Anderson, Karl. "The Lovers of Gudrun." "Scandinavian Elements in the Works of William Morris." Diss., Harvard University, 1940, 64-109.

[...] I have already pointed out that Magnússon’s remark that he and Morris began reading the Laxdæla saga in the fall of 1869 is very likely inaccurate.² The rest of the statement, however, that they read together the Völsunga saga and some of the Eddic poems in the winter of 1869 to 1870, is apparently correct.

At the end of November or early in December, 1869, Part III of The Earthly Paradise was published.³ In the spring of 1868 when he issued the first volume, later split into Parts I and II, Morris had intended to include in the rest of the poem only one Scandinavian tale – namely, “The Palace East of the Sun”; but now even in the first part of the second half we find two stories that are Norse in origin. These are “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” which is almost certainly the same tale he had before designated by the name “The Palace East of the Sun,” and “The Lovers of Gudrun”; these two poems are almost twice as long as the four non-Scandinavian stories in the volume combined.

The influence of Morris’s Scandinavian studies, however, is to be seen not only in the choice of subject for two of the tales in this volume but also in a decided change in the character of most of the poems included here which were written or rewritten after the fall of 1868.⁴ This difference in treatment, which became still more pronounced in the work produced after Morris had carried his Icelandic studies further, was noticed even at the time of the publication of this and the last volume of The Earthly Paradise by some of the more acute reviewers,⁵ and since then it has been carefully analyzed and described by several critics. Mackail, for example, writes as follows regarding this change in the third volume:

In the eighteen months which passed between the appearance of this and of the earlier volume a silent revolution had been effected in the poet. It was not at once realized even by himself. Yet here and there a critic observed that the Chaucerian manner which had been so unqualified in “Jason” and so powerful in the earlier stories of “The Earthly Paradise” was wearing off, and a new manner replacing it. Some deepening of the poetry they felt there was. What it really meant was a development of capital importance, the transformation of romance into epic. . . . “The Lovers of Gudrun,” his first essay in epic poetry, is in its way as complete and satisfying as any of his later achievements. Between this poem and the story of “The Man Born to be King,” a perfect example of the pure romance, there is in truth no comparison possible. They cannot be weighted in the same scales.⁶

Percy Lubbock, in his article on Morris to which I have already referred, brings out the importance of the change more clearly:

We come now to the most significant turning-point of Morris’s literary life, the sudden transition from the golden world of ‘The Man born to be King’ or ‘Ogier the Dane’ to the ominous landscape, the naked reality, the difficult passions, of ‘The Lovers of Gudrun’. . . . It. . . becomes intensely interesting to watch the overmastering effect upon Morris, halfway through ‘The Earthly Paradise,’ of his discovery of the heroic literature of the north. . . . He had been familiar from the early days with the northern studies of Thorpe and Dasent; but, until he began to learn Icelandic and to read the sagas in the original, their influence had not been strong enough to draw him away from the romance of the ‘happy poplar-land’ which was his imaginative home. . . .⁷

After briefly comparing the epic and the romance as forms of art, Lubbock says,

There can be no question here of discussing in detail the profound differences which separate these two most significant forms; but it is obvious by how many of them Morris would be drawn towards the earlier. The saner relations between man and man, still more between man and woman; the power of assimilating the whole business of life, instead of a narrow selection from it, as poetic material; the unflinching candour of the whole point of view – all these signs of a stronger and more difficult art would be at once attractive to a man of Morris’s temper, apart from any artistic consideration.⁸

A little later he quotes the opening lines of “The Lovers of Gudrun,” and exclaims,

That is enough: the honey-tongued story-teller is gone, and another man is attacking another task. There is nothing remote or visionary here. His tale is of men who are dead and gone, no doubt, but who are not so very far off, whose life was real and can be recaptured, who deeds are to be honoured and sung in all their glory, but not translated into a golden light which can never have shone on them. . . . ⁹

There can be no doubt that Morris’s Icelandic studies with Magnússon had had an immediate definite effect upon his style of narrative. As soon as we turn from the early Earthly Paradise poems and begin reading the tales written after 1868, we realize that here we are no longer in a quiet dream-world of eternal sunshine and beauty, inhabited by a race of people utterly unlike us mortals, whose loves, joys, disappointments, sorrows, and deaths never seem genuine and never move us to either laughter or tears, perhaps because they are described in a most dispassionate manner, but that instead we are now entering a world similar to our own, where people like ourselves, complex and inconsistent like all human begins, suffer real griefs, disappointments, and failures, and in so doing rouse the deepest sympathies of both the story-teller and his readers.

Of the two Scandinavian tales in Volume III of The Earthly Paradise I shall discuss first “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” which according to Mackail “represents the culmination of the romantic-mediæval method in the strongest antithesis to the epic treatment of a given story.”¹⁰ In regard to the sources of this poem Miss Morris says,

For “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon” my father has followed rather closely the imaginative opening of the tale in Thorpe’s “Yuletide Stories;” but it will be seen that directly the time-worn elements come into the old tale – the trivial explanations, the three gifts and all of what one might call the commonplace of fairy story (so far removed from the true magic of fairy-land), directly all this machinery appears, the poet leaves the tale. He goes to Marie de France’s “Lai of Lanval” for an incident in his own far more complicated tale, and there is possibly a suggestion of the search for his Bird-lady in “Hassan of El-Basrah: “all the rest of it, and more especially the curiously arresting framework of Gregory the Star-gazer, is his own.¹¹

The tale in Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories, which Morris probably had known as early as his Oxford days, was of course his main source.¹² The only incident in the Lai De Lanval that is similar to anything in Morris’s poems is the attempt of the Queen to gain Lanval’s love, an act which leads Lanval to reveal his love for the fairy lady, contrary to his promise to her, and thus to forfeit her affection;¹³ Morris may possibly have had this episode in mind in introducing the scene between Thorgerd and John on Christmas Day, when Thorgerd offers her love to him and he, in this deep disappointment at being separated from his true lady, cries out to her and bids her come to him, thus bringing her to his home for that night but losing her for many years thereafter.¹⁴ The main theme of this second part of “The Story of Hasan of El-Basrah” in The Thousand and One Nights¹⁵  is of course the same as the underlying idea in Morris’s poem, but the whole setting of this tale and the development of the plot are so completely different from what we find in Morris’s work that there seems to be little justification for mentioning it as a source.¹⁶

Morris’s treatment of his originals in the three Scandinavian poems included in the last two volumes of The Earthly Paradise has been investigated and discussed by Tollef B. Thompson in a dissertation called Skandinavischer Einfluss auf William Morris in den ersten Stadien (The Earthly Paradise).¹⁷ The section of this study that deals with “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon” is very detailed and complete;¹⁸ I shall merely summarize Thompson’s results, making a few comments on some of his statements and adding a few observations of my own.

Thompson first very carefully compares Morris’s poem with all the Norwegian, Danish, and German popular tales with the same or a similar theme, and comes to the conclusion that although Morris drew in the main on Thorpe’s story, he was also indebted for some of his details to these other fairy tales.¹⁹ It seems to me that some of the incidents Thompson believes were borrowed Morris may very well have invented himself, without the use of any sources,²⁰ but in the main Thompson’s conclusions are probably correct. Morris was of course intimately familiar with all the fairy tales of northern Europe, and it is only natural that when he wished to develop and enlarge upon his immediate source, he borrowed incidents from other folk tales. The four Norwegian stories to which Thompson refers, I should like to point out, are all translated into English in Dasent’s Tales from the Norse,²¹ and it must have been through this book that Morris had ^become acquainted with these legends. The Danish story Thompson mentions, “Den nedtraadte Ager” in Molbech’s Udvalgte Eventyr eller Folkedigtninger,²² had not been turned into English at this time, so far as I know; it does not seem to have played any important part in Morris’s poem, and most likely he did not know it at all.

