"Norse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as the poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped, and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of some time in the far future "standing a chance" of having an ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... English national weapon in early times. It was originally used by the Norse tribes, and was brought into Western Europe by Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, a direct ancestor of William the Conqueror. When the Normans invaded England they carried the long-bow with them, and as the Saxons had no weapon so ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dici, quia unus eorum praecedit, alius subsequitur, nomina acceperunt": alluding to the Anglo-Saxon Calendar, which designated the months of December and January as aeerre-geola and aeftera-geola, the former and the latter Yule. Both Skeat and Wedgwood derive it from the old Norse jol, which means feasting and revelry. Mr. J.F. Hodgetts, in an article entitled "Paganism in Modern Christianity" (Antiquary, December 1882, p. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... holy; Osiris was at times regarded as a Tree-spirit (1); and in inscriptions is referred to as "the solitary one in the acacia"—which reminds us curiously of the "burning bush." The same is true of others of the gods; in the old Norse mythology Ygdrasil was the great branching World-Ash, abode of the soul of the universe; the Peepul or Bo-tree in India is very sacred and must on no account be cut down, seeing that gods and spirits dwell among its branches. It is of the nature ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Fair Head, and then later at Rathlin Island, where their fate met them at last, as Deirdre had prophesied. It is a sad story, and we can easily weep at the thrilling moment when, there being no man among the Ultonians to do the king's bidding, a Norse captive takes Naisi's magic sword and strikes off the heads of the three sons of Usnach with one swift blow, and Deirdre, falling prone upon the dead bodies, chants a lament; and when she has finished singing, she puts her pale cheek against Naisi's, and dies; and a great ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lectured and read for a life-time. When the historian fully realizes his ignorance — which sometimes happens to Americans — he becomes even more tiresome to himself than to others, because his naivete is irrepressible. Adams could not get over his astonishment, though he had preached the Norse doctrine all his life against the stupid and beer-swilling Saxon boors whom Freeman loved, and who, to the despair of science, produced Shakespeare. Mere contact with Norway started voyages of thought, and, under their illusions, he took the mail steamer ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the cunning phase of piratical life. These villains had at that time been about six months on their cruise. They had made the entire circuit of Borneo, murdering, and plundering, and striking terror and desolation wherever they went. The scenes enacted by Norse pirates in the tenth century were repeated in the middle of the nineteenth by a people who, unlike the Norsemen, had no regard whatever for law; and now they were returning ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... has conjectured that it was probably brought from Iona about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and erected in Barra at the head of a grave made by a son of McNeil for himself. But it is believed to have been in any case a Norse memorial in the first instance, though certainly Christian, for ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... sympathy with roguery, however, is a very different thing from a delight in extravagance. That, too, is a universal passion, but not so native to the Teuton as to Celt or Finn or Oriental. Its absence is what most differentiates Old Norse literature from Old Irish, with which it so early came into contact. It is in travelers' tales and in the tales of seamen and in the writing that was based on these, in rare moments of religious or romantic ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Englishmen of recent generations, and not by Danish immigrants of the ninth century. To balance the anomaly of what certainly wears a faint soupcon of anachronism—namely, the apparent anticipation of the modern Norse word field, Mr. Ferguson's conjecture would take a headlong plunge into good classical English. Now of this there is no other instance. Even the little swells of ground, that hardly rise to the dignity of hills, which might be expected to submit readily to changing appellations, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... "The old Norse stories bear being told again and again. Mr. Mabie keeps their freshness, fascination and simplicity in his new version of them, and one reads with unabated pleasure of Odin's search for wisdom, of the wooing of Gerd, and of all the strange ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... bandage around his head, and the straining, glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodies and aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... thrown to the winds upon this great occasion. The far-famed pagan battle flag, the Raven Standard, was unfurled, and floated freely over the host. The War-arrow had been industriously sent round to all the neighbouring shores, peopled largely at that time with men of Norse blood. As the fleet swept south it had gathered in contingents from every island along the Scotch coast, upon which Viking settlements had been established. Manx men, too, and men from the Scandinavian settlements of Angelsea, Danes under ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... children of her daughter, who had married William de Barri, behind them in valour. No less than eighteen knights of this extraordinary family took part in the conquest, where in feats of war they renewed the glories of their ancestors both Norse and Welsh; a son of Nesta's, David, the Bishop of St. David's, gave his sympathy and help; while her grandson, Gerald de Barri, became the famous historian ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... admitted that I am wearing a bow-tie: but on careful research I find that these were constantly worn by Vikings. A distinct allusion to them is made in that fine fragment, the Tryggvhessa Saga, where the poet says, in the short alliterative lines of Early Norse poetry: ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... that exactly the same tradition is reechoed by the mountains of Norway and Sweden in the ballad of "Sir Olaf and the Erl-king's Daughter," which the milkmaid of Brittany sings in the lay of the "Sieur Nann and the Korigan," and in a language radically different from the Norse,—when, here and there, the same forms of superstition meet us in the ancient popular poetry of the Servians and modern Greeks, which were familiar to the Teutonic and Cambrian races of early centuries,—must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... glanced at her curiously from his point of vantage in the rear. She was like no other girl whom he had met, but somewhere, in pictured form, he must surely have seen such a face, for it struck some sleeping chord of memory. A fantasy perhaps of some Norse goddess or Flame Deity; a wild, weird head, painted in reds and whites, with wonderful shaded locks, and small white face aglow with the fire within. His lips twisted in an involuntary smile. Could anything be more ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... conditions under which Joseph Priestley did the work which lay before him, and then, as the Norse Sagas say, went out of the story. The work itself was of the most varied kind. No human interest was without its attraction for Priestley, and few men have ever had so many irons in the fire at once; but, though he may have burned his fingers a little, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Norseman," and having neither a reading nor speaking acquaintance with the Norse language, I am unable to decide abstruse points on which such learned doctors disagree; but not being altogether without some practical experience of English and French drama, I venture to call in question not only ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... in a loud voice to say a paternoster, not in Norse but in Latin, as had been the use of the country before his time. And as he uttered each word of the prayer he pointed with his finger at one of those who sat with him at the table. He went through them ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... both of which places he took, destroying the Moors by hundreds. He subsequently 'harried' the southern coasts of Spain on his voyage to Constantinople. But this occurred some two hundred years after the affair of Seville mentioned in the Handbook. It does not appear that the Norse ever made any serious attempt to establish their power in Spain; had they done so we have no doubt that they would have succeeded. We entertain all due respect for the courage and chivalry of the Moors, especially those of ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... left incomplete: it only hides its records, while fire destroys them. In the Norse Edda, when the gods try their games, they find themselves able to out-drink the ocean, but not to eat like the flame. Logi, or fire, licks up food and trencher and all. This chimney is more voracious than the sea. Give time enough, and all which yonder depths contain ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Kali, oread[obs3], the Great Spirit, Ushas; water nymph, wood nymph; Yama, Varuna, Zeus; Vishnu[Hindu deities], Siva, Shiva, Krishna, Juggernath[obs3], Buddha; Isis[Egyptian deities], Osiris, Ra; Belus, Bel, Baal[obs3], Asteroth &c.[obs3]; Thor[Norse deities], Odin; Mumbo Jumbo; good genius, tutelary genius; demiurge, familiar; sibyl; fairy, fay; sylph,, sylphid; Ariel[obs3], peri, nymph, nereid, dryad, seamaid, banshee, benshie[obs3], Ormuzd; Oberon, Mab, hamadryad[obs3], naiad, mermaid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a slender hand-rail. Here the bottom of the cave seemed to have dropped out, and the roof to have gone in search of it; and but for the dim glimpse of the rock on the other side one might have suspected that this bridge would launch him into that ungeographical locality called, in the old Norse mythology, "Ginnunga Gap,"—a place where there was neither side, edge, nor bottom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... newness of the plot and incidents of Aylwin.' He seems to have forgotten, however, that one incident—the most daring incident in the book—that of the rifling of a grave for treasure —is not new: it will at once remind folk-lorists of certain practices charged against our old Norse invaders. And students of Celtic and Gaelic literature are familiar with the same idea. Quite, lately, indeed, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his analysis of the Gaelic Agallamh na Senorach, or 'Colloquy of the Elders,' has made some ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... stories enough left, and it is hoped that some in the Red Fairy Book may have the attraction of being less familiar than many of the old friends. The tales have been translated, or, in the case of those from Madame d'Aulnoy's long stories, adapted, by Mrs. Hunt from the Norse, by Miss Minnie Wright from Madame d'Aulnoy, by Mrs. Lang and Miss Bruce from other French sources, by Miss May Sellar, Miss Farquharson, and Miss Blackley from the German, while the story of 'Sigurd' is condensed by the Editor from Mr. William Morris's prose version of the 'Volsunga Saga.' ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... lumberman plundered. Every trunk and limb and leaf lay where it had fallen. At every step the foot sank into the moss, which, like a soft green snow, covered everything, making every stone a cushion and every rock a bed,—a grand old Norse parlor; adorned beyond art ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... who have done most, by untiring, laborious search among old parish registers, etc., and dusty old records, to bring to light interesting social ordinances, details of ancient parish government, and gems of Norse literature and archaeological research, there have been none in the last century who have by patient work attained more knowledge of their country's inner history than ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... remain to this day some traces of the worship paid to Odin in the name given by almost all the people of the north to the fourth day of the week, which was formerly consecrated to him. It is called by a name which signifies "Odin's day;" "Old Norse, Odinsdagr; Swedish and Danish, Onsdag; Anglo-Saxon, Wodenesdaeg, Wodnesdaeg; Dutch, Woensdag; English, Wednesday. As Odin or Wodun was supposed to correspond to the Mercury of the Greeks and Romans, the name of this day was expressed ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... every country of which we have a record. In Egypt Ra was the supreme sun god where there was very elaborate worship conducted in his honor. In Greece, Apollo was attended with similar festivities. In the Norse mythology, many of the myths deal with the worship of the sun in one form or another. In England, Stonehenge and the entire system of the Druids had to do with solar worship. In Central America and Peru, temples to the sun were of amazing splendor, ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... Bald Grim seemed born again in his son Egil. A man of great size, swarthy face, harsh of aspect, and of fierce temper, in him was the old, tameless spirit of the Norse sea-kings, turbulent, passionate, owning no man master, he bent his strong soul to no man's rule. Rash and adventurous, he had a long and stormy career, while nature had endowed him with a rich gift of song, which added to his fame. Such was the type of men ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... Sea-Kings of Norway, by S. Laing; Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, by G. Pigott; Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, by William and Mary Hewitt; Die Edda, von Karl Simrock; Aryan Mythology, by George W. Cox; Norse Tales, by Dasent, etc. But one of the best as well as the most accessible summaries in English of this mythology is Mallet's Northern Antiquities, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library. This edition is edited by Mr. Blackwell with great judgment ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... fair young Olaf came of hardy Norse stock. His father, Harald Graenske, or "Gray-mantle," one of the tributary kings of Norway, had fallen a victim to the tortures of the haughty Swedish queen; and now his son, a boy of scarce thirteen, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... brother author. Only in the bards of Wales and in the Scalds of the Sagas did he seem to find his kindred spirits, though it has been suggested that his complex nature took this means of informing the world that he could read both Cymric and Norse. But we must not be unkind behind the magic door—and yet to be charitable to the uncharitable is ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... met him," said the jam-manufacturer, "he struck me as the queerest man of business—except myself—that I had ever seen. He talked about Norse sagas, witchcraft, and so on, and when he began about business, I felt uneasy. Of course ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... refuge in that ultima Thule, "that they might pray to God in peace"; but whether they did any direct work of conversion is doubtful. The actual conversion came undoubtedly from Norway. A Christian queen lived in Iceland at the end of the ninth century, the wife of the Norse Olaf who was king in Dublin; but little if any impression was made on the heathenism of the people. Nearly a century later an Icelander called Thorwald Kothransson brought a Christian bishop Frederic from Saxony, who wrought some conversions and left a body of baptized Christians behind him. ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... supposition the wild fiction that follows is probably grounded; which, extravagant as it is, possesses something striking to the imagination. Saxo Grammaticus tells us of the fame of two Norse princes or chiefs, who had formed what was called a brotherhood in arms, implying not only the firmest friendship and constant support during all the adventures which they should undertake in life, but binding them by a solemn compact, that after ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... another, stout Ole Thorwald, with several of the white settlers and the greater part of the native force, was guarding the principal approach to the church against immensely superior numbers. And nobly did the descendant of the Norse sea-kings maintain the credit of his warlike ancestors that day. With a sword that might have matched that of Goliath of Gath, he swept the way before him wherever he went, and more than once by a furious onset turned ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... a shelf on the hill slopes near Hutton Buscel, and the detritus was carried to the front of the glacier. This deposit terminates in a crescent-shape and now forms the slightly elevated ground upon which Wykeham Abbey stands. The Norse word Wyke or Vik means a creek or bay, and the fact that such a name was given to this spot would suggest that the Vale was more than marshy in Danish times, and perhaps it even contained enough water to float ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... in the runic inscription it seems to be implied that it was Christ Himself that was so wounded. The allusion is in any case very obscure; but the latter notion makes the better sense, and is capable of being explained by the Norse legend of Balder, who was frequently shot at by the other gods in sport, as he was supposed to be invulnerable; but he was slain thus one day by a shaft made of mistletoe, which alone had power ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... been placed at his disposal by the following authors and publishers:—Mr. Ruskin and Mr. William Allingham; Mr. Nimmo (for extract from Hugh Miller's works); Mr. Nelson (for poems by Mr. and Mrs. Howitt); Messrs. Edmonston and Douglas (for extract from Dasent's "Tales from the Norse"); Messrs. Chapman and Hall (for extracts from the works of Charles Dickens and Mr. Carlyle); Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Co. (for extracts from the works of Macaulay and Mr. Froude); Messrs. Routledge and Co. (for extracts from Miss Martineau's works); Mr. Murray (for extracts from the works ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... ravaged the coasts of France in the 10th century, had become in the course of one hundred and fifty years, completely identified with the French. They had accepted Christianity, intermarried with the native women, and forgotten their own Norse tongue. The race thus formed was the most brilliant in Europe. The warlike, adventurous spirit of the vikings mingled in its blood with the French nimbleness of wit and fondness for display. The Normans were a nation of knights-errant, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... again, their hearts now filled with ardent expectation. At length rose again the stirring cry of "Land!" or its Norse equivalent, and as the dragon-peaked craft glided swiftly onward there rose into view a long coast-line, flat and covered with white sand in the foreground, while a dense forest spread over the rising ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... took iron which had been brought from the mountains of Norse Land; and, after beating it upon their bellows until it glowed white and hot, Sindre ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... over to Norway," said one of us; and then came the idea, what we should do if we got over there, seeing none of us understood Norse. ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... shots don't 'most always go in the same hole." Then he went to the telegraph instrument. In a few minutes he could have told a story as wild as a Norse saga, but what he said, when Denver ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... Haworth, four miles off—four tough, steep, scrambling miles, the road winding between the wavelike hills that rose and fell on every side of the horizon, with a long illimitable sinuous look, as if they were a part of the line of the Great Serpent, which the Norse legend says girdles the world. The day was lead-coloured; the road had stone factories alongside of it,—grey, dull-coloured rows of stone cottages belonging to these factories, and then we came to poor, hungry-looking fields;—stone fences ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... had a fire. Still, until you are used to it, it is trying to sit in the company of a score of black people and of many thousand fleas, enveloped with a cloud of pungent smoke, according to the custom of our Norse ancestors. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Oh! had I been his son, how I would have carried on the feud! How I would have laughed when I cut down the false traitors, and burnt their palaces!" Richard's eye kindled, and his words, as he spoke the old Norse language, flowed into the sort of wild verse in which the Sagas or legendary songs were composed, and which, ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pp 296. 335.).—This noble monument of Old Norse literature was written at the close of the twelfth century by a Norwegian of high rank, but who expresses his resolution to remain unknown, in which he has perfectly succeeded. He probably resided near Trondhjem. See, for other information, the preface ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... as given us by the Damrosch Company, are nine stout, comely young women, attired in costumes somewhat similar to the armor worn by Herr Lawrence Barrett's Roman army in Herr Shakespeare's play of "Der Julius Caesar." Readers of Norse mythology may suppose that these weird sisters were dim, vague, shadowy creatures; but they are mistaken. Brunhilde has the embonpoint of a dowager, and her arms are as robust and red as ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... 1878, was not founded on a mere grotesque treatment of classical subjects, but was the fruit of a close study of and easy familiarity with heathen mythology, classical, Egyptian, and, in particular, Norse. The fun was not particularly broad, but Tom Taylor was especially tickled by his attempts to find amusement in the extraordinary head-dresses worn by ladies of Ancient Egypt—such as that in the cut (July 11th, 1874) learnedly inscribed ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Greece On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece); Whose words, in simplest home-spun clad, The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had, With power reserved at need to reach The Roman forum's loftiest speech, Sweet with persuasion, eloquent In passion, cool in argument, Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes As fell the Norse god's hammer blows. Crushing as if with Talus' flail Through Error's logic-woven mail, And failing only when they tried The adamant of the righteous side,— Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved Of old friends, by the new deceived, Too soon for us, too soon for ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... renderings of Spanish ballads are unsurpassed, wrote of his complete skill in the Scandinavian languages, and his "copious body of translations from their popular minstrelsies, not at all to be confounded with that of certain versifiers. . . . His Norse ditties have the unforgeable stamp of authenticity on every line." W. Bodham Donne, a well-known critic, even went so far as to rank them above Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome." A fine facsimile edition of Borrow's "Romantic ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... as his double name implies, comes of the mixed Norse and Celtic race which constitutes the population of the Isle of Man. Hall, his mother's name, is Norse, and is common to this day in Iceland, from which the Norsemen came to Manxland. Caine, which means "a fighter with clubs," is Celtic. Hall Caine himself, with his ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... over into the Scandinavian countries, and the Norse Sea-kings. This Markgraviate did not last long under that title. I ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... 875 that Ingolf, a jarl of Norway, came to Iceland with Norse settlers. They built their habitation at first where a pleasant headland seemed attractive, the present Ingolfshofdi, and later founded Reikjavik, where the signs directed them; for certain carved posts, which they had thrown overboard as they approached the island, were ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... notwithstanding the rubbish she talked about the chief, Rezu, who according to her account of him, must resemble one of the fabulous "trolls," half-human and half-ghostly evil creatures, of whom I have read in the Norse Sagas, who could only be slain by some particular hero armed with a ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... idiomatic expressions, and the preparation of the explanatory notes has therefore been a perplexing task. A fairly complete statement under each mythological reference would in the aggregate reach the proportions of a treatise on Norse mythology, but the limitations of space made such elaboration impossible. While brevity of expression has thus been the hard rule imposed by the necessity of keeping within bounds, it is hoped that the notes may ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... certain month of the year. The Hindoos had twelve primal gods, "the Aditya." Moses erected twelve pillars at Sinai. The Mandan Indians celebrated the Flood with twelve typical characters, who danced around the ark. The Scandinavians believed in the twelve gods, the Aesir, who dwelt on Asgard, the Norse Olympus. Diligent investigation may yet reveal that the number of a modern jury, twelve, is a survival of the ancient ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... morning the boys were aroused at seven o'clock by a servant, who brought a tray with the most fragrant coffee and hot rolls. It was in honor of the guest that, in accordance with Norse custom, this early meal was served; and all the boys, carrying pillows and blankets, gathered on Albert's and Ralph's bed and feasted right royally. So it seemed to them, at least; for any break in the ordinary routine, be it ever so slight, is an event ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... came to his father, he found Erik the Red directing the building of one of the great Norse galleys, nearly eighty feet long and seventeen wide and only six feet deep. The boat had twenty ribs, and the frame was fastened together by withes made of roots, while the oaken planks were held by iron rivets. ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... most beautiful after-echoes of this old Norse faith in the magic Ash as the great tree of life, is to my mind, one which has been preserved by Grimm in his 'Mythology' (2d edition, 2d book, page 912), and which the German poet Hoffmann has happily turned in a poem full of spirit and grace. The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tradition of the sea seemed to cling about him as he swung down the narrow trail in advance of the dogs; and he brought the butt of his dog whip against Malemute Kid's door as a Norse sea rover, on southern foray, might thunder for ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... familiar in his youth with English songs, and most probably knew the old Norse sagas; but he had to learn Latin in his later life. We must remember that most of the literature which Alfred could get at was locked up in Latin; even the invaluable Church History of St Bede needed a translator's ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... state of suspended animation: in Berlin there is a privately rebellious Spouse and Household, there is a Tobacco-Parliament withal;—and the royal mind, sensitive, imaginative as a poet's, as a woman's, and liable to transports as of a Norse Baresark, is of uncertain movement. Such a load of intricacies and exaggerated anxieties hanging on it, the royal mind goes like the most confused smoke-jack, sure only to HAVE revolutions; and we know how, afar from Soissons, and at home ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... tall grass to grow about their burrows, as these afford cover for coyotes and other enemies to stalk them. If they cannot remove these screens, they will leave the place. And yet they will sometimes allow a weed such as the Norse nettle or the Mexican poppy to grow on the mound at the mouth of the den where it will afford shade and not obstruct the view. At first thought this conduct may look like a matter of calculation and forethought, but it is doubtless ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... protest against that optimism which in fiction we call poetic justice. The harsh and unsentimental logic of reality is emphasized with a ruthless disregard of rose-colored traditions. The peasant lad Wold, who, like all Norse peasants, has been brought up on the Bible, has become deeply impressed with the story of Jacob, and God's persistent partisanship for him, in spite of his dishonesty and tricky behavior. The story becomes, half unconsciously, the basis of his philosophy of life, and he undertakes to model ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... and of Charlotte Bronte "put into my hands" by a cousin who had served as a Bashi Bazouk, and knew not the meaning of fear. But I DID, and perhaps even Nelson would have found out "what fear was," or the boy in the Norse tale would have "learned to shiver," if he had been left alone to peruse 'Jane Eyre,' and the 'Black Cat,' and the 'Fall of the House of Usher,' as I was. Every night I expected to wake up in my coffin, having been prematurely buried; or to hear sighs in the area, followed by light, unsteady ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... old English of Alfred and Harold than are, for example, the thoroughly anglicized Welsh of Cornwall. Otherwise, the infusion of new blood into the English race on this side of the Atlantic has been chiefly from three sources—German, Irish, and Norse; and these three sources represent the elemental parts of the composite English stock in about the same proportions in which they were originally combined,—mainly Teutonic, largely Celtic, and with a Scandinavian admixture. The descendant of the German becomes as much an Anglo-American ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Celts, and spoke Celtic; when they were conquered by the Romans, Latin words crept into the tongue; and as Romans gave place to the Saxons, and the Saxons to the Danes, words from the German and Norse tongues were added to the language. Finally, came the Norman Conquest, and with it a flood of French words. The English we speak to-day is a mixture of Celtic, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 58, December 16, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... some that so anomalous a system of government should have persisted as late as the eleventh century, in other words for a period of over 500 years. But we must take account of the Danish—or as we should rather call it, the Norse—invasion of Ireland. Danish ships first appeared off the Irish coasts about the year 800. From that time for two centuries Ireland was to a large extent cut off from intercourse with the rest of Europe. ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... after I think we parted only to dream of the literature which we poured out upon each other in every waking moment. I had just learned to know Bjornson's stories, and Boyesen told me of his poetry and of his drama, which in even measure embodied the great Norse literary movement, and filled me with the wonder and delight of that noble revolt against convention, that brave return to nature and the springs of poetry in the heart and the speech of the common people. Literature was Boyesen's religion more than the Swedenborgian ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Norwegian ode that follows" (Gray). This ode (The Fatal Sisters, translated from the Norse) describes the Valkyriur, "the choosers of the slain," or warlike Fates of the Gothic mythology, as weaving the destinies of those who were doomed to perish in ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... delving, as of late years, by the German and British workers in comparative philology, has pierc'd and dispers'd many of the falsest bubbles of centuries; and will disperse many more. It was long recorded that in Scandinavian mythology the heroes in the Norse Paradise drank out of the skulls of their slain enemies. Later investigation proves the word taken for skulls to mean horns of beasts slain in the hunt. And what reader had not been exercis'd over the traces of that feudal custom, by which seigneurs warm'd their feet in the bowels of serfs, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... school, like the English, but more learnedly and systematically, sought to reinforce its native stock of materials by motifs drawn from foreign literatures, and particularly from Norse mythology and from Spanish romance. Percy's translation of Malet: Gray's versions from the Welsh and the Scandinavian: Southey's "Chronicles of the Cid" and Lockhart's translations of the Spanish ballads are paralleled in Germany ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of honour given to Cort Sivertsen, a famous Norse seaman, who rendered distinguished naval services to Denmark and to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Great Spirit, Ushas; water nymph, wood nymph; Yama, Varuna, Zeus; Vishnu [Hindu deities], Siva, Shiva, Krishna, Juggernath^, Buddha; Isis [Egyptian deities], Osiris, Ra; Belus, Bel, Baal^, Asteroth &c; Thor [Norse deities], Odin; Mumbo Jumbo; good genius, tutelary genius; demiurge, familiar; sibyl; fairy, fay; sylph, sylphid; Ariel^, peri, nymph, nereid, dryad, seamaid, banshee, benshie^, Ormuzd; Oberon, Mab, hamadryad^, naiad, mermaid, kelpie^, Ondine, nixie, sprite; denizens of the air; pixy &c (bad spirit) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Northern Europe. "Do you renounce the devils, and all their words and works; Thonar, Wodin, and Saxenote?" was part of the form of recantation administered to the Scandinavian converts;[1] and at the present day "Odin take you" is the Norse equivalent of "the devil take you." On the other hand, an attempt was made to identify Balda "the beautiful" with Christ—a confusion of character that may go far towards accounting for a custom joyously observed ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... archives, maps, essays, and books relating to the periods covered by the Story of Canada, and used by the writer, see appendix to his "Cape Breton and its Memorials," in which all authorities bearing on the Norse, Cabot, and