrary it has been practised by a multitude of peoples, savage, barbarous, and civilised, in many parts of the world. For example, it was an old Norse rule that a corpse might not be carried out of the house by the door which was used by the living; hence a hole was made in the wall at the back of the dead man's head and he was taken out through it backwards, or a hole was dug in the ground under the south wall and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... width is 15-1/2 inches. Mr. Carmichael has conjectured that it was probably brought from Iona about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and erected in Barra at the head of a grave made by a son of McNeil for himself. But it is believed to have been in any case a Norse memorial in the first instance, though certainly Christian, ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... depths of one of the dark-blue fjords, and we were left on a desolate island, like Robinson Crusoe, with our worldly goods around us. Most of the natives we found so stupid that they could not understand our excellent Norse. One fellow, in particular, might as well have been a piece of mahogany as a man. He stood looking at me with stolid imbecility while I was talking to him, and made no reply when I had done. In fact the motion of his eyes, as he looked at me, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... that then numbered amongst its contributors such writers as Harriet Martineau and S. Baring-Gould, and artists as Leech, Keene, Tenniel, Millais and Du Maurier. Amongst these translations were "The Hailstorm, or the Death of Bui," from the ancient Norse; "The Count of Vendal's Daughter," from the ancient Danish; "Harald Harfagr," from the Norse; "Emelian the Fool," and "The Story of Yashka with the Bear's Ear," from the Russian; and several ballads from the Manx. Other translations from the Danish of Oehlenschlaeger are ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... serial. There is nothing essentially heroic in life-saving. Indeed, all the old heroes of Norseland, Rome, and Greece regarded the saving of life with a contempt that was only natural when we consider the utter lack of board schools and their frantic belief in a hereafter. I imagine the Norse Sea-kings who pushed out to Vine-land—aye, even down to Cape Cod—would have been puzzled to hear an undersized clerk who had saved a man from a watery grave described as a hero. Their method was to pull the drowning wretch out with a boat-hook, and curse him for being ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Medival History, pp. 34-39. The Northmen extended their expeditions to Spain, Italy, and even into Russia. In England, under the name of Danes, we find them forcing Alfred the Great to recognize them as the masters of northern England (878). The Norse pirates were often called vikings, from their habit of leaving their long boats in the vik, i.e., bay or inlet. A goodly number of the Northmen settled in Iceland, and our knowledge of their civilization and customs comes chiefly from the Icelandic sagas, or tales. Some ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of Russia from the rest of Europe, it was his policy to draw to St. Petersburg—the city of his own creation—leaders of thought from every capital in Europe. And as his aim was to establish a navy, he especially endeavored to attract foreign navigators to his kingdom. Among these were many Norse and Danes. The acquaintance may have dated from the apprenticeship on the docks of the East India Company; but at any rate, among the foreign navigators was one Vitus Ivanovich Bering, a Dane of humble origin from Horsens,[4] who had been an East India Company sailor till ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... his lonely hours in his home at Wittemberg; and the Marseillaise of the Reformation, as that grand hymn of his has been called, came, words and music, from his heart. There was humour in him, coarse horseplay often; an honest, hearty, broad laugh frequently, like that of a Norse god. There were coarse tastes in him, tastes of the peasant folk from whom he came, which clung to him through life, and kept him in sympathy with the common people, and intelligible to them. And withal there was a constitutional melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... heresies, one after another, are mentioned in the record itself. The not exterminated germs of the nature-worship (with the adoration of fire) spring up again, but the moral life remained. (1.) Therefore the Veda language is to me the precipitate of the Old Bactrian (as the Edda language of the Old Norse). (2.) The Zend language is the second step from the Northern Old Bactrian. (3.) The Sanskrit is one still further advanced from the Southern Old Bactrian, or from the Veda language. (4.) All Indian literature, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... hordes of Northern Europe. "Do you renounce the devils, and all their words and works; Thonar, Wodin, and Saxenote?" was part of the form of recantation administered to the Scandinavian converts;[1] and at the present day "Odin take you" is the Norse equivalent of "the devil take you." On the other hand, an attempt was made to identify Balda "the beautiful" with Christ—a confusion of character that may go far towards accounting for a custom joyously observed ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... literature, the inhabitants of ancient Lothian are known as Saix-Brit, i.e. Saxo-Britons, because they were a Cymric people, governed by the Saxons of Northumbria".[31] A further non-Celtic influence was that of the Norse invaders, who attacked the country from the ninth to the eighteenth century, and profoundly modified the racial character of the population on the south and west coasts, in the islands, and along the east coast as far south ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... the devastating expeditions of the Norse or Northmen, the Carlovingian empire, now weakened by division, became an easier prey for the invaders. Emboldened by success, the Northmen at length commenced to settle in the regions they invaded, no longer returning, as formerly, to their northern homes in winter. Among ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... look like a peasant," said the girl, with a flavour of discontent, as though a more apparent rusticity would have lent special magnanimity to Madame Okraska's benevolence. But the massive lady assured her: "Oh yes, it is the true Norse type; their peasantry has its patrician quality. I have been to Norway. Sir Alliston looks very much moved, doesn't he? He has been in love with Madame Okraska for years." And she added with a deep sigh of satisfaction: "There has never