Thompson next discusses Dasent’s and Thorpe’s style of translation in their English versions of Scandinavian fairy tales, and refers briefly to the influence of their renderings on some of Morris’s Earthly Paradise poems and on his later prose romances.²³ The examples that Thompson gives of this influence show that it is rather slight and in no case very important.

Next comes a very detailed account of all Morris’s changes and additions to the original story.²⁴ Thompson mentions first a number of elements which he thinks were suggested to Morris by details in Scandinavian popular tales with an entirely different theme; it seems to me that almost all of these incidents Morris in all probability invented himself, and that there is little need for citing these similar episodes as possible sources. The following examples are especially unconvincing:

(M)²⁵ Bei seiner Rückkehr sieht die Mutter die Kleider des Sohnes furchtsam an und fragt ihn flüsternd, ob er etwas von dem Ort, von dem der neue Glauba spreche, erzählen könne. Dies ist dem norw. Märchen “Somme Kjærringer er slige” entnommen. Thorpe übersetzt es (S. 331): “Where he was from? I come from Ringerige answered the man. Oh, indeed! what, do you say you come from Himmerige (Heaven), then of course you know the second Peter, my poor late husband?” Dasent übersetzt es (S. 202) auf ganz ännliche Weise. Die Freude am Ende der Erzählung (M) ist charakteristisch für die meisten Märchen.²⁶

A little later we read, “Auf seinem weg trifft er Leute und ruft sie an: “What land of all lands might this be?” In Dasents Übersetzung von Hv.²⁷ ruft der Held unter åhnlichen Umständen: “What’s the name of this land?”²⁸

Next Thompson discusses other changes and additions by Morris, and lists the Scandinavian allusions Morris introduced in order to make the Norse setting of the tale more realistic.²⁹ He calls attention to the references to “stockfish,”³⁰ to “Sigurd Fafnir’s-bane,”³¹ to “Skeggi’s two sons,”³² and to “Haldor the Icelander;”³³ he also points out that Morris gave Scandinavian names to most of his characters, such as “Thorgerd,” Asa,” “Kirstin,”³⁴ and “Haldor.”³⁵ For the allusion to Sigurd Fafnir’s-bane,” as Thompson notes, Morris was very likely indebted to Thorpe’s Northern Mythology.³⁶  In his reference to “Skeggi’s two sons” as well-known evil-doers, Morris does not seem to have had any definite historical figures in mind; the name “Skeggi,” however, as Thompson shows, is extremely common in Old Norse works, and Morris had already come across the name both in the Grettis saga and in the Njáls saga.³⁷ With the names “Haldor,” Thorgard,” and “Asa” he had also already met, I should like to add, in the Grettis saga.³⁸ “Stockfish” is likewise mentioned in the Grettis saga and also in the Eyrbyggja saga,³⁹ but for Morris’s acquaintance with the use of stockfish in Scandinavia it is scarcely necessary to seek for any definite source. To Thompson’s list of Norse elements that Morris inserted in the tale itself, I should like to add his use of the term “bonder,”⁴⁰ an allusion to Micklegarth,⁴¹ and his use of the names “Thorolf” and “Thord.”⁴² With these terms and names Morris had become familiar even before he began studying Icelandic with Magnússon.⁴³ Finally, in regard to the framework of the tale, Thompson calls attention to the fact that Morris presents the whole story as a dream of Gregory the Star-gazer and represents Gregory as living in Norway in the reign of King Magnus.⁴⁴ Thompson does not point out, however, that Morris further portrays Gregory as a member of the retinue of Marshall Biorn, and designates the scene of the opening of the dream as Ladir.⁴⁵ For his references to Magnus, Marshall Biorn, and Ladir, I should like to state, Morris was very likely indebted to Laing’s translation of the Heimskringla. In that work there are five Norwegian kings named Magnus whose reigns are described in detail, - Magnus Barefoot, Magnus the Blind, Magnus Erlingson, Magnus the Good, and Magnus, the son of Harald Hardredy;⁴⁶ which one of these Morris had in mind here there is nothing in the poem to indicate. There is also a Marshall Biorn mentioned in the Heimskringla, but he was one of the chief officers of King Olaf the Holy.⁴⁷ Moreover, Ladir is frequently referred to in the early part of the Heimskringla, this being the seat of the powerful Earls of Ladir⁴⁸ , but neither Marshall Biorn nor any of the kings by the name of Magnus had any special connection with this place. Morris probably simply remembered these names from his reading of Laing’s translation of the Heimskringla, and introduced them here in order to make more vivid the Norwegian setting he had invented for the tale.

Thompson also suggests a possible modern Scandinavian influence. He calls attention to the similarity between Morris’s description of the youth John and Ibsen’s account of Peer Gynt, and thinks that Morris may have had Ibsen’s character in mind when he wrote his tale.⁴⁹ The possibility that Morris was influenced in any way by Ibsen is extremely slight. In the first place the similarity pointed out is not very striking. Moreover, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt appeared in 1867; and as we have already seen, Morris seems to have written the first draft of his poem in 1865 or 1866, if not earlier, and already in the manuscript of this work in the Fitzwilliam Museum, which is very likely a copy of this first draft, we find practically the same descriptions of John as those in the printed text to which Thompson calls attention and on which he bases his suggestion.

It is clear, then, that Morris found the central theme of his poem “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon” in the tale called “The Beautiful Palace East of the Sun and North of the Earth” in Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories, but that he enlarged considerably on this legend, developing in some detail a medieval Scandinavian setting and introducing a number of new incidents, some of them probably suggested by other Norse folk tales and others most likely invented by the poet himself. The finished poem thus differs in a very marked degree from the story in Thorpe. An excellent opportunity to study the evolution of the tale is provided by the holograph manuscript of an earlier version in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to which I have already on several occasions referred.

In this manuscript Morris has written out the poem very neatly in ink in a small notebook, using only one side of each page.⁵⁰ There are extremely few corrections throughout the whole work. Frequently we find on the left-handed page, otherwise left blank, brief notes for pictures, similar to the notes which, according to Miss Morris, are found in some of the other early manuscripts.⁵¹ Very likely this Fitzwilliam Museum notebook is a fair copy of the manuscript of the first draft of the poem, which Miss Morris describes briefly in the Preface to Volume V of the Collected Works.⁵² At any rate, it most certainly represents an early form of the story, for the version found here differs considerably from the poem he finally published.

In order to reveal the extent of these differences and to show how the tale developed under Morris’s hand, I shall present first a brief abstract of the legend as it is found in Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories, then a fairly full summary of the plot of the poem in the Fitzwilliam Museum manuscript, going into some detail here since there is no account in print of this manuscript, and finally a synopsis of the printed poem.

In Thorpe’s story, which he translated from G. O. Hyltén-Cavallius and George Stephen’s Svenska Folk-Sagor och Äfventyr,⁵³ an old farmer, often finding on summer mornings that the grass in his best field had been trampled down during the night, once resolved to find out who the malefactors were by sending his oldest son to watch over the meadow. The boy, however, fell asleep and discovered nothing. The next son fared similarly the following night. Finally the youngest boy, amidst the jeers of his brothers, decided to try his luck. Just before sunrise the following morning he saw three doves alight on the grass; they immediately shed their feathers and became three fair ladies, and then began to dance over the meadow. The young lad straightway fell in love with the prettiest one, and decided to steal their plumage and wait for the results. Just after the sun had risen, the three maidens prepared to leave, and not finding their feather-dresses, they searched the field carefully and came across the youth. He refused to return the skins unless they answered two questions. First he demanded to know who they were; one of the girls replied that she was a king’s daughter, and that she and her attendants came from “The Palace Which Lies East of the Sun and North of the Earth.” He then made the request that the king’s daughter should promise to marry him, and when she did so and fixed a day for the wedding, he gave back the feather-dresses and the three maidens flew away. The youth now returned home, but said nothing about his adventure. When the day set for the marriage arrived, he asked his father to prepare a feast; at midnight the princess arrived with her two attendants. All were supremely happy, but just before dawn, the young lady revealed to her husband that she must leave at once, because she was held in captivity by a troll who had slain her father and allowed her only a few hours of liberty at midnight. The three guests departed, the princess giving him a ring and her two attendants presenting him with two golden apples. Needless to say, the youth now felt very unhappy, and after a short time he left his home to search for his bride. One day he came across two giants fighting in the woods over a pair of boots which enabled the wearer to cover a hundred miles at every step. He persuaded the giants that the easiest way for them to settle their dispute would be to give him the boots, and he spoke so convincingly that they agreed to this suggestion. In the same way the youth acquired a cloak which rendered the wearer invisible and a sword which possessed such power that its point immediately killed anyone it touched but its hilt restored life to the dead. Delighted with his new possessions he journeyed onward, and came one night to the cot of an extremely old woman, who in return for his kind greeting promised to aid him in his search for the palace east of the sun and north of the earth. In the morning she summoned all the beasts, over which she ruled, and asked whether anyone of them knew this palace. But no one had heard of it. The old lady then sent the youth to her sister, who held sway over the fishes, but they could not give him any information either. This lady directed him to another sister, who was the ruler of the birds. Here he learned that the phoenix knew of this palace, and the old lady commanded the bird to convey the young man thinner. It did so. As soon as it was midnight, the lad knocked at the gate of the palace, and gained admittance to the princess after he had identified himself by means of the golden apples and the ring that he had received as presents. In the morning, with the aid of the boots, cloak, and sword he killed all the trolls and restored to life the slain relatives of the princess. The young man then became their king.

In the Fitzwilliam Museum manuscript of Morris’s poem, the whole opening scene is very similar to that in the fairy tale. The two older sons, Roger and Hugh, were both unsuccessful in their watch over their father’s field; but the youngest boy, John, kept awake, and early in the morning saw three swans arrive in the meadow. When they removed their swanskins and began dancing, John realized at once that the fairest one was a queen, for on her skin lay a crown. He feel in love with this girl immediately, and stole her skin. When the maidens ceased dancing and discovered that one of the feather-dresses was gone, the queen sent her two attendants home, and remained in shame alone; she then burst into tears. At this point John came forth. She begged him to return the skin, promising as a reward to make him free if he was a thrall and to make him rich if he was poor. John, however, would not be satisfied with these fair words, and demanded that she promise to marry him. She looked at him askance, noticing that he was fair; and remembering that it often happened that a fool’s heart beat in a king and that a king’s courage and nobility were frequently to be found in a man of low birth, she gave him her promise to marry him. She directed him to wait for ten days, and then to wish to be with her, and he would be transported at once to her land. Then they parted. He returned home, but did not mention his adventure. On the tenth day, following her instructions, he went into the woods, longed passionately for his love, and was immediately carried to a strange country, where he saw before him a royal palace roofed with gold. As he approached the castle, he found a river before him, guarded by huge dragons. He hesitated a moment but then plunged in, and reached the other bank untouched. At the gate of the palace he walked boldly by two lions, and in the doorway he passed unharmed through a fire that burned on the threshold. He then found his beloved seated on a dais surrounded by knights; she praised him for the courage he had shown in not being frightened at all these dangers, and commanded her chamberlains to give him clothes befitting a king.

Here now John passed many a day in perfect happiness, sitting on his throne judging wrong-doers, watching his soldiers engage in tilts, talking with his sailors about far-off lands, or kissing his fair lady in some lone garden. But amidst all his happiness he began to think of Norway, and one day he asked his queen whether it would not be possible for the two of them to visit his country. She replied that she could not accompany him thither, but that he might go alone, assuring him that when he saw the hunger and distress of his own land, he would soon realize how happy he had been with her. As they parted, she gave him a ring, by the aid of which he could be transported to his father’s house by merely expressing a desire to be there. She also warned him not to wish for her, for then she would be compelled to come to him at once but would also be forced to leave him shortly thereafter forever, and he would no longer be a king. He now followed her directions, and soon found himself before his father’s house. As he approached his old home, he pulled down his hood; and meeting his father at the door, he asked for shelter, saying that his horse had been frightened away when he had alighted to adjust the stirrups. He sat down on the settle by the door, and sang an old song he had learned as a boy, and through this song his family recognized him. The next day John went to the town, bought a horse and a beautiful suit of armor, engaged in a tourney held by the king, and carried off the prize. The young Queen fell in love with him, and bidding him come to her chamber, offered him her love; when her fair words failed, she began to threaten him with death, but he firmly refused, declaring that he had already given his love away to a maiden much fairer than the Queen and finally in desperation uttering the forbidden wish that his beloved would come to him. In a flash his fairy lady stood before him. She told him that all their joy was now at an end, for she must go at once to the land which lies Eastward of the Sun and West of the Moon, and he would never see her again. Then she departed abruptly, and left John plunged in despair.

After a short time had passed, John wandered to the sea and found a dromond ready to sail, the master standing drinking the farewell toasts. The captain announced that he intended to sail to Dunwich, London, Calais Marseilles, and Scanderby in Africa, where one can see many marvels, such as headless black men and war between birds and men, and from which one can travel “to westward of the moon.” At these last words John decided at once to accompany this skipper. After visiting the places named, the travellers finally arrived in Africa, and sailing up the Nile, came to a city beside and untrodden desert. In the evening John walked alone outside the city-gates, mourning over his loss, and came across two brothers quarrelling over the inheritance left them by their father; this inheritance consisted of a sword which could pierce anything made by a smith and at the same time was able to shield its wielder from all wounds, a pair of shoes which transported him who possessed them whithersoever he wished in a moment, and a cap which rendered the wearer invisible. As the brothers were fighting, John snatched up all three articles, and disappeared. Of course, he immediately wished to be East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and at once he stood in a marvellous land, where the woods were leafless and there was no grass,

            But underneath red stones he saw
            And emerald without a flaw.
            And when he lifted up his face
            Skyward, there ever in his place
            The sun was set, nor moved at all,
            Nor ever seaward did he fall.
            And over against him was the moon
            That moved not either late or soon.
            For there was neither night nor day
            But changeless was the light always.

On a river he saw strange ships of gold, manned by golden men with long red beards. On the land uncouth beasts with tongues striped with blue fed on the red pebbles. He soon came across a red and green tower in a garden, and entering, he found a king and a queen seated on their throne, the king being all naked except for a crown and a heavy belt of rubies. John, wearing the cap of invisibility, approached them, and found that the queen, who was sobbing violently, was his beloved. As the king led her off to the bedchamber, John followed unseen, struck off the king’s head, snatched up a golden cup, gathered his lady in his arms, and wished to be back in his own country. Straightway he and his bride found themselves on a ness in Norway. That night they lay down together on a beech mast, their marriage-bed. The next day they brought the golden cup to the King of Norway as a gift; the King, in return for this present, granted them large estates, and John became a man of wealth and position.

In the published poem the opening scene of the tale itself is very similar to that in the early version and in Thorpe’s story. The two oldest sons, Thorolf and Thord, were unsuccessful in their watch over their father’s field; but John, the youngest, after an uneventful night, found in the early morning that seven white swans came down on the field, shed their skins, and became fair maidens. The description that follows of how John fell in love with one of these damsels and stold her skin is given here in much more detail than in the early version, the account here being more than twice as long. Even more expanded in the published poem is the scene between John and his lady, after others had flown away, when John won the love of the swan-maiden and she promised to remain faithful to him forever; this passage is almost four times as long here as in the Fitzwilliam Museum manuscript. The nature of the scene is also almost entirely different: all the passion, tenderness, and emotion and the delicate dream-world atmosphere found in the final form are absent in the earlier draft.

From this point on, Morris has completely rewritten his tale. As soon as John and his lady had plighted troth to each other, he was transported directly to her land, where they lived for many years in complete happiness until John returned to his old home for a visit. Morris describes in a very touching manner John’s feelings on seeing all the well-known places again; this whole description is entirely lacking in the account of John’s visit to his home in the early poem. He reached the house just as the family was sitting down to dinner, and although he kept his identity unknown, he was at once invited to come in and partake of the food. He found everything as it had been, except for the fact that his brother Thord was newly married; and John soon became aware that Thorgerd, the bride, had now fallen in love with him. Later in the day, when the men had returned to work, John revealed to his mother, mainly by means of singing an old song, that he was her long-lost son. He now continued to live in his father’s house during the autumn and early winter; he longed desperately for his lady, and went every evening, as she had requested, to the meadow where they first had met to watch for any sign from her. In the meantime Thorgerd’s love for him grew greater and greater, but she was utterly unable to turn his thoughts to her. On Christmas Day, as he returned dejected from his watch in the meadow, he met Thorgerd, and thought for a moment that she was his lady; then, being plunged into despair when he realized his mistake, he forgot that he must not call upon her to come to him, and cried out,

             “Would God that her beloved feet
             Would bless our threshold this same night’.”⁵⁴

He repented at once, but it was too late. That night amidst the feast she arrived, and all John’s kinsmen and friends marveled at the beauty of his bride. As it grew late, she drew him away to his chamber, and during the night he slept happily in her arms. Just before dawn she arove while he still slumbered, and amidst stifled sobs and sighs, she prayed that although she must now leave him, he would seek for her in the land which lies east of the sun and west of the moon. Then she slipped away into the night.

When John awoke and discovered his loss, he was of course overcome with despair, and rather than face his family and friends again, he rushed out at once into the snow to seek for her. He soon reached the sea, and early in the spring sailed on the first ship that left the harbor. For a long time he had faintly remembered something told him in a dream, but he could not recall the message exactly; now one morning when he awoke, he saw the pale moon just over the mast, while in the east the sun rose brightly over the horizon, and at once the phrase “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” came clearly into his mind. From that moment he knew where he must search for his love. But although he journeyed far and wide throughout the world, he never met anyone who knew of this land. Finally he found himself sailing over the Indian Ocean; and one night just as the sun was sinking in the west, he saw the moon over the mast, and again the well-known phrase flashed into his mind. That night the ship was wrecked in a storm, and he was washed ashore in a strange land. There he found a beautiful palace, inhabited by people who did not speak either to him or to one another. In a separate chamber he came across his love, as she sat embroidering, but she too remained deaf to his greetings and gave no response to his caresses. At last he repeated the whole story of their love and of his search for her, and as he told how he remembered the words “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” the spell broke, and she recognized him. From that time forth, as long as they lived, the two enjoyed supreme happiness there in her land.

If we compare Morris’s two versions of this tale, we see at once that the final, rewritten form is far superior in every way. In the early poem all the characters are vague and unreal; the action is not well motivated, and the movement of the plot is not always smooth and natural; many of the incidents are fantastic and even grotesque, and some are colorless conventionalities; the treatment of the whole story is singularly unimaginative, and throughout the poem we find no beautiful descriptive passages, no flashes of insight into character, and no tender, sympathetic portrayal of emotions and feelings. The whole work seems unusually dull and uninspired. In the published poem, however, the situation is just the opposite. Here the main characters, although by no means drawn in detail and fully developed, are not mere types like those found in the medieval romances, but are more individualized and more human. Again, Morris does not here introduce unusual or extraordinary adventures and scenes, but tries to make the action and setting as natural and realistic as possible. In the early poem, when John returned from his lady to his old home he bought a suit of armor and a horse, engaged in a tourney, and won the prize and also the love of the young queen, who first requested with fair words and then demanded with threats that he become her paramour, - a scene very closely resembling the temptation of Lanval by Queen Guenevere in the Lai de Lanval by Marie de France; in the later version, however, Morris does not borrow any of the conventions of the medieval romances, for here on his visit home John quite simply and naturally awakened the love of his brother’s young bride Thorgerd, and it was through an unexpected meeting with her when his mind was especially occupied with thoughts of his love one that he was led to utter the fatal wish for his lady. Similarly, in the first version John finally reached the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon and regained his beloved by means of the magic sword, shoes, and cap, but in the published poem Morris does not resort to any of the outworn supernatural devices, bringing John to the home of his fairy love by means of a storm which wrecks his ship and washes him ashore, unconscious, in a strange land. In the first draft Morris describes the country in which John finally discovers his princess as a place of extraordinary marvels: the hills are white but not with snow, the woods are leafless, the ground is not covered with grass but with red stones and emeralds, golden images with red beards reaching to their knees move slowly about, singing, on ships of gold, and golden people tend beasts with blue-striped tongues that feed upon the red pebbles. In the rewritten poem, however, Morris represents the place as being exceptionally beautiful but essentially natural, the only marvels being a tree that bears blossoms and fruit at the same time and the spell of silence which has been laid upon the inhabitants of the palace and which is broken as soon as the princess recognizes John. Finally, in the rejected version John finds his love just as she is about to be married to a king, all naked except for a crown and a belt of rubies, from whom he rescues her by smiting off his head with the magic sword; in the other poem John discovers his lady as she sits embroidering, surrounded by her maidens, and he awakens her from her trance by reciting the story of their love. Furthermore, not only are the scenes and incidents in the rewritten poem more natural and more pleasing, but the whole story is told here with a wealth of imaginative detail that is especially delightful; I have already called attention to some of the most beautiful passages in my synopsis of the published tale. Moreover, there is a great difference in the attitude of the author toward his subject in the two poems: in the first one he seems to stand apart, showing but little interest in the fate of his characters, but throughout the second version of the story there runs a deep note of tenderness, sympathy, and warmheartedness. Because of all these differences, the original tale as compared with the revised form seems shadowy, vague, and utterly unreal, but the rewritten poem, even though it is purely a fairy story, takes on a human quality and an air of realism, and rouses the deepest interest and sympathy of the reader.

The reasons for this decided difference in Morris’s treatment of the same tale in these two poems are probably numerous. Perhaps he simply lacked inspiration when he wrote the first one. Again, he may have been too close to his sources to give free play to his imagination in the early version. Moreover, the improvements in the second form may merely have been the result of maturing poetical powers. However, it is not at all unlikely that many of the changes noted above in the revised version – the tendency to avoid the introduction of fairy elements, the attempt to make the setting, characters, and episodes in the tale realistic and natural, and the revelation of a greater understanding of human nature and a deeper sympathy – were all to a great extent a definite result of Morris’s study of the Icelandic sagas in the original, and that these alterations were part of the general change from the method of the romance to that of the epic which, as I have already pointed out, took place in Morris’s creative writing after the fall of 1868. WE seem to have here in these two poems, one written almost certainly before his meeting with Magnússon and the other composed a little less than a year after he had begun reading Icelandic, an illustration of how even in the telling of the same story Morris’s style underwent a change as a result of his becoming acquainted with the saga literature of the North at first hand.

Apart from this change in the general nature of the tale, the growth in Morris’s knowledge of early Scandinavia is apparent in the increase in the number of Norse allusions in the second version. Not only was the whole framework of Gregory the Star-gazer and his dream with the references to King Magnus, Biorn, and Ladir added in the final form, but in the story itself most of the Scandinavian names and several of the allusions to early Scandinavia which I have already pointed out in the published poem, especially in the last part of the work, were inserted in the course of the revision. These added Norse allusions help, of course, to make the setting more realistic.

The other Scandinavian poem that was published in Volume III of The Earthly Paradise was “The Lovers of Gudrun,” a very lengthy tale in heroic couplets based on the central episode in the Laxdaela saga.⁵⁵ This story is generally considered to be the best one in the whole collection  in fact, it is considered by some critics to be one of the finest of all Morris’s literary productions. Apart from its own inherent value, the poem is noteworthy because it was through this work that many Englishmen of the nineteenth century made their first acquaintance with the Icelandic sagas; the publication of this poem was undoubtedly one of the most important factors contributing to the awakening of an interest in the literature of the North among English-speaking people in the second half of the last century. However, although Morris followed very closely the main events described in the saga, he told the story in an entirely different spirit from that found in the original, and many critics familiar with the sagas have resented Morris’s modernizing of the tale and have criticized him for his treatment. Sir Oliver Elton, for example, says of the poem in his Survey of English Literature,

It is a history that is better packed into a ballad, as the late Miss Barmby showed in her noble Bolli and Gudrun,⁵⁶ than unfold into a long romance. A detailed comparison with the original⁵⁷ shows how much nerve is lost, and how the characterization is weakened, in the process. The saga deals in a vicious close cut-and-thrust of dialogue; Morris loosens this, and sentences become speeches, and the words do not draw blood, although the incidents are respected and passages versified bodily. In recompense, there is always his diffused beauty of treatment, and much lovely ornamentation.⁵⁸

Morris’s treatment of the original saga material has been very thoroughly examined and discussed in the second chapter of Thompson’s Skandinavischer Einfluss auf William Morris in den ersten Stadien (The Earthly Paradise).⁵⁹ In order to indicate in some detail the nature of Morris’s changes, I shall call attention to the most important and interesting observations Thompson makes in this study, adding a few remarks of my own.

Thompson points out that Morris made slight alterations in the character and personality of some of the leading figures; he says, for example, “Gudrun erscheint naiver und schuldfreier, Bodli mehr von Leidenschaft getrieben und mehr wissentlich schuldig, und die Brüder Gudruns boschafter als im Original, diese Personen warden überhaupt am meisten verändert.”⁶⁰ In the original saga, moreover, the characters as a rule do not reveal their feelings outwardly even in the slightest degree, but in Morris’s poem they are allowed to express their sorrow and grief openly:

S⁶¹ : B. spricht ruhig mit G. über K. s Aufenthalt in Norwegen (M: Er nimst ihre Hand, worauf Freudentrånen seine Augen füllen). S: G. zeigt keine Erregung, hat aber ein sehr rotes Gesicht, als sie B. verlåsst. (S⁶² : Sie weint.) S: Als K. von G.s Heirat hört, scheint er darüber nicht traurig zu sein. (M: er wird aufgeregt und bricht in Wehklagen aus)….S: G. spricht wenig mit B. über K.s Rückkehr, zeigt aber, dass sie unzufrieden ist (M: sie kommt zu B. in der Nacht, als er noch auf ist, überschüttet ihn mit Schimpfworten und verlässt ihn, ehe er ihr antworten kann).⁶³

The most important change, however, that Morris made was the addition of psychological analysis of the characters; this literary device was utterly foreign to the sagas.

Alles in allem warden der Liebespsychologie Bodlis, ehe er nach Island zurückkehrt, mehr als 60 Zeilen und bis zu seiner Verheiratung mit Gudrun ca. 125 Zeilen gewidmet; G.s Liebespsychologie, entweder von dem Dichter berichtet oder von ihr selbst in Selbstgesprächen mitgeteilt, umfasst bis zu ihrer Verheiratung mit B. ca. 90 Zeilen; desgleichen bei K. bis zu seiner Rückkehr 30 Zeilen; bei Ingibiorg 45 Zeilen; K.s Gemütsstimmung(liebe, Sorge, Kummer), nachdem er zurückgekehrt ist, 172 Zeilen; bei G. nach K.s Rückkehr bis zu seinem Tod 102 Zeilen. . . . alles in allem umfasst die Psychologie der Personen ungefähr 940 Zeilen, das ist fast ein Fünftel des ganzen Gedichtes.⁶⁴

Similarly, the style of the sagas was absolutely objective, the teller of the story never introducing his own opinion or his own interpretation of the events described; Morris, however, did not hesitate to insert his own reflections on a number of occasions:

Als B. die G. heiratet, macht der Dichter selber die Bemerkung, “so sprung the evil crop by evil sown”, womit er B.s Handlung vollständig verwirft; er nennt dies spatter die Ernte aus den Leidenschaften und den Lügen. Wiederum tritt seine Persönliche Lebensanschauung spricht er in den Worten aus: “I deem it that use and wont may raise the base, but somewhat abase those that are wise and noble”.⁶⁵

Less important as far as the general tone of the poem is concerned but nevertheless very interesting are the changes which Thompson shows that Morris made in his original for the apparent purpose of rendering certain scenes more effective from the modern point of view:

S: Guest trifft G. an der Quelle (M: Sie hört, dass er kommt, als sie im Hause sitzt, damit der Dichter ihr Bild in der Tür beschreiben kann). S: Als K. nach Island zurückkehrt, reitet sein Vater zu dem Schiff, um ihn zu empfangen (M: Olaf und seine Söhne waren damals nicht zu Hause, so dass einige Zeit vergeht, bovor K. sie sieht. Dadurch stellt der Dichter die Szene mit Refna mehr in den Vordergrund). . . . S: Der Kopfputz wird gestohlen, ehe Refna Gelegenheit hat, ihm beimfeste zu tragen (M: Sie traågt ihn beim Feste, damit der Dichter ihr Aussehen und die Wirkung auf die anderen schildern kann).⁶⁶

Finally, it should be noted that Thompson points out here and there in his discussion that in developing the Scandinavian setting of his tale Morris occasionally introduced Norse allusions not found in his immediate source. Thus, for example, he writes,

Das Aussehen König Olafs (roter Bart, breite Schuldern, helle Augen) hat M. vielleicht auch Laings Heimskringla entommen; die Beschreibung past auf einen König Olaf, aber nicht auf Tryggveson, sondern auf seinen christlichen Nachfolger Olaf Haraldson. Dieser Fehler ist sehr leicht zu erklären, den die Geschichte von Haraldson folgt direct auf die Olaf Tryggvesons Saga in der Heimskringla. Hieraus stammt auch vermutlich die Auskunft über des Königs Langschiffe und über den Bischof. Das Christentum wurde im Island auf dem Thinghügel im Jahre 1000 n. Chr. angenommen. Über den Einfluss Grissurs und Hjaltis wird in Heimskringla berichtet; von Snorris Einfluss hat M. vielleicht in Mallet gelesen, auch von dem Gestez der Gastfreundschaft.⁶⁷

With the stories of the Christianization of Iceland found in the Heimskringla and in Mallet’s Northern Antiquities Morris was very likely familiar, as Thompson suggests, but these descriptions seem not to have been the only ones that Morris had in mind in referring to the event, for he mentions details not found in these sources.⁶⁸ It was very likely the fuller account in Dasent’s translation of the Njáls saga⁶⁹  which was the basis of Morris’s statement

         that the Hill of Laws had heard
         Sung through the clear air many a threatening word,
         And seen the weapons gather for the fight;
         Till Snorri’s wiles, Hall’s wisdom, Gizur’s might,
         And fears of many men, and wavering doubt
         On the worse side, had brought it so about
         That now Christ’s faith was law to everyone.⁷⁰

In another passage in his study⁷¹ Thompson points out that in the account of how Kiartan and his companions were summoned to appear before King Olaf Tryggvason in his council chamber Morris enlarged upon his original and made Bodli say that they must go, and

         then, if the worse befall,
         There can we die too, as in Atli’s Hall
         The Niblungs fell,⁷²

and that somewhat later in the story, when Ingibiorg, the King’s sister, parts with Kiartan and gives him a coif for Gudrun, Morris again departed from his source, representing Ingibiorg as saying that the headdress had been made by “folk of Micklegarth.”⁷³ With indications that Morris was familiar with the story of the Volsungs and with the Norsemen’s visits to Micklegarth we have already met.⁷⁴

These are the only Scandinavian allusions inserted by Morris that Thompson notes. It is very surprising that he does not point out anywhere in his study that in the long description given in the poem of the paintings on the walls and ceiling of Olaf Peacock’s hall Morris drew not upon the Laxdæla saga but on the “Húsdrápa” of Ulfr Uggason. The saga refers very briefly to these paintings; in Chapter XXIX, in the account of the building of the hall, it states that “voru þar markadar á ágætar sögur á þili-vidinum ok sva á ræfrinu,”⁷⁵ and at the end of the same chapter, in telling of the wedding-feast of Geirmundr and Thuridr, the saga further relates, “þar var at bodi Ulfr Uggason, ok hardi ort kvædi um Olaf Höskuldsson ok um sögun þær, er skrifader voru á eldhúsinu ok færdi hann þer at bodinu. þetta kvædi er kallst Hús-drápa ok er vel ort. Olafr launadi vel kvædit. . . .”⁷⁶ Morris, however, describes the scene at great length:

        For over the high-seat, in his ship there lay
        The gold-haired Baldur, God of the dead day,
        The spring-flowers round his high pile, waiting there
        Until the Gods thereto the torch should bear;
        And they were wrought on this side and on that,
        Drawing on towards him. There was Frey, and sat
        On the gold-bristled boar, who first they say
        Ploughed the brown earth, and made it green for Frey.
        Then came dark-bearded Niörd; and after him
        Freyia, thin-robed, about her ankles slim
        The grey cats playing. In another place
        Thor’s hammer gleamed o’er Thor’s red-bearded face;
        And Heimdall, with the gold horn slung behind,
        That in the God’s dusk he shall surely wind,
        Sickening all hearts with fear; and last of all
        Was Odin’s sorrow wrought upon the wall,
        As slow-paced, weary-faced, he went along,
        Anxious with all the tales of woe and wrong
        His ravens, Thought and Memory, bring to him...

        But furthermore
        Upon the other side, the deeds of Thor
        Were duly done; the fight in the far sea
        With him who rings the world’s iniquity,
        The Midgard Worm; strife in the giants’ land,
        With snares and mockeries thick on either hand,
        And dealings with the Evil One who brought
        Death even amid the Gods – all these well wrought
        Did Guest behold. . . .⁷⁷

The Húsdrápa,” which describes these paintings in much the same way and was obviously the source of Morris’s account, is reproduced with a Latin translation and commentary at the end of the edition of the Laxdæla saga that was published at Copenhagen in 1826.⁷⁸ Very likely Morris used this edition of the saga, and became acquainted with the “Húsdrápa” through this work. He was of course already familiar with the incidents referred to in the poem, and it should be noted that in his description he enlarged upon the account in the “Húsdrápa,” supplementing the material presented there with information that he had gained from his reading of the Edda stories in Thorpe’s Northern Mythology and Mallet’s Northern Antiquities.⁷⁹

In addition to this description Morris introduced a few other allsions to Norse mythology in developing the Scandinavian background of his poem, referring on three other occasions to Thor⁸⁰ and twice to Odin.⁸¹ He also inserted two proverbs common in Icelandic, with which he head evidently become familiar in translating the Grettis saga – namely, “Old friends are last to sever”⁸² and “Bettered is bale by bale that follows it.”⁸³ Finally, I should like to point out that when in another passage Kiartan threatens to burn the hall at Bathstead and Morris represents him as exclaiming,

        “Come out, I say,
        Else o’er your roof the red cock crows to-day!”⁸⁴

Morris seems again to be trying to add a Scandinavian touch to the poem. The use of this expression is of course by no means restricted to the Scandinavians, but that it was common among Northmen Morris must have learned from Thorpe’s Northern Mythology,⁸⁵ and it may have been for this reason that he introduced it here.

Morris’s infusion of sentiment into the tale and his addition of psychological analyses are undoubtedly the most important changes made in this retelling of the tragic story of Gudrun, Kiartan, and Bolli. It is of course true that as a result of these alterations the original tale loses much of its force and vividness, as Sir Oliver Elton points out in the quotation presented above, but it must be admitted that Morris was to a certain extent justified in changing the story as he did, in order that he might be able to present it in The Earthly Paradise as one of the old tales told by the Wanderers to their Grecian hosts at the close of the fourteenth century and in order that he might make his poem more acceptable to the average modern reader. Miss May Morris, commenting on the necessity for these alterations, says of “The Lovers of Gudrun,”

. . . as one scene follows on another in the relentless drama, throughout the whole runs an undertone of pity and tenderness – the modern setting of this chronicle of passion that renders it more widely intelligible and sympathetic. It is doubtful whether the general English reader would ever have come to know well this splendid Saga, with its terse self-restraint, its grimly brief handling of the most poignant moments, without some introduction or modern comment. . . .The relation in which the story-teller of modern England is placed to his reader is of necessity different from that which held between the ancient Sagaman and his listeners, and involves a like difference in handling which is apparent in the English poem. In “The Lovers of Gudrun” the wildest and grimmest of the touches are softened or discarded and the writer allows himself some explanation of motive, where the Icelandic historian is able to trust almost entirely to the habit of mind of his audience for the interpretation of external things . . . .

So it is after a different fashion that our poet makes us feel the irony of things and the fate that broods over these passionate conflicting wills; but modern difference and all, the poem stands with the splendid things of the Saga unaltered, none the less impressive for having been brought into the “Earthly Paradise” atmosphere.⁸⁶

The original manuscript of the first draft of “The Lovers of Gudrun” is now deposited in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England;⁸⁷ I have very carefully compared this manuscript with the published poem, and I have found, as Miss Morris did, “that some of the passages have been amplified, but there are not many alterations and except for two whole pages cancelled(greatly to the improvement of the poem) no serious ones; there is very little groping about or teasing into shape of the verse.”⁸⁸ Some of the revisions Morris made are interesting, and deserve brief consideration.

The most extensive change Morris made was the cancellation, referred to above, of two whole pages at the very beginning of the episode headed “Tidings brought to Bathstead of Kiartan’s coming back.”⁸⁹ In the passage struck out, which extended to ninety-five lines,⁹⁰ Morris drew mainly for his material on the opening of Chapter XLIII of the Laxdæla saga; he described how, after Bodli had returned alone to Iceland, everyone began more and more to doubt that Kiartan would ever tear himself loose from King Olaf and his sister Ingibiorg in Norway, how Gudrun pined away, sometimes dreaming wildly that Kiartan would come back to her unwed, at other times raging at the thought that he would nevermore be hers, how her father and brothers were led to favor her marriage with Bodli because of the increase in power an alliance with the men of Herdholdt would give them, how Olaf tried in vain to dissuade his fosterson from seeking to marry Gudrun, and how the wedding was finally held, with little real pleasure to anyone, while all present wondered how Gudrun could have forgotten Kiartan in this way in only a year. After Morris had written this passage, he seems to have felt dissatisfied with it, for he cancelled it completely; then he rewrote the account of the actual wedding-feast, but said nothing about the reasons which led Gudrun to agree to the marriage, although he had made only very vague references to this matter earlier in the story. Undoubtedly, as Miss Morris says in one of the quotations presented above, the original passage in the manuscript was cancelled “greatly to the improvement of the poem.” In the saga, which aims to present a cross section of life as it actually is, without any very great manipulation of events or scenes for the sake of artistic effectiveness, a detailed account of the circumstances leading to Bodli’s wedding is of course absolutely essential; in Morris’s poem, however, where exactly the opposite method is followed and where the actual incidents and details of the story are rearranged, developed, dropped, or subordinated by the narrator according to what he considers the most effective presentation, there is a distinct gain in omitting a description of these details, for not only is the whole passage dull and uninteresting but the very omission of any direct account of how Gudrun was led to yield to Bodli’s suit makes the marriage itself seem more pitiable and dreadful.