other early voyages are cited. Also, appendix to same author's "Parliamentary Government in Canada" (Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., vol. xi., and American Hist. Ass. Report, Washington, 1891). Also ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... that of his greater and more enduring triumphs. The "Targum" consists of translations from the following languages: Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Tartar, Tibetian, Chinese, Mandchou, Russian, Malo-Russian, Polish, Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, Ancient Norse, Suabian, German, Dutch, Danish, Ancient Danish, Swedish, Ancient Irish, Irish, Gaellic, Ancient British, Cambrian British, Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, Provencal, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Rommany. A few specimens from this work may ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the Norse romance now offered to the reader, the tale of Eric and his deeds would be true; but the dream of Asmund, the witchcraft of Swanhild, the incident of the speaking head, and the visions of Eric and Skallagrim, ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... must be remembered, are not, in general, a sea-going folk. They have always neglected the rich fisheries of their coasts; and in Ireland every seaport owes its existence, not to the natives, but to Norse colonists. Even now, the Irishman or Western Highlander, who emigrates to escape the "Saxons," sails in a ship built and manned by those very "Saxons," to lands which the Saxons have discovered and civilized. But in the seventh and eighth centuries, and perhaps ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... our Saxon blood. Tomorrow's hopes, an April flood Come roaring in. The newest race Is born of her resilient grace. We here renounce our Teuton pride: Our Norse and Slavic boasts have died: Italian dreams are swept away, And Celtic feuds are ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king, Columbus, my hero, royalest Sea-king of all! it is no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste deep waters; around thee, mutinous, discouraged souls; behind thee, disgrace and ruin; before thee, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Saracens. England had not been recreated by a Norman Conqueror. The Crusades were still undreamed of. Art, science, letters, were in custody in the East. These armed children ran riot,—passionate, intense, uncontrolled, loving fight and finery as the Trojans, or the Norse heroes of ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... places belonging to Fians or to Fairies" that they did not discover and appropriate. This statement receives strong confirmation from a Scandinavian record, the Landnama-bok, which says[22] that, in or about the year 870, a well-known Norse ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... and wild theorizing among would-be philologists. Rafinesque christened it the "Taino" language, and discovered it to be closely akin to the "Pelasgic" of Europe.[16] The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg will have it allied to the Maya, the old Norse or Scandinavian, the ancient Coptic, and what not. Rafinesque and Jegor von Sivors[17] have made vocabularies of it, but the former in so uncritical, and the latter in so superficial a manner, that they are worse ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... that follows of the Norse-pilot mooring his boat under the lee of the monster is completed in a line that attunes the mind once more to all the pathos and gloom ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... or dig their way out, to look upon a changed and blasted world. No cloud is in the sky, no rivers or lakes are on the earth; only the deep springs of the caverns are left; the sun, a ball of fire, glares in the bronze heavens. It is to this period that the Norse legend of Mimer's well, where Odin gave an eye for ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... fabled by the Muslim chroniclers to have been to Solomon what Odin's ravens were to the Norse god. It is said to have known all the secrets of the earth and to have revealed them to him; hence the magical virtues attributed by the Mohammedans to ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... carved boxes. Fig. 49 was drawn as an example of the rich effect which that kind of engraved work may have, and of the use which it makes of closely packed letters in the inscription. The pattern is, of course, a traditional Norse one, although the carving is comparatively modern. The points to be noted in the other box were its quaint and simple construction, the use of the letters as decoration, more especially the unpremeditated ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... of Glasgow, and Clan MacLean Association of Glasgow; Corresponding Member Davenport Academy of Sciences, and Western Reserve Historical Society; Author of History of Clan MacLean, Antiquity of Man, The Mound Builders, Mastodon, Mammoth and Man, Norse Discovery of America, Fingal's Cave, Introduction Study St. John's Gospel, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... constitutes the greatest epic in Teutonic Gothic literature. Its origin is hard to trace, but parts of the legends carry the investigator back to Iranian sources. Its greatest development, however, may justly be credited to Icelandic sagas, in which the mythology of the Norse people has a prominent place. In both the Gothic and Teutonic versions, while considerable variation of incident is noticeable, the awakening of Brynhild, a valkyrie maiden, and daughter of Wotan, is represented as having been accomplished by Siegfried, who rides through a wall of flames which ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... Greek cycle stories Norse cycle stories King Arthur tales Charlemagne and Roland legends Chivalry tales Stories from Chaucer Stories from the Faerie Queene Irish hero tales Stories from Shakespeare Stories from the Old Testament Stories from the New Testament ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... included in its zenith Sir James Mackintosh, Mrs. Barbauld, Crabb Robinson, the solemn Dr. John Alderson, Amelia Opie, Henry Reeve of Edinburgh fame, Basil Montagu, the Sewards, the Quaker Gurneys of Earlham, and Dr. Frank Sayers, whom the German critics compared to Gray, who had handled the Norse mythology in poetry, to which Borrow was introduced by Sayer's private biographer, the eminent and aforesaid William Taylor" [no relation of the "Taylors of Norwich"] "whose 'Jail-delivery of German Studies' the jealous Thomas Carlyle stigmatized ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... marriage rite, which was nevertheless coincident with a high and pure morality. It has been suggested that the severe conditions imposed by the Church on divorces may have had something to do with the peculiar marital usages of the Teutonic and Norse chieftains. Reasons of state might require Theudemir the Ostrogoth, or William Longsword the Norman, to ally himself some day with a powerful king's daughter, and therefore he would not go through the marriage rite with the woman, really and ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... while I enumerate the parts of a norse in language so simple any bloomin' fool can understand. This'll be useful to you, for if you ever 'ave a norse to deal with and he loses one of 'is parts you'll know 'ow to indent for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... Swedish king, and Earl Eric had made this agreement between them, that, if they slew Olaf Tryggvason, he of them who should be nearest at the time should own the ship and all the share of booty taken in the battle; but of the realm of the Norse king they should each ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... goods duly folded. Without delay or haste, and with the minimum of speech, the whole great establishment turned on wheels like a machine. Nowhere have I seen order more complete and pervasive. And yet I was always reminded of Norse tales of trolls and ogres who kept their hearts buried in the ground for the mere safety, and must confide the secret to their wives. For these weapons are the life of Tembinok'. He does not aim at popularity; but drives and braves his subjects, with a simplicity of domination ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its wake. So it will be here. Some day, in the present decade, there will be an excursion train advertised to run from London to John O'Groat's; and perhaps the lineal descendant of Sigurd, or some other old Norse jarl, will wear the conductor's belt and cap or ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... sake, but for that of her boy; for he was to grow great and strong, and the knowledge of his birth might shatter his strength and break his courage. For the same reason she also exchanged her picturesque Norse costume for that of the people among whom she was living. She went commonly by the name of Mrs. Brita, which pronounced in the English way, sounded very much like Mrs. Bright, and this at last became the name by which she ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the outlying islands of the West Indies. The Sagas of Leif the Lucky and Eric the Red told some marvelous stories of discoveries to the southwest of Iceland. Some of these stories seem to be verified in many ways, by digging up the logs of the Norse huts, by the written characters on Dighton rock, by the old tower at Newport, by the Benheim map of 1492, and a ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... expeditions she always spoke French; he begged her to talk Norse at least now and ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the primitive chiefs stood when publicly invested with the insignia of office, is still, or was lately, in existence in Ladykirk, at Burwick, South Ronaldshay, Orkney. A local tradition, that originated long after the Pictish chiefs passed away, and a new Norse race, ignorant of the customs of their predecessors, came in, says that the stone in question was used by St. Magnus as a boat to ferry him over the Pentland Firth; while an earlier tradition looked upon it as a miraculous ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the revolt with contempt. Under such conditions, the specific literary battle of the Norwegian with the Dane easily developed into the eternal warfare of youthful idealism with "respectability" and convention. Ibsen had already started work upon the greatest of his Norse Histories—The Pretenders. But history was for him little more than material for the illustration of modern problems; and he turned with zest from the task of breathing his own spirit into the stubborn mould ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... sacrificed two white bulls to the sylvan deities whom they thus sought to propitiate. We hang up our bunches of mistletoe now, but we do not attach any superstitious importance to it, nor imagine that any gods of the woods will be influenced by our procedure. The bringing in of the Yule-log was a Norse custom observed in honour of Thor, from whose name we derive our word Thursday or Thor's-day. The mighty log was drawn into the baronial hall with great pomp, while the bards sang their songs of praise ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Antoinette" Writing Table Bedstead of Marie Antoinette A Cylinder Secretaire (Rothschild Collection) An Arm Chair (Louis XVI.) Carved and Gilt Settee and Arm Chair A Sofa En Suite A Marqueterie Escritoire (Jones Collection) A Norse Interior, Shewing French Influence A Secretaire with Sevres Plaques A Clock by Robin (Jones Collection) Harpsichord, About 1750 ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield |
