Northern Antiquities/Chapter 13

by Paul Henri Mallet

CHAPTER XIII.

Sequel of the customs, arts and Sciences of the ancient Scandinavians.

THE arts which are necessary to the convenience of life, are but indifferently cultivated among a people, who neglect the more pleasing and refined ones. The Scandinavians held them all equally in contempt: What little attention they bestowed on any, was chiefly on such as were subservient to their darling passion. This contempt for the arts, which mens’ desire of justifying their own sloth inspires, received additional strength from their sanguinary religion, from their extravagant fondness for liberty, which could not brook a long confinement in the same place, and especially from their rough, fiery and quarrelsome temper, which taught them to place all the happiness and glory of man in being able to brave his equals and to repel insults.

As long as this inclination had its full sway among a people, who were perpetually migrating from one forest to another, and entirely maintained from the produce of their flocks and herds, they never thought of cultivating the soil. In the time of Tacitus, the Germans were little used to agriculture. “They cultivate,” says that historian, “sometimes one part of the country, and sometimes another; and then make a new division of the lands. They will much easier be persuaded to attack and reap wounds from an enemy, than to till the ground and wait the produce. They consider it as an indication of effeminacy and want of courage to gain by the sweat of their brow, what they may acquire at the price of their blood^[1].” This prejudice gradually wore out, and they applied themselves more to agriculture. The great consumption of grain in a country, where the principal part of their food and their ordinary liquor was chiefly made of nothing else, could not but produce this effect. In the ninth and tenth centuries we see the free-men, the nobility and the men of great property, directing the operations of husbandry themselves^[2]. At length Christianity Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/426 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/427 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/428 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/429 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/430 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/431 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/432 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/433 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/434 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/435 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/436 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/437 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/438 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/439 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/440 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/441 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/442 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/443 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/444 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/445 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/446 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/447 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/448 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/449 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/450 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/451 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/452 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/453 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/454 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/455 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/456 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/457 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/458 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/459 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/460 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/461 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/462 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/463 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/464 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/465 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/466 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/467 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/468 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/469 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/470 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/471 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/472 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/473 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/474 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/475 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/476 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/477 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/478 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/479 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/480 Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/481 curiosity of those readers who like to view the original manners and spirit of a people, I have endeavoured to translate such fragments of ancient northern poetry as would best answer this purpose. These translations, together with a few explanatory notes, will be thrown to the end by way of sequel, and as affording vouchers to this little work.

1. Tac. Germ. c. 14, &c.
2. Vid. Arng. Jon. Crymog. lib. i. p. 52.