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"Impiger, iracundus!" said the archbishop; "a very Achilles, to whom our English Agamemnon, if he cross him, is a baby. All this is sad truth; our parents spoilt him in his childhood, and glory in his youth, and wealth, power, success, in his manhood. Ay! if Warwick be chafed, it will be as the stir of the sea-serpent, which, according to the Icelanders, moves a world.
Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once or twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers in the Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, some Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders.
What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century! to substitute in rude, savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
On the morning after my arrival I called to see my young friend Jonasen, the governor's son, and was most hospitably entertained by the family. I had a letter of introduction to the governor from the Minister of the Judiciary at Copenhagen, but thought it unnecessary to present it. His excellency is a good specimen of the better class of Icelanders simple, kind-hearted, and polite.
Oh, what does it matter whether you are English or Icelanders, Fins or Turks! Humanity is so much greater than nationality. Your men shall work side by side with mine, and what each produces, each shall have. What is being done for my country shall surely be done for yours. Can't you see, Maraton can't you see, my prophet who gropes in the darkness, that I am showing you the only way?"
This conduct shows that the character of the Icelanders does not belong to the best; and that they take advantage of travellers with as much shrewdness as the landlords and guides on the continent. A besetting sin of the Icelanders is their drunkenness. Their poverty would probably not be so great if they were less devoted to brandy, and worked more industriously.
In brief, after about a year, Thangbrand returned to Norway and King Olaf, declaring the Icelanders to be a perverse, satirical, and inconvertible people, having himself, the record says, been "the death of three men there." King Olaf was in high rage at this result; but was persuaded by the Icelanders about him to try farther, and by a milder instrument.
My surprise was slightly modified when I knew that this tranquil and solemn personage was only a hunter of the eider duck, the down of which is, after all, the greatest source of the Icelanders' wealth.
In some of our mountainous and barren places, and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil.
The German theory that Baldr could only be killed by his own sword, which was therefore disguised by enchantment and used against him, and that the Icelandic writers misunderstood this to mean a mistletoe sprig, is far-fetched and romantic, and crumbles at a touch. For if, as it is claimed, the Icelanders had no mistletoe, why should they introduce it into a story to which it did not belong?
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