been a word whispered against her reputation; ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... myself—would know that true love never asks for a girl's pedigree. And as for 'disgrace,' Sophy Traill will never call anything like 'disgrace' to herself. I will allow that Sophy is poor, but as for family, the Traills are of the best Norse strain. They were sea-fighters, hundreds of years before they were sea-fishers; and they had been 'at home' on the North Sea, and in all the lands about it, centuries before the like of the Braelands were thought or heard ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... years, by the German and British workers in comparative philology, has pierc'd and dispers'd many of the falsest bubbles of centuries; and will disperse many more. It was long recorded that in Scandinavian mythology the heroes in the Norse Paradise drank out of the skulls of their slain enemies. Later investigation proves the word taken for skulls to mean horns of beasts slain in the hunt. And what reader had not been exercis'd over the traces of that feudal custom, by which seigneurs warm'd their feet in the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Hammersmith of Nowhere. It was by tales such as these that he first won a hearing from all lovers of English literature. The story of Jason is but a Greek setting of a folk-tale known among the Gaels as the Battle of the Birds, and in Norse as the Master Maid. Many of the tales which the travellers told one another in the Earthly Paradise, such as The Man Born to be King (itself derived from the first of our stories), The Land East of the Sun and West of ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... Northmen, who had ravaged the coasts of France in the 10th century, had become in the course of one hundred and fifty years, completely identified with the French. They had accepted Christianity, intermarried with the native women, and forgotten their own Norse tongue. The race thus formed was the most brilliant in Europe. The warlike, adventurous spirit of the vikings mingled in its blood with the French nimbleness of wit and fondness for display. The Normans were a nation of knights-errant, with a passion for prowess and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the ax people. If they have not yet arrived, they are due very soon. They formed one of the big waves of migratory people, who flooded the country, settled there. Eventually they became the Norse or Celtic stock. We don't know whether they stamped out the native tribes they found there ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... Norway, as you were saying yesterday. I should think it would be just the same sort of thing as Brittany, only, of course, different sort of scenery, and different language and different people. Madge, you will have to set to and get up Norse to ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... scene from the legends of the Norse gods. The cuirassiers, riding straight toward the westering sun, glittered and flashed with fairy-like radiance, their shining sword-blades looked like tongues of fire, their cuirasses and helmets blazed as if they were at a ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... among the Norse vikings—a warrior, at the approach of death from natural causes, embarking alone in his vessel, floating out to sea, and setting it afire, that he might perish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... names and terms, as well as in idiomatic expressions, and the preparation of the explanatory notes has therefore been a perplexing task. A fairly complete statement under each mythological reference would in the aggregate reach the proportions of a treatise on Norse mythology, but the limitations of space made such elaboration impossible. While brevity of expression has thus been the hard rule imposed by the necessity of keeping within bounds, it is hoped that the notes may nevertheless ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... being regarded as the abode of the god it had finally been called by his name. Fergunna and Virgunia, two names of mountains in Germany, are relics of the name. The name of the god, if preserved in the Gothic, would have been Fairguneis; and indeed in the Old Norse language Fioergynn is the father of Frigg, the wife of Odin, and Fioergynnior, the Earth-goddess, is mother of Thor. Professor Zimmer takes the same view. Grimm thinks that the Greeks and Romans, by changing f into h, represented Fergunni ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... When Norse and Danish galleys plied Their oars within the Firth of Clyde, When floated Haco's banner trim Above Norwegian warriors grim, Savage of heart and huge ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... accentuated by two bold excisions. One of the things for which Wagner has been faulted is that in his treatment of the Siegfried legend he has sacrificed historical elements in order to bring it into closer relationship with Norse mythology; has, in fact, made the fate of the gods and goddesses of our ancestors the chief concern of the prologue and succeeding dramas. Except for those who prefer to see only ethical symbols in the characters there is some force in the objection. Like Homer in his "Iliad," Wagner ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... but whether they did any direct work of conversion is doubtful. The actual conversion came undoubtedly from Norway. A Christian queen lived in Iceland at the end of the ninth century, the wife of the Norse Olaf who was king in Dublin; but little if any impression was made on the heathenism of the people. Nearly a century later an Icelander called Thorwald Kothransson brought a Christian bishop Frederic from Saxony, ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... cruel to the cunning phase of piratical life. These villains had at that time been about six months on their cruise. They had made the entire circuit of Borneo, murdering, and plundering, and striking terror and desolation wherever they went. The scenes enacted by Norse pirates in the tenth century were repeated in the middle of the nineteenth by a people who, unlike the Norsemen, had no regard whatever for law; and now they were returning ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... there seems to have been a certain laxity as to the marriage rite, which was nevertheless coincident with a high and pure morality. It has been suggested that the severe conditions imposed by the Church on divorces may have had something to do with the peculiar marital usages of the Teutonic and Norse chieftains. Reasons of state might require Theudemir the Ostrogoth, or William Longsword the Norman, to ally himself some day with a powerful king's daughter, and therefore he would not go through the marriage rite with the woman, really and truly his wife, but generally his inferior ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... woman's face was as baffling, as inexplicable, in its way, as was Mona Lisa's. One wasn't sure that she was beautiful; one was only sure that she was unforgetable, and that after other faces had faded from the memory, hers remained to haunt the heart. And that red hair of hers, like the hair of a Norse sun-goddess! ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... could have got it out of "Les Mille et une Nuits." There are two ways by which the story might have reached them independently of Galland's work: the Arabs and Persians traded extensively in former times with Scandinavia, through Russia, and this as well as other Norse tales of undoubtedly Eastern extraction may have been communicated by the same channel;[FN417] or the Norsemen may have taken it back with them from the South of Europe. But however this may be, the Icelandic version is so quaint in its ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... own energy into them. During the long reign of Duke Richard the Fearless, the son of William Longsword, a reign which lasted from 945 to 996, the heathen Norman pirates became French Christians and feudal at heart. The old Norse language lived only at Bayeux and in a few local names. As the old Northern freedom died silently away, the descendants of the pirates became feudal nobles and the "Pirates' land" sank into the most loyal of the fiefs ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... cleaned and oiled, the goods duly folded. Without delay or haste, and with the minimum of speech, the whole great establishment turned on wheels like a machine. Nowhere have I seen order more complete and pervasive. And yet I was always reminded of Norse tales of trolls and ogres who kept their hearts buried in the ground for the mere safety, and must confide the secret to their wives. For these weapons are the life of Tembinok'. He does not aim at popularity; but drives ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with them. When he does attack them, it is because he is stung by personal injuries; and it is only with his own arm that he strikes. His exploits have a mixture of grim humour and fierce hatred quite unlike anything else in Scripture, and more resembling the horse-play of Homeric or Norse heroes than the stern purpose and righteous wrath of a soldier who felt that he was God's instrument. We seem to hear his loud laughter as he ties the firebrands to the struggling jackals, or swings the jaw-bone. A strange champion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Celtic-speaking peoples are of differing types—short and dark as well as tall and fairer Highlanders or Welshmen, short, broad-headed Bretons, various types of Irishmen. Men with Norse names and Norse aspect "have the Gaelic." But all alike have the same character and temperament, a striking witness to the influence which the character as well as the language of the Celts, whoever they were, made on all with whom they mingled. Ethnologically there may not be a Celtic race, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... parsonage, Udby, South Seeland. He was sent to school in Jutland, and soon learned to love his wild native moors. While attending the Latin School in Aarhus he made friends with an old shoemaker, who used to tell him interesting stories of the old Norse heroes and sagas, often repeating the old Danish folk-songs. The lad being a true Dane, a descendant of the old vikings, he soon became very interested in the history of his race. Being sent to the University of Copenhagen, he chose to study ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... A series of Norse ballads tell much the same tale, but in none is the 'friends' will' a crucial point. Chansons from Burgundy, Bretagne, Provence, and northern Italy, faintly echo ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... In the Purusha Sukta, the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda Sanhita, we have a description of the creation of all things out of the severed limbs of a magnified non-natural man, Purusha. This conception is of course that which occurs in the Norse myths of the rent body of Ymir. Borr's sons took the body of the Giant Ymir and of his flesh formed the earth, of his blood seas and waters, of his bones mountains, of his teeth rocks and stones, of his hair all manner of ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Norse legends we are sure to find the inevitable three brothers, to the youngest of whom, Grimmel, fall all the adventures, the dealings with the Devil, and the pot of yellow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... The town-meeting is to a very limited extent a legislative body; it can make sundry regulations for the management of its local affairs. Such regulations are known by a very ancient name, "by-laws." By is an Old Norse word meaning "town," and it appears in the names of such towns as Derby and Whitby in the part of England overrun by the Danes in the ninth and tenth ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... literary battle of the Norwegian with the Dane easily developed into the eternal warfare of youthful idealism with "respectability" and convention. Ibsen had already started work upon the greatest of his Norse Histories—The Pretenders. But history was for him little more than material for the illustration of modern problems; and he turned with zest from the task of breathing his own spirit into the stubborn mould of the thirteenth ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... that I do not like the gloomy songs you sing; nor do I care for green things, except to wear in my hair. And it seems to me that I should be spiritless and a coward if I should like such a life. I am no English girl, to tremble and hide under a mean kirtle. I am a Norse maiden, the kinswoman of warriors. I think I should not show much honor to my father and my brother were I to leave them unavenged and sit down here with you. No, I will go to my King and get justice. When he ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... refuge and stronghold of the outlaw was the woods. Hence he is termed by Latin writers silvatious, by the Normans forestier. The Anglo-Saxon robber or highwayman is called a woodrover wealdgenga, and the Norse word for outlaw is exactly equivalent.