n extremity of fierceness and terror that ladies and
gentlemen would be carried out of the theatre in hysterics, as in the
days of Byron. Where Hioerdis insults her guests, and contrives
the horrid murder of the boy Thorolf before their eyes, we have a
stage-dilemma presented to us-either the actress must treat the scene
inadequately, or else intolerably. _Ne pueros coram populo Medea
trucidet_, and we shrink from Hioerdis with a physical disgust. Her great
hands and shrieking mouth are like Bellona's, and they smell of blood.

What is true of Hioerdis is true in less degree of all the characters
in _The Vikings_. They are "great beautiful half-witted men," as Mr.
Chesterton would say:

Our sea was dark with dreadful ships
Full of strange spoil and fire,
And hairy men, as strange as sin,
With horrid heads, came wading in
Through the long low sea-mire.

This is the other side of the picture; this is how Oernulf and his seven
terrible sons must have appeared to Kaare the peasant, and this is how,
to tell the truth, they would in real life appear to us. The persons in
_The Vikings at Helgeland_ are so primitive that they scarcely appeal to
our sense of reality. In spite of all the romantic color that the poet
has lavished upon them, and the majestic sentiments which he has put
into their mouths, we feel that the inhabitants of Helgeland must have
regarded them as those of Surbiton regarded the beings who were shot
down from Mars in Mr. Wells' blood-curdling story.

_The Vikings at Helgeland_ is a work of extraordinary violence and
agitation. The personages bark at one another like seals and roar like
sea-lions; they "cry for blood, like beasts at night." Oernulf, the aged
father of a grim and speechless clan, is sorely wounded at the beginning
of the play, but it makes no difference to him; no one binds up his arm,
but he talks, fights, travels as before. We may see here foreshadowed
various features of Ibsen's more mannered work. Here is his favorite
conventional tame man, since, among the shouting heroes, Gunnar
whimpers like a Tesman. Here is Ibsen's favorite trick of unrequited
self-sacrifice; it is Sigurd, in Gunnar's armor, who kills the mystical
white bear, but it is Gunnar who reaps the advantage. It is only fair
to say that there is more than this to applaud in _The Vikings at
Helgeland_; it moves on a consistent and high level of austere
romantic beauty. Mr. William Archer, who admire