Much later in the poem we find two long passages which Morris left uncancelled in the manuscript of the first draft but which he either rejected or entirely rewrote when he revised the tale. One of these occurs in the very moving description of how Kiartan’s body, after he had been slain by Bodli, was carried to Bathstead, while Bodli, overcome with grief and shame, plodded wearily behind; at this point in the manuscript Morris seems to have been carried away by the pathos and tragedy of the story he was retelling, for he bursts out into a very touching lament over the unworthiness he feels in attempting to describe the actions and feelings of these truly great and noble men.⁹¹ These lines are exceedingly interesting, for they reveal very vividly how deeply Morris’s feelings were aroused by this ancient tale.

        O ye who hearken as unto the end
        I draw of this strange woful history,
        A little now I pray you pardon me
        My stammering tongue unfit to deal with love,
        Unfit to deal with the great thoughts that move
        The hearts of great men, for so must I drag down
        Their souls unto the level of mine own.
        My little longings cling about their lives,
        My little fluttering hope that feebly strives
        Amidst my life of foolish pettiness
        To gain from out the dark some faint redress
        Of my life’s vanity, bears to earth again
        Their soaring vision that saw heaven so plain.
        Great men beloved were these, though in cold verse
        And petty do I tell about the curse
        They struggled with and fell beneath at last,
        That they might please us….⁹²

This passage is completely omitted in the printed poem; it was of course only natural that Morris should realize, when soberly revising the tale, that these personal remarks of the author not only unduly interrupt the action but also have no place whatever in the retelling of a saga-story.

The other passage I referred to occurs only a few pages later in the account of the proceedings in the hall at Herdholt in the evening of the day on which Kiartan was slain. In the published poem Morris tells us that on that night Olaf Peacock sat in his hall, with tears in his eyes, surrounded by his family and friends, that as his gaze fell on Kiartan’s empty seat, he bade them all drink to the memory of “the best man Iceland ever knew,” that threats were muttered against the slayer of Kiartan, that Refna came in, pale-faced, and sat down beside Olaf, and that finally Thorgerd threw a sword upon the table, vowing that Bodli would be slain in revenge, even if she must do the deed herself.⁹³ In the manuscript Morris leads up to Thorgerd’s vow to avenge Kiartan in an entirely different way. According to the manuscript account, as Olaf sat dejected in his hall, he asked the “masspriest” whether there was not any story in the Bible of a man who lost his son, whereupon the priest related the tale of David and Absalom; and when he came to the end and told how David at the news of the death of his son exclaimed, “O Absalom, my son, my son, would God I had died for thee,” Thorgerd rose, threw a sword on the table, and cried that if all the old gods had departed from the land, she, Thorgerd, had not gone, and she would avenge Kiartan.⁹⁴ Perhaps Morris originally introduced this allusion to David and Absalom because he wished to make the acceptance of Christianity by the Icelanders, which had been described earlier in the poem, seem more real. He had already made Bodli say, when Oswif praised him for his courage in not hiding after he had killed Kiartan,

        “Nay, I am not beguiled
        To hope for speedy death; is it not told
        How that Cain lived till he was very old?”⁹⁵

This remark, which is not to be found in the original saga either, Morris retained when he revised the poem, but the reference to David and Absalom he completely omitted when he rewrote the account of the scene in the hall, probably feeling that the sharp contrast between the new Christian and the old Pagan outlook upon life in the manuscript passage, effective as it was, was somewhat too artificial and improbable. There can be no doubt that the account in the published poem is much more in harmony with the spirit of the rest of the story and at the same time is more moving, with its simple description of the grief of Olaf and Refna for Kiartan.

In addition to these changes there are a few other less important alterations in the manuscript and in the printed text which I should like to mention. It is very interesting to note, for example, that many of those passages in which Morris departs most widely from the spirit of his original in the introduction of sentiment are not in the first draft. Thus, in the description of Gudrun’s feelings when she awoke on the morning of the day set for the slaying of Kiartan, we do not find in the manuscript the following lines from the published poem:

        And then she thought of Refna’s longing eyes,
        And to her face a dreadful smile did rise
        That died amidst its birth, as back again
        Her thoughts went to the tender longing pain
        She once had deemed a sweet fair day would end;
        And therewith such an agony did rend
        Her body and soul, that all things she forgat
        Amidst of it; upon the bed she sat
        Rigid and stark, and deemed she shrieked, yet made
        No sound indeed; but slowly now did fade
        All will away from her, until the sun
        Risen higher, on her moveless body shone,
        And as a smitten thing beneath its stroke
        She shrank and started, and awhile awoke
        To hear the tramp of men about the hall.⁹⁶

At the end of this episode, the long, detailed, and very moving description in the printed text of Bodli’s passionate farewell to Gudrun and his departure from Bathstead with her rude brothers for the purpose of waylaying Kiartan – an account which extends here to forty-nine lines⁹⁷ – is the result of the expansion of a passage only fifteen lines long in the manuscript.⁹⁸ The original description, it should be noted, is almost entirely a mere statement of fact. Similarly, part of the account of Gudrun’s wild despair when Kiartan’s body was borne away from Bathstead is not found in the first draft.⁹⁹

In some cases the revisions in the printed text represent corrections. Thus, according to the manuscript, when the idea of going abroad first occurred to Kiartan, he went to Oswif to learn the truth of the reports from Norway that Olaf Tryggvason was waging war against the sons of Grunhild,¹⁰⁰ and a little later we are told that he heard that Gunnhild’s sons had been driven from the land and that Olaf had become king.¹⁰¹ Here Morris has become slightly confused about certain facts in the early history of Norway, for it was not from the sons of Gunnhild but from Earl Hakon, son of the powerful Earl Sigurd of Ladir, that Olaf Tryggvason won the country. In the published poem these mistakes have been corrected, the name “Hakon” having been substituted for “the sons of Gunnhild” in the two passages to which I just referred.¹⁰² Similarly, later in the tale Morris relates in the printed version that when Bodli sailed from Norway to return to Iceland, Kiartan exclaimed to his foster-brother,

        “This is the best face I have seen on thee
        Since first our black oars smote the Burgfirth sea.”¹⁰³

In the first draft Morris incorrectly wrote “the Broadfirth Sea” instead of “the Burgfirth sea.”¹⁰⁴ Very likely these errors were pointed out to Morris by Magnússon.

Rather surprising are two cases in which Morris seems to depart deliberately from the facts of the saga in his revisions. At the very opening of the story we are told in the published poem that

        Bathsread its roof did raise
        Seven miles from Herdholt….¹⁰⁵

The actual distance between the two farms is approximately fifteen miles, and in the manuscript we find that Morris originally correctly wrote “fifteen” instead of “seven” in this passage.¹⁰⁶ There is no statement in the Laxdæla saga as to how far Bathstead is from Herdholdt; very likely Morris had learned of the distance from Magnússon when they were reading the saga. His reason for departing from the facts was perhaps that he felt that if he represented the two farms as being only seven miles apart, he would make the frequent visits of Kiartan to Bathstead and the otherwise intimate relations between the two families seem more probable. More puzzling is the other change referred to. In the manuscript when Morris enumerates the members of Olaf’s family, he says,

        Two maids Bergthora, Thorbiorg there were.¹⁰⁷

This statement is correct according to the account in the saga.¹⁰⁸ In the published version, however, he writes,

        Two maidens, Thurid, Thorbiorg there were.¹⁰⁹

The reason for the substitution of “Thurid” for “Bergthora” is not apparent.

The two Scandinavian tales in Volume III of The Earthly Paradise met with almost unqualified approval in the reviews of the time. Most of the critics considered the two poems the best in the volume, - if not the best so far in the whole collection. Concerning “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine said that of all the tales in the volume this “is the most charming in its lingering wistful sweetness.”¹¹⁰ The Atlantic Monthly stated that the “poem is full of tender and beautiful passages, - sensuous often, but pure as the white nakedness of marble, - and is written in the octosyllabic rhyme-verses, which are often managed so happily by Mr. Morris, especially in his effective modulations and skilful use of pauses.”¹¹¹ Speaking of the “dreamy, sweet, and sad” passages in the tale, the reviewer in the Galaxy pointed out that they

seem all the more dreamy and delicious because of the clear, precise, deeply-tinted realism with which every landscape, figure, and object in the poem is described, and which compels us to see the strange sights and forms in the wondrous land that lies east of the sun and west of the moon as distinctly as if our own feet had trodden there a familiar region.¹¹²

The critic in the Spectator voiced a slight dissatisfaction with the poem: “We confess to certain misgivings about ‘The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon.’ It is a region almost too dreamy and misty for living men to walk in; we lose ourselves in rambling melodies, and are oppressed with the vagueness of everlasting twilight.”¹¹³ This criticism, however, is by no means severe.

As is to be expected, the reviewers were more lavish in their praise of “The Lovers of Gudrun.” The Atlantic Monthly said of it,

But of all the poems in this new volume, it is in “The Lovers of Gudrun” that we are made to feel that we are in the presence of assured flesh and blood and the hearts of men and women with real personality and characters, and it is here, we think, Mr. Morris touches us most surely. . . .It is written in the simpler heroic rhymed verse, and is generally straightforward and vigorous, not wearying us with languid monotones, as do many of the long poems in stanzas whose lines are too often oppressive with monosyllables.¹¹⁴

The Atheneæum felt that “in regard to his mastery in tragic narrative and his power over emotion” this work was “the highest achievement in the book.”¹¹⁵ The critic in the Spectator was the most lavish in his praise, and was at the same time the most specific:

The tale is broken up into several sections, and a careful judgment is shown in keeping the less important parts of the narrative at their proper level, as well as in handling and distributing the stronger effects. Mr. Morris had not hitherto shown himself capable of this reserve and discretion, which enhance the impression made by the exercise of an unwonted force. Here, too, is seen in free play that fresh and simple delight in life which contributes so much to the charm of both the Earthly Paradise and Jason. Elsewhere it is well nigh stifled at times in very luxuriance of description, for which there is here little or no place. But the tragic passages of this tale disclose the powers of which the author’s former work had given no sign. The events are brought on by the working of an inevitable doom, and they are told in a way to remind us of the horror subdued by divine awe that pervades the Æschylean drama.¹¹⁶

Only two contemporary notices that I have seen offered any adverse criticism at all. One appeared in the Galaxy; the writer of this review, however, failed to explain and substantiate the first part of his criticism, and the second fault he found with the poem, the scarcity of “tender, spiritual, melodious passages,” is, as the reviewer himself admitted, inherent in the tale.

But as a story it is not artistically constructed, and it has fewer than any other of those tender, spiritual, melodious passages which one delights to read over and over again. The drear Northern atmosphere is all around it; the genius loci makes his presence felt everywhere; and this, undoubtedly a striking artistic merit, yet renders the story less fascinating and delightful than the poems which are warmed by a brighter sun and fanned by more genial airs.¹¹⁷

In a review in the Academy G. A. Simcox pointed out what he considered an inconsistency in the poem:

Before leaving the subject of Mr. Morris’s relation to the sources which serve as food to his rare and peculiar inspiration, we may be permitted to express a doubtful regret that while he has dwelt with equal emphasis on each of the four stages of Gudrun’s Dream, he has dismissed the fourth stage of her life, which serves to interpret the dream, with only a hurried and perfunctory mention. If this violation of obvious symmetry is really a fault, it may easily be forgiven to the poet who has transformed one of the least artistic of the Norse sagas into one of the completest of English poems.¹¹⁸

Simcox’s criticism of Morris for not having described in more detail Gudrun’s marriage with Thorkel seems to me entirely unjustified, for in the poem all the interest centers in the unfulfilled love of Kiartan and Gudrun, and any extended account of Gudrun’s life after the death of Kiartan would be entirely out of place. Finally, before leaving these contemporary criticisms, I should like to point out that it is rather surprising that none of the reviews examined raised the slightest objection against Morris’s failure to preserve the grim reserve, the lack of sentiment, and the terseness of expression of the original tale. Most likely very few of the writers of these criticisms knew the sagas at first hand.¹¹⁹

In only two cases do we find references to Scandinavian matters in the links between the various tales in Volume III of The Earthly Paradise. The first is a mere allusion to Micklegarth in the passage in which Rolf, the captain of the Wanderers, introduces his story “The Man who Never Laughed Again” and recalls how he first heard the tale when his father was a member of the Varangian Guard.¹²⁰ Later, when one of the other mariners is about to relate the story “The Lovers of Gudrun,” we are given a beautiful and sympathetic description, thirty-four lines long, of Iceland and its people.¹²¹ Here as in the published prologue to his translation of the Grettis saga, Morris dwells on the contrast between the barrenness and roughness of the land and the nobility and courage of the men and women who lived there long ago. The passage opens up with the lines,

        Then spake a Wanderer: “Long the tale I tell,
        Though in few years the deeds thereof befell,
        In a strange land and barren, far removed
        From southlands and their bliss; yet folk beloved,
        Yearning for love, striving ‘gainst change and hate,
        Strong, uncomplaining, yet compassionate,
        Have dwelt therein …”¹²²

It is interesting to note that Morris considered it worth while to interrupt his description with the statement that the tale that was to follow was historically true; he probably thought it expedient to inform his readers beforehand that the story they were about to read was of a totally different nature from the other poems in the collection, all of which were based on legends or fairy tales. He says,

        “…know withal that we
        Have ever deemed this tale as true to be,
        As thought those very Dwellers in Laxdale,
        Risen from the dead had told us their own tale.”¹²³

With these remarks I shall conclude my comments on the Scandinavian elements in the third volume of The Earthly Paradise.

As I have stated before, Part Three was published at the end of 1869. During the late fall of this year and the early winter of the next, Morris was engaged in a number of undertakings, most of which reflected in one way or another his interest in Scandinavia. Thus, as I have already pointed out, he was at work during this time on a translation of the Völsunga saga and of the heroic lays of the Poetic Edda.¹²⁴ There is also reason to believe, as I shall show presently, that it was now that he composed “The Fostering of Aslaug,” the only Scandinavian poem he included in the last volume of The Earthly Paradise, which appeared a year later.¹²⁵ Moreover, he seems at this time to have begun turning Norse ballads into English; the manuscript of his rendering of “Hafbur og Signe” is dated February 4, 1870.¹²⁶ Finally, it should be noted that in February of 1870 he resumed the production of illuminated manuscripts; during the next four or five years he spent almost all of his leisure time at this work, turning out a surprisingly large number of illuminated manuscripts both of his own original compositions and translations and of the works of other authors.¹²⁷ A great many of these manuscripts were copies of his Icelandic saga-renderings, and are of great interest for this study. These works and his ballad translations I shall discuss in detail in the next chapter, when I describe the Scandinavian work Morris carried on in the years 1871 to 1876.¹²⁸