Hans of Iceland

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

“AS HE DESCENDED, HE CAUGHT THE SORROWFUL AND TENDER ACCENTS OF THE WORD ‘FAREWELL'”1

VICTOR ' HUGO

Preface To The First Edition

The author of this work, from the day when he wrote the first page, up to the hour when he was able to inscribe the grateful word u finis ” at the bottom of the last, was the sport of a most ridiculous illusion. Imagining that a literary production in four volumes was worthy of some degree of premeditation, he wasted his time searching for a fundamental idea ; in developing it, well or ill, upon a plan good or bad ; in arranging his scenes, combining effects, in studying as thoroughly as possible the conditions, — -in a word, he took his book seriously.

It is only at this stage of affairs, — at the moment when, in conformity with usage, authors leave off where readers begin, — when he was about to elaborate a long preface, which was to serve as a protecting shield for his book, and to contain, together with an exposition of the literary and moral principles upon which its conception depended, a more or less rapid review of the different historical events involved, and a more or less complete topographical survey of the country where the story is laid ; only at this moment, be it repeated, has the author discovered his mistake, recognized the utter insignificance and frivolity of the puppets in whose behalf he has so studiously blackened so much paper, and realized how thoroughly he has, as it were, mystified himself in supposing that this romance could, except in very limited terms, be regarded as a literary production, or that these four volumes would make a book.

He therefore wisely resolved, after making all due apologies, to say nothing more whatever in this preface, which his

Preface To The First Edition

publisher will consequently take pains to print in big type. He will not inform the reader either as to his name or his surnames ; whether he is young or old, married or single ; whether he has made elegies, or fables, or odes, or satires; or whether he desires to make tragedies, or dramas, or comedies ; whether he poses as a literary aristocrat in an academy, or whether he holds a position on a newspaper, — and yet all these things would be very interesting, if known. He will simply content himself with observing that the descriptive portions of his romance have been a source of particular solicitude ; that those romantic characters, the K’s, the Y’s, the H’s, and the W’s, which appear frequently, have really been employed with extreme sobriety, — witness, for instance, the historic name of “ Guldenlew,” which several chroniclers write “ Guldenloëwe,” and which the author has not dared to venture on ; that, moreover, the numerous diphthongs have been varied with much taste and elegance ; and, finally, that all the chapters are preceded by strange and mysterious epigraphs, which give a singular interest and a characteristic physiognomy to each division of the book.

January, 1823.

Preface To The Second Edition

The author of this work has been informed that it is absolutely necessary to devote a few lines, by way of advertisement, preface, or introduction, to this second edition. In vain has he pleaded that the four or five unlucky and meaningless pages prefixed to the first edition, and which the publisher has obstinately refused to suppress, have already drawn down the anathemas of one of our most honorable and distinguished writers,1 11 who has accused the author of assuming “the sub-acid' tone ” of the illustrious Jedediah Cleishbotham, schoolmaster and sexton of Gandercleugh parish. In vain has he pleaded that this brilliant and judicious critic, so severe upon the first fault, would doubtless be pitiless at its repetition ; in vain has he presented, to put it briefly, a multitude of other reasons, not less good, for avoiding a second fall. It is clear that they must have been met by better ones; for here he is at this moment writing a second preface, after having so deeply repented the writing of the first. When the task was fairly determined upon, he first thought of placing at the forefront of this second edition, what he had not dared to impose upon the first, that is, certain general and particular views regarding the romance. Meditating upon this little literary and didactic treatise, he was still in the all too brief mysterious intoxication of composition, — when the author, thinking to grasp an ideal perfection that is beyond his reach, is thoroughly wrapped up in the progress of his work, — it was, be it repeated, at this

1 C. Nodier; Quotidienne , March 12.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

moment of interior ecstasy, when work is a delight and secret intimacy with the Muse seems sweeter far than the dazzling pursuit of glory, — it was then that one of his friends, the wisest of all, came and snatched him rudely from his dreamy abstraction, assuring him that many very eminent, very popular, and very influential men of letters would find the dissertation, which he was maliciously preparing, nothing less than insipid and dull ; that the dolorous necessities of criticism, with which these men are charged in divers public prints, imposing upon them the painful necessity of relentlessly pursuing the monster of romanticism and bad taste, they would devote themselves, without a minute’s delay, to the preparation for certain impartial and intelligent journals, of a conscientious, logical, and, more than all, a pungent criticism upon the potential dissertation aforesaid. At this terrible warning the poor author —

that is to say, he had no other resource but to leave in the limbo whence he was about to fetch it a dissertation, “ virgin and yet unborn,” as Jean Baptiste Rousseau has it, upon which criticism so just and implacable was about to sharpen its fangs. His friend advised him to replace it simply with a sort of “ publisher's announcement,” through which medium he could, with entire decency, say all the pretty little things that tickle so sweetly an author’s ears. In fact, numerous models taken from works very much in favor were presented to him. Some of them began with these words : “ The immense and popular success of this work,” and so on; others started off in this way : “ The European celebrity which this romance has acquired,” and so on ; others declared : “ It is a wholly superfluous task to praise this book, since universal opinion maintains that the most ardent laudation is far beneath its merit”; and so forth, and so forth. Although

1 “Was stupified; his hair stood up; and his voice stuck in his throat.”

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

these different formulas, according to the discreet counsellor, were not without a certain virtue in their favor, the author of this book did not feel that he was possessed of sufficient paternal humility and indifference to expose his work to the disenchantment and exactions of a reader who had been served with these magnificent apologies ; neither did he feel that he had enough effrontery to imitate the travelling mountebanks, who, to stimulate the curiosity of the public, paint a crocodile upon a piece of canvas, and behind it exhibit, to those who have paid their money, nothing but a lizard.

He rejected, therefore, the astonishing idea of sounding his own praises through the mouths of those indulgent gentlemen, his publishers. His friend then suggested, as a sort of passport to his villanous, brigandly island, something that would bring it into the prevailing mode and excite fashionable sympathy, such as delicate pleasantries concerning marquises, bitter sarcasms about priests, and ingenious allusions in regard to nuns, monks, and other monsters of the social order. The author would have asked for nothing better ; but, to tell the truth, it did not seem to him that marquises and monks had any very direct relation to the work which he has published. He might, indeed, have borrowed other colors from the same palette, and thrown in here a few philanthropic pages, in which, — always avoiding prudently the dangerous shoals concealed beneath the seas of philosophy and known as the “ correctional tribunal,” — he might have brought forward some of the truths discovered by the wise for the glory of man and the consolation of the dying ; for instance, that a man is nothing but a brute, that the soul is only a little gas of more or less density, and that God is nothing. But it occurred to him that these incontestable truths were already well known and not of much importance, and that he would be adding barely one scant drop to the deluge of rational morality, atheistic religions, maxims, doctrines, and principles, which inundate us for our happiness after we are thirty years old, with such overwhelming force that one might, if it were

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

not irreverent to do so, apply to them Régnier’ s verses upon the storm : —

Moreover, these lofty themes have no very obvious connection with the subject of this book; and the author would have been very much embarrassed in trying to bridge the chasm, in spite of the fact that the art of transition has been singularly simplified, since so many eminent men have discovered the secret of passing without a shock from a market-stall to a palace, and of exchanging without any appearance of incongruity a soldier’s fatigue cap for a civic crown.

Realizing, then, his inability to bring forth, either by talent or knowledge, — “ by wings or by beak,” as an ingenious Arabian verse has it, — a preface that would be interesting to his readers, the author has determined to offer to them here nothing but a serious and candid account of the corrections that have been made in this second edition.

First of all he desires to say that the term “ second edition ” is decidedly out of place, and that the title of “ first edition” is really applicable to this reprinting, inasmuch as the four unsymmetrical packages of black-and-white spotted grayish paper, which an indulgent public has been kind enough hitherto to accept as the four volumes of Hans of Iceland, have been so desecrated with typographical incongruities by a barbarous printer, that the unhappy author, in looking over his unrecognizable offspring, underwent continually the agony which a father might feel on recovering his child, mutilated and tattooed at the hands of the Iroquois of Lake Ontario.

Here the “ esclavage ” (slavery) of suicide became “ usage ” (custom) ; elsewhere typographical manipulation gave to a “ lien ” (fetter) the voice of a “ lion ” ; further on, the moun-

1 The water fell from the clouds in such a flood,

That the dogs could drink it up, just as they stood.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

tain of Dof re-Field was deprived of its “pics ” (peaks), and furnished with “pieds” (feet); and when the Norwegian fishermen undertook to moor their boats in the “ criques ” (inlets), they pushed their craft up on the “ briques ” (bricks). Not to weary the reader, the author will pass over in silence the numerous outrages of this kind that have left their mark upon his embittered memory, —

Enough to say that there is no grotesque simile, no uncouth meaning, no absurdity of thought, no inconsistency of form, no idle burlesque, that the industrious stupidity of ignorance of this puzzle-devising printer’s foreman has not made him express. Any one, alas, who has had occasion in the course of his life to get a dozen lines put into print, were it only a marriage announcement or a burial notice, is aware of the profound bitterness associated with a grief of this kind !

It is therefore with the most scrupulous care that the proofs have been revised for this new impression; and now the author dares to believe, together with one or two of his intimate friends, that the restored romance is worthy of taking its place among the glorious writings, in presence of which “the eleven stars bow down as if in presence of the moon and sun.” 2

If the newspaper critics accuse the author of not having revised his text, he will take the liberty of sending to them the proofs of his regenerated book, blackened with the record of microscopic labor, — for it is said there still remain among these gentlemen more than one doubting Thomas.

For the rest, the benevolent reader will observe that numerous dates have been corrected, several historical notes added, and, more particularly, that one or two chapters have been enriched with new epigraphs. In a word, he will find

1 Deep in his breast remains the wound.

2 Alkoran.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

on every page changes, the extreme importance of which can only be measured by that of the work itself.

An impertinent adviser desires that the author should place at the foot of his pages translations of all the Latin phrases that Doctor Spiagudry scatters through the volume, for the edification — thus he went on — of certain bricklayers, braziers, and hair-dressers, who edit certain journals, before which Hans of Iceland may perhaps come up for judgment. It may easily be imagined with what indignation the author received this insidious advice. He instantly informed the untimely joker that all journalists, without distinction, are perfect luminaries of urbanity, erudition, and good faith; and begged him to have the decency to believe that he was not to be reckoned among the number of those ungrateful citizens who are always ready to address to the censors of taste and genius this malicious verse from an ancient poet, —

that he, in fact, was far from believing that the “ lion’s skin ” was not the natural covering of these popular dignitaries.

Still another has exhorted him — for he owes it to his readers to make a clean breast of the whole matter — to put his name upon the title-page of this romance, which up to now has figured as the abandoned child of an unknown father. It must be confessed that, in addition to the satisfaction of seeing the seven or eight Roman letters, making up what they call his name, standing out in handsome black lines on the fine white paper, there is a certain decided charm in the idea of seeing it shine forth in isolation upon the back of the printed cover, as if the work which it enclosed, far from being the only monument of the author’s genius, were only a single column of a stately temple, some day to be the shrine of his immortality, and only an inadequate example of his hidden talent and unpublished glory. That, at the very least, would

Keep to your skins and never judge anybody.

Preface To The Second Edition

IT prove an intention to be some day an illustrious and important writer. To triumph over this new temptation, the author has been obliged to fall back upon the fear that he would never be able to struggle through the crowd of scribblers, among whom, even in casting off his anonymity, he would always be “ the unknown.”

As to the objection that several delicate-eared amateurs have brought forward, touching the barbarous uncouthness of Norwegian names, he considers it to be entirely justifiable ; and he proposes, as soon as he shall have been elected to membership in the Royal Society of Stockholm or the Bergen Academy, to suggest to the good-natured Norsemen a change of language, on the ground that the villanous jargon which they are so odd as to employ is an offence to Parisian hearing, and that their grotesque names, as rugged as their cliffs, have upon the sensitive tongues of those who attempt to pronounce them doubtless much the same effect that their bear’s oil and bark-bread would have upon the acute and sensitive perceptions of a cultivated palate.

It remains for him to extend his thanks to the eight or ten persons who have had the kindness to read his book entirely through, and who have thus demonstrated the truly prodigious success which it has obtained. He also wishes to express his gratitude to those among his fair readers who, as he is informed, have evolved for themselves out of his book an ideal author for Hans of Iceland. He is infinitely flattered when they endow him with red hair, a curly beard, and fiery eyes ; he is ashamed to think that they do him the honor of believing that he never trims his nails ; but he supplicates them upon his knees not to think for a moment that he carries his ferocity to the extent of devouring little children alive. However, all these details will be determined when his fame has ascended to the level of that of the authors of Lolotte arid Fanfan, or Puss in Boots, — those transcendent creatures, twins in genius and taste, “ arcades arnbof — and there shall be placed at the head of his works his por-

He was about to close this already too long note when his publisher, at the moment of sending the work to the newspapers, has asked him to prepare a few little notices setting forth its merits, adding, to obviate all possibility of objection on the part of the author, that his “ writing will not be made known,” and that he — .the publisher — will “copy them himself.” This last suggestion is really quite touching. Since it is evident that in this epoch every person of distinction feels bound to instruct his neighbor with regard to his capabilities and personal perfections, — matters concerning which no one could be better informed than the wearers of them, — as, moreover, this latest temptation is a sufficiently strong one, the author believes that, in case he should succumb, he ought to warn the public never to take seriously more than half of what the newspapers say about his book.

HANS OF ICELAND.

Chapter I

Did you see it ? Did you see it ? Did you see it ? Oh, did you see it ? Who saw it ? Who did see it ? For mercy’s sake, who saw it ? — Sterne : Tristram, Shandy.

“You see what love leads to, friend Niels. That poor Guth Stersen would never be stretched out on that great black stone, like a starfish cast up by the sea, if she had never thought of anything else but patching up her father’s boat, and mending the fish-nets of our old comrade. May St. U suph, the fisherman, console him in his affliction ! ” “And her lover,” put in a shrill and trembling voice; “Gill Stadt, the fine young man that’s close beside her — he wouldn’t be there if, instead of making love to Guth and hunting for a fortune in those cursed Roerass mines, he had spent his youth in swinging his younger brother’s cradle under the smoky beams of his cottage.”

“Your memory grows old with you, mother Oily,” interrupted neighbor Niels, whom the first speaker had addressed ; “ Gill never had a brother, and so the sorrow of poor widow Stadt is all the more bitter, for her cabin is now wholly deserted. When she looks to heaven for help, her eyes light upon the empty cradle, still Ranging from the roof, of her child who has grown to a big young man, and is dead.”

“ Poor mother,” responded old Oily. “ As for the young man, it was his own fault. Why did he turn miner at Roerass ? ”

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“It’s true enough/’ said Niels, “that those infernal mines rob us of a man for every stiver of copper we get from them. Isn’t that so, neighbor Braal ? ”

“ Those miners are fools,” replied the fisherman. “ Fish don’t have to leave the water to make a living, and a man ought not to go underground.”

“ But,” queried a young man in the crowd, “ suppose that Gill Stadt was obliged to work in the mines to win a wife ? ”

“It’s not right to risk one’s life for a fancy that’s not worth the penalty. It’s a fine marriage-bed that Gill has made for his Guth.”

“ Did the girl drown herself in despair at the young man’s death ? ” asked one who stood by.

“ Who said that ? ” cried a soldier, who had just forced his way through the throng. “ This young girl, whom I knew very well, was in fact engaged to a young miner, who not long ago was crushed in a blast in one of the lower levels of Storwaadsgrube, near Roerass ; but she was also the mistress of one of my comrades, and day before yesterday, when she was trying to steal her way into Munckholm to celebrate the death of her betrothed with her lover, the boat she was in was capsized on a reef, and she was drowned.”

A confused medley of voices arose. “ That can’t be true, master soldier ! ” exclaimed the old women, while the young ones were silent, and neighbor Niels wickedly reminded Braal, the fisherman, of his former words, “ You see what love leads to!”

The soldier was in a fair way to get very angry with his feminine dissentients. He had saluted them as “ old witches out of Quiragoth’s Cave,” and they were showing little disposition to endure patiently so serious an insult, when a strident and imperious voice, crying, “ Peace, peace, you crones ! ” put an end to the discussion. Silence followed, like that which pervades a flock of hens when the master of the feathered harem orders them to be quiet.

Before narrating the scene that followed, it perhaps will

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be worth while to describe the place where it occurred. It was — as no doubt the reader has already fancied — one of those melancholy structures consecrated by public pity and social necessity to serve as a last asylum for the unknown dead, whose lives, for the most part, have been anything but happy ; a place where the thoughtless sightseer, the cynical or charitable observer, and often the friends and weeping relatives, gather, the latter through long and insupportable anxiety being left with only this deplorable hope. At this distant epoch, and in the comparatively uncivilized country to which I have transported the reader, they had not as yet devised the plan adopted in our dirty, gilded cities, of transforming such places into ingeniously gloomy and elegantly funereal monuments. No light entered there through a tomblike opening along an artistically sculptured vault, to fall upon a series of resting-places that seem to have been devised to give the dead some of the comforts of the living, and where even the support for the head is shaped like a sleeper’s pillow. If the keeper’s door stood open, the eye, wearied with the inspection of naked and hideous corpses, could not have the pleasure, as with us, of lighting upon elegant furniture and merry children. Here death appeared in its native ugliness and in all its horror, and no effort had as yet been made to bedeck its grisly form with trinkets and with ribbons.

The room where the present company had gathered was large and dark, and the very darkness made it seem larger than it really was. The only light that entered came through a low, square door opening upon Drontheim quay, and through a rudely contrived opening in the ceiling, whence it descended in pale, wan rays, with rain and hail and snow, according to the weather, upon the dead bodies arranged directly beneath. The room was divided by an iron railing breast-high. The public came in to the first section through the square door, and saw beyond the railing six long pieces of black granite placed in the foreground, side by side. A little side door

9-2

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gave access to each section, for the keeper and his assistant, whose lodgings were at the rear of the structure, bordering on the sea. The miner and his betrothed lay upon two of these granite beds. Decomposition had already begun to show itself upon the girl’s body, in the broad blue and purplish streaks marking the course of the blood-vessels upon her limbs. Gill’s features were stern and sombre, but the body was so horribly mutilated that it was impossible to form any opinion regarding the assertion of mother Oily about his physical beauty.

Before these disfigured bodies, and amid the gazing crowd, the conversation previously recorded began again. A tall, gaunt old man, seated, with folded arms and bowed head, upon a rickety stool in the darkest corner of the apartment, and apparently paying no attention to what was going on, suddenly got up and exclaimed, “ Peace, peace, you crones ! ” and walked over and seized the soldier by the arm.

Every one was silent, until the soldier turned and broke into a tremendous outburst of laughter at the sight of this singular personage, whose emaciated face, scanty and uncombed locks, long fingers, and garb of reindeer skin, amply justified the hilarious reception. The women, however, who had been silenced for a moment, began to murmur.

“ It’s the keeper of the Spladgest.1 Cursed janitor of the dead ! That devil of a Spiagudry ! Infernal sorcerer ! ”

“ Peace, crones, peace ! If this is your witches’ sabbath, hurry to your brooms, or they will fly away from you. Trouble no further this honorable descendant of the mighty Thor.” Then Spiagudry, assuming with difficulty an ingratiating grimace, turned to the soldier, and said, “ You tell me, my good man, that this miserable woman ” —

“ The old scoundrel,” muttered Oily ; “ yes, we’re all ‘ miserable women,’ because when our bodies fall into his claws he gets a fee of only thirty ascalins, while for the carcass of a worthless man he gets full forty.”

1 The morgue at Drontheim is so called.

HANS OF ICELAND.

“ Silence, you witches,” exclaimed Spiagudry. “ Why, these devils’ daughters are like their caldrons ; when they’re heated, they boil and bubble. Tell me now, sir knight of the sword, did your comrade, who had Guth for his mistress, go and kill himself in despair at losing her ? ”

At this point the long-restrained explosion burst forth. “ Listen to the old sinner, the old pagan,” shrieked twenty strident and discordant voices ; “ how glad he’d be to know that there was one living man the less, that he might get forty ascalins for the body ! ”

“ And if that be true,” responded the keeper of the Spladgest, “ has not our gracious king and master, Christiern V., whom St. Hospitius bless, proclaimed himself the born protector of all miners, that when they die he may enrich his royal treasury with their pitiful heritage ? ”

“ You do too much honor to the king,” responded Braal, the fisherman, “ to compare the royal treasury to the strong box of your charnel-house, and him to you, neighbor Spiagudry.”

“ Neighbor ! ” said the keeper, offended with so much familiarity. “ Your neighbor ! Say rather your host ; for it may very well be some day, my fine boat propeller, that I shall have you for a week as the tenant of one of my six stone beds. And yet,” he added with a laugh, “ if I spoke of the soldier’s death it was simply because I wanted to see an old custom perpetuated, — That of committing suicide as a sequel to the noble and tragic passions which these ladies have the privilege to inspire.”

“Oh, come now, corpse-like keeper of corpses,” said the soldier ; “ what are you trying to get at, with that amiable grin of yours, which looks more than anything else like a gallows-bird’s last smile ? ”

“Well said, my fine fellow,” responded Spiagudry. “I always thought that there was more clever wit under the helmit of soldier Thurn, who lays out the devil with sword and tongue, than under the mitre of Bishop Isleif, who wrote

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the history of Iceland, or under the four-cornered hat of Professor Shoenning, the memorialist of our cathedral.”

“ In that case, if you will be advised by me, old leathersack, you will give up your charnel-house fees, and sell yourself as a curiosity to the viceregal museum at Bergen. I swear to you, by St. Belphegor, that they would pay your weight in gold for such a rare specimen of animal as you are. But tell me, what do you want with me ? ”

“ When the bodies brought here have been taken from the water, we are obliged to give up half the fees to the fishermen. I only wanted to beg of you, illustrious and soldierly descendant of the house of Thurn, to get your unfortunate comrade not to drown himself, but to choose some other method of death. It ought to be a matter of indifference to him ; and he would not wish, in his last moments, to wrong the unfortunate Christian to whose tender mercies his corpse will be consigned, — if, indeed, the loss of Guth will really drive him to a deed so desperate.”

“ That’s where you deceive yourself, my beneficent and hospitable keeper. My comrade will not have the pleasure of being received in your cheerful six-bedded tavern. Does it occur to you that he may already have consoled himself with another charmer for the death of this one ? Why, by my beard, he was weary of your Guth full long ago.”