[11] It has often been suggested that Robin Hood is a corruption, or dialectic form, of Robin of the Wood; and when we remember that wood is pronounced hood in some parts of England,[12] (as whoop is pronounced hoop everywhere,) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... personality of the young American as he appeared that day at Madame Choudey's; and he looked like one of the pictured Norse sea kings as he towered, sallow and bronzed, back of the vivacious Frenchmen and their neighbors ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the bullet head; the points of that Norse rover's moustache, falling below the line of the heavy jaw; the whole full and pale physiognomy, whose determined character was marred by too much flesh; at the cunning wrinkles radiating from the outer corners of the eyes—and in that purposeful contemplation ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... blue-eyed Norseman told A Saga of the days of old. "There is," said he, "a wondrous book Of Legends in the old Norse tongue, Of the dead kings of Norroway— Legends that once were told or sung In many a smoky fireside nook Of Iceland, in the ancient day, By wandering Saga-man or Scald; 'Heimskringla' is the volume called; And he who looks may find therein The ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... make it unquestionably the masterpiece of Arnold's longer poems, among which it is the largest in bulk and also the most ambitious in scheme." Balder Dead, a characteristic Arnoldian production, founded upon the Norse legend of Balder, Lok, and Hader, though not so great as Sohrab and Rustum, has much poetic worth and ranks high among its kind; and Tristram and Iseult, with its infinite tragedy, and The Sick King in Bokhara, gorgeous ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... one of the things that the Ministry of Transport has, so to say, up its sleeve, and is alone a sufficient answer to those who suggest that this Ministry has outlived its hour. There is a grim Norse spirit amongst its officials, inspired perhaps by their chieftain's name, and already the plans for a first-class Pullman galley are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... have simultaneously agreed in conferring upon them titles of endearment and affection. The brothers Grimm write—"In Scotland they [The Fairies] are called The Good People, Good Neighbours, Men of Peace; in Wales—The Family, The Blessing of their Mothers, The Dear Ladies; in the old Norse, and to this day in the Faroe islands, Huldufolk (The Gracious People;) in Norway, Huldre;[23] and, in conformity with these denominations, discover a striving to be in the proximity of men, and to keep up a good understanding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... found full scope in rendering the impressions of natural beauty, the glory of elemental strife; as in the 'Songs of the Four Seasons,' where the approach of a storm from the sea is likened to a descent of the Norse pirates on to the peaceful coast, and the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... nomina acceperunt": alluding to the Anglo-Saxon Calendar, which designated the months of December and January as aeerre-geola and aeftera-geola, the former and the latter Yule. Both Skeat and Wedgwood derive it from the old Norse jol, which means feasting and revelry. Mr. J.F. Hodgetts, in an article entitled "Paganism in Modern Christianity" (Antiquary, December 1882, p. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... us: "A traill," says she to her helper. "Traill," it seems to me, would be meaning in the English, "lazy, useless, bedraggled"; but there is no word in English that would be giving the contempt of that word, which I am thinking would have some connection with the Norse word "troll," but I am not sure of it. But there was no end to her kindness ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... to be found in our vulgar sayings, Jasper; for example—in that particularly vulgar saying of ours, "Your mother is up," {62b} there's a noble Norse word; mother, there, meaning not the female who bore us, but rage and choler, as I discovered by reading the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... exactly the same tradition is reechoed by the mountains of Norway and Sweden in the ballad of "Sir Olaf and the Erl-king's Daughter," which the milkmaid of Brittany sings in the lay of the "Sieur Nann and the Korigan," and in a language radically different from the Norse,—when, here and there, the same forms of superstition meet us in the ancient popular poetry of the Servians and modern Greeks, which were familiar to the Teutonic and Cambrian races of early centuries,—must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Angles, and Jutes believed in the old Norse gods, and Tiew and Woden, Thor and Friga, or Frija, were worshiped on the soil of Britain for ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... skill. The Celts revolted more than once, but Malcolm Canmore and his successors crushed them and confiscated their lands. In the reign of Alexander I. (d. 1124) mention is first made of Aberdeen (originally called Abordon and, in the Norse sagas, Apardion), which received its charter from William the Lion in 1179, by which date its burgesses had alfeady combined with those of Banff, Elgin, Inverness and other trans-Grampian communities to form a free Hanse, under which they enjoyed exceptional trading privileges. By this time, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Here the bottom of the cave seemed to have dropped out, and the roof to have gone in search of it; and but for the dim glimpse of the rock on the other side one might have suspected that this bridge would launch him into that ungeographical locality called, in the old Norse mythology, "Ginnunga Gap,"—a place where there was neither side, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... immigration from foreign lands has not greatly affected the country community. In Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states of the Northwest substantial sections of the community are invaded by people of sturdy Germanic and Norse extraction. In New England the Poles, French, Portuguese and some Jews are settling in the country. But throughout the states of the Union as a whole the population, both the newcomers and older ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... to sea! North of the Humber, a stern Willelmus Conquaestor burnt the Country, finding it unruly, into very stern repose. Wild fowl scream in those ancient silences, wild cattle roam in those ancient solitudes; the scanty sulky Norse-bred population all coerced into silence,—feeling that, under these new Norman Governors, their history has probably as good as ended. Men and Northumbrian Norse populations know little what has ended, what is but beginning! The Ribble and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... "white-man's land" (Hvitramannaland) extend down as far as Florida, on the very Gulf of Mexico. It is curious to notice the coincidence between the remark of Bernal Diaz, that the Mexicans called their priests papa (more properly papahua), and that in the old Norse Chronicle, which tells of the first colonization of Iceland by the Northmen, and relates that they found living there "Christian men whom the Northmen call Papa." These latter are shown by the context to have ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... homogeneous mixture of descendants of Norse and Celts 94%, population of foreign ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... large an infusion of Norse blood and certain traditions anent "usquebae" and "barley bree" it would—with so large a liberty—be naturally expected, a liberal proportion of drouthy souls, but with an abundance of what cheers and distinctly inebriates in their midst they were a temperate people in ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... his mind, Against the new Norse king designed, Than by his words he seems to show— And truly it may well be so. Stubborn and stiff are Throndhjem men, But Throndhjem's earl may come again; In Swedish land he knows no rest— Fierce wrath is gathering in ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... by the first part of the Norse tale translated by Dasent in Popular Tales from the Norse, 1888, p. 39, under the title of Hacon Grizzlebeard. A princess refuses all suitors, and mocks them publicly. Hacon Grizzlebeard, a prince, comes to woo her. She makes the king's ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... "aver" denoted the animal produce or stock on a farm; and there were "averia lanata" likewise. Similar apparently whimsical adaptations of words will not shock those who are aware that "pig" in England properly means a little fellow of the swine species, and that "pige" in Norse signifies a little maid, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... the adverse conditions of his life, but he was not servile. The Norse blood in him had not entirely lost its self-reliance. He came of a proud fisher line, men who were not afraid of anything but the ice and the devil, and he had prospects before him when his father went down off ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... old Norse stories of the first finding of America. The country which Leif called Helluland was most likely Labrador, Markland Newfoundland, and Vineland ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... be mine as the shame was hers, In desolate days of departed years She had leisure for shame and sorrow— There was light repentance and brief remorse, When I rode against Saxon foes or Norse, With clang of harness and clatter of horse, And little ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... 875 that Ingolf, a jarl of Norway, came to Iceland with Norse settlers. They built their habitation at first where a pleasant headland seemed attractive, the present Ingolfshofdi, and later founded Reikjavik, where the signs directed them; for certain carved posts, which they had thrown overboard as they approached the island, were found to have drifted ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... all have been as clear as an opera-glass, or as Mr. Joseph Cook's theory of Solar Light. Why didn't his parents give him my "Mathematical Exposition of Orthodoxy for Children," or my "The Theology of Euclid," on his birthdays, instead of Hans Andersen's "Fairy Tales" and the "Tales from the Norse?" It was very ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... not worthy of taking rank beside Mr. Morris's, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely of language into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the new spirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek, and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet a vigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, that stirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Northmen was speedily beaten down, but their leader desperately defended the ladder leading to the poop. He was struck by two arrows, and fell on one knee, and Edmund was about to climb the ladder when the door of the cabin in the poop opened, and a Norse maiden some sixteen years old sprang out. Seeing her father wounded at the top of the ladder and the Saxons preparing to ascend it, while others turned their bows against the wounded Northman, she sprang forward and throwing herself upon her knees before Edmund besought ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... are not found in the original notes we are chiefly indebted to Prof. R. B. Anderson, of the University of Wisconsin, and to his valuable work, NORSE MYTHOLOGY. We are also under obligations to Mrs. E. Hasselqvist, of the Augustana College of Rock ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... innocent so long as you surrender to them simply without any admixture of interested motive.—But there were men of a more worldly type who only played the game of set purpose: the popular movement was to them only a road to success. Like the Norse pirates, they made rise of the rising tide to carry their ships up into the land: they aimed at reaching the innermost point of the great estuaries so as to be left snugly ensconced in the conquered cities when the sea fell back once more. The channel was ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... strange green mound or barrow that rose out of a flat field not far from the vicarage windows. Dr. Baker grasped his whiskers, threw the young man a queer glance, and replied. Thenceforward he and Robert kept up a lively antiquarian talk on the traces of Norse settlement in the Cumbrian valleys, which lasted till the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Norse myths for reading, they had been the subject of many conversations, queries and illustrations. Some were even dramatized—in a childlike way, of course. Detailed descriptions of Mt. Ida, Asgard, and some of the principal heroes, were given. ...
— A Primary Reader - Old-time Stories, Fairy Tales and Myths Retold by Children • E. Louise Smythe
... in this direction has improved the beauty of all household fabrics, and has affected the taste in household art in both England and America. Nevertheless he is best known as a poet. His finest poems are "The Earthly Paradise," a series of Norse legends, "Three Northern Stones," translated from Icelandic poems, and his translations of "The Odyssey." He ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... comparing for a moment with the dog in intelligence or adaptability. The common notion that his name is derived from the use of reins in driving him, thus putting him in the class with the horse, is a mistake; the word comes from a Norse root which refers to his moss-browsing habit. The "rein" with which he is driven is a rope tied around one of his horns. He has no cognisance of "gee" and "haw," nor of any other vocal direction, but must be yanked hither and thither with the rope by main ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Britons were Celts, and spoke Celtic; when they were conquered by the Romans, Latin words crept into the tongue; and as Romans gave place to the Saxons, and the Saxons to the Danes, words from the German and Norse tongues were added to the language. Finally, came the Norman Conquest, and with it a flood of French words. The English we speak to-day is a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Saxon, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 58, December 16, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of Glasgow; Corresponding Member Davenport Academy of Sciences, and Western Reserve Historical Society; Author of History of Clan MacLean, Antiquity of Man, The Mound Builders, Mastodon, Mammoth and Man, Norse Discovery of America, Fingal's Cave, Introduction Study St. John's Gospel, Jewish Nature ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... though not like him. In his early wanderings he had met and loved a simple peasant woman, unlettered, but with sound and serviceable common sense, and with the beauty of perfect honesty shining in her big Norse-blue eyes. It was then and it is now a wonder to me how in that mystical brain of his, replete with abstractions, generalizations, idealizations, he placed his love for wife and children; strong and tender as it was, one could appreciate at once that he had no sense of the burden of practical ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... Jasper; it means fun, ridicule, jest; it is an ancient Norse word, and is found in ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... old legend and identified the place with her husband's house, and so became convinced that her boys were to become world famous. They came of very good stock, and the family traced their ancestry back to the great Leif Ericsson, son of Eric the Red, who had been the Norse discoverer ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... humor of the contrast between the conventional and the natural motives in behavior. In Greek mythology, individual traits of human nature are abstracted, idealized, and personified into gods. The heroes of Norse sagas and Teutonic legends are the gigantic symbols of primary emotions and sentiments. Historical characters live in the social memory not alone because they are identified with political, religious, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... not until the twelfth century that the compass found its way into Europe from the East. In the Landnammabok of Ari Frode, the Norse historian, we read that Flocke Vildergersen, a renowned viking, sailed from Norway to discover Iceland in the year 868, and took with him two ravens as guides, for in those days the "seamen had no lodestone (that is, no lidar stein, ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... part of Beowulf which tells of the monster Grendel. Again, he named Sigard the Volsung (the Siegfrid of the Niebelungenlied and of Wagner's opera), and this would recall the slaying of the dragon Fafnir, or some other story of the old Norse saga. So every name or place which Widsith mentioned was an invitation. When he came to a hall and "unlocked his word-hoard," he offered his hearers a variety of poems and legends from which they made their own selection. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... with the insignia of office, is still, or was lately, in existence in Ladykirk, at Burwick, South Ronaldshay, Orkney. A local tradition, that originated long after the Pictish chiefs passed away, and a new Norse race, ignorant of the customs of their predecessors, came in, says that the stone in question was used by St. Magnus as a boat to ferry him over the Pentland Firth; while an earlier tradition looked upon it as a miraculous whale which opportunely appeared at the prayer ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... very north of the island), but a natural name if we refer it to Norway, of which Sutherland was, at one time, a southern dependency, or (if not a dependency), a robbing-ground. Orkney and Shetland were once as thoroughly Norse as ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... not, in all conscience, have picked out a better day for our regatta had we had the free choice of all the days that ever dawned upon the lonely struggles and solitary agonies of ships since the Norse rovers first steered to the westward against the run of Atlantic waves. It was a very good race. At the finish there was not an oar's length between the first and second boat, with Death coming in a good third ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... was partaken of as a sacrament. An oak was the sacred tree of the ancient Druids of Britain. We inherit their custom of gathering the sacred mistletoe at Yule-tide, while in our Christmas Tree we have a remnant of the old Norse tree-worship. During the Middle Ages the worship of trees was forbidden in France by the ecclesiastical councils, and in England by the laws of Canute. A learned antiquary remarks that "the English maypole ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... incomplete: it only hides its records, while fire destroys them. In the Norse Edda, when the gods try their games, they find themselves able to out-drink the ocean, but not to eat like the flame. Logi, or fire, licks up food and trencher and all. This chimney is more voracious than the sea. Give time enough, and all which yonder depths ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Bald Grim seemed born again in his son Egil. A man of great size, swarthy face, harsh of aspect, and of fierce temper, in him was the old, tameless spirit of the Norse sea-kings, turbulent, passionate, owning no man master, he bent his strong soul to no man's rule. Rash and adventurous, he had a long and stormy career, while nature had endowed him with a rich gift of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... elf, a fairy, from the Anglo-Saxon, refers especially to tiny sprites, fond of mischief and tricks. But there were various kinds of elves, according to the Norse mythology. Consult Gayley's "Classic Myths." ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... to Iceland, returned to rummage in the libraries of Copenhagen, began to translate the Heimskringla, planned a History of the Vikings. Emphatically, this kind of thing suited him. No one was less likely to turn out a bookworm, yet in the study of Norse literature he found that combination of mental and muscular interests which was perchance ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... shoes for he felt that the place was holy; Osiris was at times regarded as a Tree-spirit (1); and in inscriptions is referred to as "the solitary one in the acacia"—which reminds us curiously of the "burning bush." The same is true of others of the gods; in the old Norse mythology Ygdrasil was the great branching World-Ash, abode of the soul of the universe; the Peepul or Bo-tree in India is very sacred and must on no account be cut down, seeing that gods and spirits ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... "Marie Antoinette" Writing Table Bedstead of Marie Antoinette A Cylinder Secretaire (Rothschild Collection) An Arm Chair (Louis XVI.) Carved and Gilt Settee and Arm Chair A Sofa En Suite A Marqueterie Escritoire (Jones Collection) A Norse Interior, Shewing French Influence A Secretaire with Sevres Plaques A Clock by Robin (Jones Collection) Harpsichord, About ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... wish to express their appreciation of the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Dodd, Mead & Co., and the Macmillan Company, by means of which they have been enabled to reprint stories from Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales," from "In the Days of Giants," from "Norse Stories," from Church's "Stories from Homer," ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... has affixed itself to the Mountain Ash, as derived from the Norse, Runa (a charm), because it is supposed to have the power of averting ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... then set it to music. And it is one of the greatest of religions,—what Nature engraved on the heart of our own Teutonic ancestors. It is all there,—its thousand phantasmal years, from the first cowering cry of the Norse savage before the chariot of his storm-god to the last gentle hymn that rose to Freya under her new name of Mary,—all. It is interpreted as a purely human expression; and, I repeat, no man has done so vast and worthy an artistic work in ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... has something of the force which immortalized the "Voluspa." The "bardic inspiration," which moved the early Norse poets to sing the bloody results of the "Berserker fury," peculiar to the Teutonic and Norse peoples, seems to control him as he recounts the dreadful features of the war and reminds the vanquished ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... had to do with the experience of many of the children the saeter might really have been Asgard, the Norse paradise. The youngest had never before been outside the narrow valley where they were born. Ellida and Margit, Didrik and little Peder, could not be convinced that they were anywhere but in Asgard ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... Hereford Square, where his wife died in 1869. He died himself at Oulton in August 1881, leaving behind him, so it is frequently asserted, many manuscript volumes, including treatises on Celtic poetry, on Welsh and Cornish and Manx literature, as well as translations from the Norse and Russ and the jest-books of Turkey. Some, at all events, of these works were advertised as 'ready ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Carlyle effected by his book on Heroes we must put ourselves at the point of view of the time when it was written, the days of Wellington and Melbourne, Brougham and Macaulay, Southey and Coleridge. None of these men understood the heroic in Norse mythology, or the grandeur of Oliver Cromwell, or the supreme importance of the Divina Commedia as the embodiment of Catholic Feudalism. All this Carlyle felt as no Englishman before him had felt, and told us in a voice which has since been accepted as conclusive. How far deeper is ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... and publishers:—Mr. Ruskin and Mr. William Allingham; Mr. Nimmo (for extract from Hugh Miller's works); Mr. Nelson (for poems by Mr. and Mrs. Howitt); Messrs. Edmonston and Douglas (for extract from Dasent's "Tales from the Norse"); Messrs. Chapman and Hall (for extracts from the works of Charles Dickens and Mr. Carlyle); Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Co. (for extracts from the works of Macaulay and Mr. Froude); Messrs. Routledge and Co. (for extracts from Miss Martineau's works); Mr. Murray (for extracts ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, between Charles the Simple and Rollo, the chief of the Norse barbarians, gives Rollo's name followed by all his titles, among which we read that of Master of the Secret ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... we have the remarkable details of the flight, in Zulu, Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy, {93e} Russian, Italian, Japanese. Of all incidents in the myth, the incidents of the flight are most widely known. But the whole connected series of events—the coming of the wooer; the love of the hostile being's daughter; the tasks imposed on the wooer; the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... work, mention must be made of 'Maria Stuart i Skotland' (1864), chronologically interjected among the saga-plays, and dealing with the more definite history of the hapless Queen of Scots in much of the saga-spirit. Bjoernson felt that the Scots had inherited no little of the Norse blood and temper, and believed that the psychology of his saga-heroes was adequate to account for the group of men whose fortunes were bound up with those of Mary Stuart in Scotland. He finds his key to the problem of her career in the fact that she was by nature incapable ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... rival, a man from Barra to be more than half a foreigner. Yet let us meet in some far country, and, whether we hail from the braes of Manor or the braes of Mar, some ready-made affection joins us on the instant. It is not race. Look at us. One is Norse, one Celtic, and another Saxon. It is not community of tongue. We have it not among ourselves; and we have it almost to perfection, with English, or Irish, or American. It is no tie of faith, for we detest each other's errors. And yet somewhere, deep down in the heart of ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the corruption of the Danish "vild" into "will." The rustics of this part of England are in the habit of saying "they are led will" (vild or wild), when from intoxication or some other cause they are bewildered at night and cannot find their way home. This expression is clearly from the old Norse or Danish. I am not at all certain that "Bil" in Bilinger may not be this same "will" or "Vild," and that the word may not be a corruption of Vilden, old or elder, wild or ...
— Letters to his mother, Ann Borrow - and Other Correspondents • George Borrow
... composition; and his poetry, if not characterised by uniformity of power, never descends into weakness. Triumphant in humour, he is eminently a master of the plaintive; his tender pieces breathe a deep-toned cadence, and his sacred lyrics are replete with devotional fervour. His Norse ballads are resonant with the echoes of his birth-land, and his songs are to be remarked for their deep pathos and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the Sun. Moreover, when the early Christians prayed, they turned to the East. Their holy day was, as the holy day of Christendom still is, Sunday, day of the Sun, an expression that comes from the Norse, on whom also shone the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... beginnings of dusk, and hear them out on the Lake where they moor at night, a bedtime music that makes for strange dreaming—we know well what kind of a gift to the community Jack Miner is; and we are almost as sorry as he, when the keen, hardy Norse blood of the birds calls them forth ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... that, in sundry dialects of the north of Europe, the preposition at has been preferred for the governing of the infinitive: "The use of at for to, as the sign of the infinitive mode, is Norse, not Saxon. It is the regular prefix in Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, and Feroic. It is also found in the northern dialects of the Old English, and in the particular dialect of Westmoreland at the present day."—Fowler, on the English Language, 8vo, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... one of large low-ceiled rooms, with big stoves that would need a deal of firewood in winter. The furniture was a mixture of every possible sort and style: a mahogany sofa, cupboards with painted roses on the panels, chairs covered with "Old Norse" carving, and on the walls appalling pictures of foreign royal families and of the Crucifixion. "Good Heavens!" said Merle, as they went round the rooms alone: "how shall we ever get used ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... fully realizes his ignorance — which sometimes happens to Americans — he becomes even more tiresome to himself than to others, because his naivete is irrepressible. Adams could not get over his astonishment, though he had preached the Norse doctrine all his life against the stupid and beer-swilling Saxon boors whom Freeman loved, and who, to the despair of science, produced Shakespeare. Mere contact with Norway started voyages of thought, and, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... said Kenric, speaking now in the Norse tongue that the lad might better understand him. "And tell me, what manner of men were the three strangers you saw landing in the bay of ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... think as we please of these Beggars of the Ocean, these Norse corsairs come to life again with the flavour of Genevan theology in them; but for daring, for ingenuity, for obstinate determination to be spiritually free or to die for it, the like of the Protestant privateers of the sixteenth century has been rarely ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... is to trace the legend current among the Greeks, and known to us as that of Jason and the Golden Fleece, in the Storyology of the Africans, the Norse, the Malagasies, the Russians, the Italians, the Samoans, the Finns, the Samoyedes and the Eskimo. Some of the resemblances are so exceedingly close and curious as to severely shake our belief in the dawn-sun-spring-lightning interpretations of the mythologists. They drive ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Great Central lines also afford communications. The land is extremely fertile. The name, properly Axeyholm (cf. Haxey), is hybrid, Ax being the Celtic uisg, water; ey the Anglo-Saxon for island; and holm the Norse word with the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked. In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... tradition of the sea seemed to cling about him as he swung down the narrow trail in advance of the dogs; and he brought the butt of his dog whip against Malemute Kid's door as a Norse sea rover, on southern foray, might thunder for admittance at ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... readily adapted themselves to the habits, customs, and language of the people among whom they settled. We find the Norse names of Rurik, Oleg, and Igor, but after the last named their descendants were Russians ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... met him," said the jam-manufacturer, "he struck me as the queerest man of business—except myself—that I had ever seen. He talked about Norse sagas, witchcraft, and so on, and when he began about business, I felt uneasy. Of course I know him ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... the Norse mythology, that the gods tied Loki, the impersonation of the evil principle, to three sharp rocks, and hung a snake over him in such a way, that its venom should drip on his face. But, in this dreadful ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Both loved a fair Norse maiden in Horlingdal. The father of the maid favoured the elder warrior; the maid ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... face, I ask your indulgence. My feminine audience of the pantomimes was undoubtedly graciously pleased at my personality and physical aspect. That I am "tall as a Viking of old"—and "handsome as a young Norse God"—is very pretty talk in the selling of my product. But I deplore its intrusion into the personality of this, my recorded narrative. And so now, for preface, to all my audience I do give earnest assurance that Gregg ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... the head remains lifeless, abstract, whilst the limbs are full of expression. In a contrary spirit, more akin to modern ideas, the Norse myth relates that Skadi, having her choice of a husband from among all the gods, but having to choose by the feet alone, meaning to take Baldur, got by mistake Niordr, an inferior deity. This does not seem so strange to us; but a Greek would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... day some traces of the worship paid to Odin in the name given by almost all the people of the north to the fourth day of the week, which was formerly consecrated to him. It is called by a name which signifies "Odin's day;" "Old Norse, Odinsdagr; Swedish and Danish, Onsdag; Anglo-Saxon, Wodenesdaeg, Wodnesdaeg; Dutch, Woensdag; English, Wednesday. As Odin or Wodun was supposed to correspond to the Mercury of the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus |
