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Before the little creatures of the pasture world were created, before pines grew upon earth, the words they sing were set to the sagas of vast space, rhythmic runes of unremembered ages taught by the great winds of the world to these patriarchs that seem to tell them over and over lest they forget. They tower virid and virile.
A round buckler he bore and a huge twibill, which no man of the kindred could well wield save himself; and it was done both blade and shaft with knots and runes in gold; and he loved that twibill well, and called it the Wolf's Sister. There then stood Heriulf, looking no less than one of the forefathers of the kindred come back again to the battle of the Wolfings.
Then Brynhild filled a beaker and bore it to Sigurd, and gave him the drink of love, and spake "Beer bring I to thee, Fair fruit of the byrnies' clash, Mixed is it mightily, Mingled with fame, Brimming with bright lays And pitiful runes, Wise words, sweet words, Speech of great game. "Runes of war know thou, If great thou wilt be!
Of how many feats of chivalry had those old walls been witness, when hostile kings contended for their possession! how many an army from the south and from the north had trod that old bridge! what red and noble blood had crimsoned those rushing waters!-what strains had been sung, ay, were yet being sung, on its banks! some soft as Doric reed; some fierce and sharp as those of Norwegian Skaldaglam; some as replete with wild and wizard force as Finland's runes, singing of Kalevala's moors, and the deeds of Woinomoinen!
Writing by Runes has some air of being original among the Norsemen: not a Phoenician Alphabet, but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us farther that Odin invented Poetry; the music of human speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it.
How strange, for example, it is to think of the Venetians borrowing the form and structure of their temple from the mosques of Alexandria, decking its façade with the horses of Lysippus, and panelling the sanctuary with marbles from the harem-floors of Eastern emperors; while at the other end of Italy, at Palermo, close beside the ruined colonnades of Greek Segesta, Norman kings were embroidering their massive churches with Saracenic arabesques and Byzantine mosaics, interspersing delicate Arabian tracery with rope-patterns and monsters of the deep, and linking Cuphic sentences with Scandinavian runes.
Fate hangs on the house of Cerdic, or the realm of the Saxon, when Woden calls the laeca of his son from the grave." Hilda, much troubled bent her face over her clasped hands, and, rocking to and fro, muttered some runes unintelligible to the ear of her listener.
The storm-swept maples repeated their "rhythmical runes of these unremembered ages." We allowed ourselves to sink soothingly beneath deep waves of primitive emotions until we seemed to perceive the sagas that the maples told the elms of a more remote history than that of the Pharaohs or storied Greece. Darkness began to settle over this lonely spot.
Of how many feats of chivalry had those old walls been witness, when hostile kings contended for their possession? how many an army from the south and from the north had trod that old bridge? what red and noble blood had crimsoned those rushing waters? what strains had been sung, ay, were yet being sung on its banks? some soft as Doric reed; some fierce and sharp as those of Norwegian Skaldaglam; some as replete with wild and wizard force as Finland's runes, singing of Kalevale's moors, and the deeds of Woinomoinen!
On it he thrust the head of a dead horse, crying out: "I turn this dishonor against all the land-spirits of this land, that they may all stray bewildered and none of them find his home until they have driven King Erik and Queen Gunhild out of this land." This message of defiance he cut in runes the letters of the Northland into the pole, that all might read it, and then sailed back to Iceland.
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