Viking Tales by Jennie Hall (best classic books TXT) 📖

Possibly this book seems made up of four or five disconnected stories. They are, however, strung upon one thread,—the westward emigration from Norway. The story of Harald is intended to serve in two ways towards the working out of this plot. It gives the general setting that continues throughout the book in costume, houses, ideals, habits. It explains the cause of the emigration from the mother country. It is really an introductory chapter. As for the other stories, they are distinctly steps in the progress of the plot. A chain of islands loosely connects Norway with America,—Orkneys and Shetlands, Faroes, Iceland, Greenland. It was from link to link of this chain that the Norsemen sailed in search of home and adventure. Discoveries were made by accident. Ships were driven by the wind from known island to unknown. These two points,—the island connection that made possible the long voyage from Norway to America, and the contribution of storm to discovery,—I have stated in the book only dramatically. I emphasize them here, hoping that the teacher will make sure that the children see them, and possibly that they state them abstractly.

Let me speak as to the proper imaging of the stories. I have not often interrupted incident with special description, not because I do not consider the getting of vivid and detailed images most necessary to full enjoyment and to proper intellectual habits, but because I trusted to the pictures of this book and to the teacher to do what seemed to me inartistic to do in the story. Some of these descriptions and explanations I have introduced into the book in the form of notes, hoping that the children in turning to them might form a habit of insisting upon full understanding of a point, and might possibly, with the teacher's encouragement, begin the habit of reference reading.

The landscape of Norway, Iceland, and Greenland is wonderful and will greatly assist in giving reality and definiteness to the stories. Materials for this study are not difficult of access. Foreign colored photographs of Norwegian landscape are becoming common in our art stores. There are good illustrations in the geographical works referred to in the book list. These could be copied upon the blackboard. There are three books beautifully illustrated in color that it will be possible to find only in large libraries,—"Coast of Norway," by Walton; "Travels in the Island of Iceland," by Mackenzie; "Voyage en Islande et au Gröenland," by J. P. Gaimard. If the landscape is studied from the point of view of formation, the images will be more accurate and more easily gained, and the study will have a general value that will continue past the reading of these stories into all work in geography.

Trustworthy pictures of Norse houses and costumes are difficult to obtain. In "Viking Age" and "Story of Norway," by Boyesen (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York), are many copies of Norse antiquities in the fashion of weapons, shield-bosses, coins, jewelry, wood-carving. These are, of course, accurate, but of little interest to children. Their chief value lies in helping the teacher to piece together a picture that she can finally give to her pupils.

Metal-working and wood-carving were the most important arts of the Norse. If children study products of these arts and actually do some of the work, they will gain a quickened sympathy with the people and an appreciation of their power. They may, perhaps, make something to merely illustrate Norse work; for instance, a carved ship's-head, or a copper shield, or a wrought door-nail. But, better, they may apply Norse ideas of form and decoration and Norse processes in making some modern thing that they can actually use; for instance, a carved wood pin-tray or a copper match holder. This work should lead out into a study of these same industries among ourselves with visits to wood-working shops and metal foundries.

Frequent drawn or painted illustration by the children of costumes, landscapes, houses, feast halls, and ships will help to make these images clear. But dramatization will do more than anything else for the interpreting of the stories and the characters. It would be an excellent thing if at last, through the dramatization and the handwork, the children should come into sufficient understanding and enthusiasm to turn skalds and compose songs in the Norse manner. This requires only a small vocabulary and a rough feeling for simple rhythm, but an intensity of emotion and a great vividness of image.

These Norse stories have, to my thinking, three values. The men, with the crude courage and the strange adventures that make a man interesting to children, have at the same time the love of truth, the hardy endurance, the faithfulness to plighted word, that make them a child's fit companions. Again, in form and in matter old Norse literature is well worth our reading. I should deem it a great thing accomplished if the children who read these stories should so be tempted after a while to read those fine old books, to enjoy the tales, to appreciate straightforwardness and simplicity of style. The historical value of the story of Leif Ericsson and the others seems to me to be not to learn the fact that Norsemen discovered America before Columbus did, but to gain a conception of the conditions of early navigation, of the length of the voyage, of the dangers of the sea, and a consequent realization of the reason for the fact that America was unknown to mediæval Europe, of why the Norsemen did not travel, of what was necessary to be done before men should strike out across the ocean. Norse story is only one chapter in that tale of American discovery. I give below an outline of a year's work on the subject that was once followed by the fourth grade of the Chicago Normal School. The idea in it is to give importance, sequence, reasonableness, broad connections, to the discovery of America.

The head of the history department who planned this course says it is "in a sense a dramatization of the development of geographical knowledge."

Following is a bare topical outline of the work: