CHAPTER XXIII. 



IDROTTIR.- -POETRY OR SCALDSHIP, MUSIC AND MENTAL 



EXERCISES. 



Poetry a gift from the gods The scald Many sagas based on poems Honour 

 paid to poets Their moral power Poets on the battle-field Recital of 

 poems at feasts Saga telling Forms of poetry The harp Parables 

 and puzzles Gest's riddles. 



POETRY (or Scaldship) was reckoned among the Iclrottir, and 

 was considered a gift from the gods. The people looked to 

 their poets to perpetuate in songs and transmit to future 

 generations the deeds of their heroes, and the fame which was 

 to cling to their names when they had gone to Valhalla. 

 From these poets, or scalds, we learn all we know of the history 

 of the earlier Norse tribes ; from their songs the people 

 heard of the birth of their religion ; of the creation of the 

 world, of the wisdom of the past, &c. Without them the 

 history and deeds of the race must have been lost to us, and we 

 would only have had left the antiquities of the early times to 

 ponder over. These songs filled the youth of the country 

 who listened to them with ambition, urging them to emulate 

 the deeds of those whose praises were sung. 



In no literature which has come down to us do we see dying 

 heroes such as Ragnar Lodbrok, Hjalrnar, Orvar Odd, and 

 others, singing the deeds they had accomplished as life is 

 ebbing away from them, and they are ready to enter into 

 Hel. Whether these heroes sang these songs at such a 

 time or not, or whether they were written by poets at a 

 later time, matters little. The people of the land believed 

 in them. 



In this peculiar branch of poetry the earlier Norsemen 

 stand wholly apart from those of other lands. 



