n to fight this stern battle of life well and
bravely, while its blind inexorable nature allowed no room for any
careful weighing of chances or probabilities, or for any anxious prying
into the nature of things doomed once for all to come to pass. To do
things like a man, without looking to the right or left, as Kari acted
when he smote off Gunnar's head in Earl Sigurd's hall, was the
Northman's pride. He must do them openly too, and show no shame for what
he had done. To kill a man and say that you had killed him, was
manslaughter; to kill him and not to take it on your hand was murder. To
kill men at dead of night was also looked on as murder. To kill a foe
and not bestow the rights of burial on his body by throwing sand or
gravel over him, was also looked on as murder. Even the wicked Thiostolf
throws gravel over Glum in our Saga, and Thord Freedmanson's complaint
against Brynjolf the unruly was that he had buried Atli's body badly.
Even in killing a foe there was an open gentlemanlike way of doing it,
to fail in which was shocking to the free and outspoken spirit of the
age. Thorgeir Craggeir and the gallant Kari wake their foes and give
them time to arm themselves before they fall upon them; and Hrapp, too,
the thorough Icelander of the common stamp, "the friend of his friends
and the foe of his foes," stalks before Gudbrand and tells him to his
face the crimes which he has committed. Robbery and piracy in a good
straightforward wholesale way were honoured and respected; but to steal,
to creep to a man's abode secretly at dead of night and spoil his goods,
was looked upon as infamy of the worst kind. To do what lay before him
openly and like a man, without fear of either foes, fiends, or fate; to
hold his own and speak his mind, and seek fame without respect of
persons; to be free and daring in all his deeds; to be gentle and
generous to his friends and kinsmen; to be stern and grim to his foes,
but even towards them to feel bound to fulfil all bounden duties; to be
as forgiving to some as he was unyielding and unforgiving to others. To
be no truce-breaker, nor talebearer nor backbiter. To utter nothing
against any man that he would not dare to tell him to his face. To turn
no man from his door who sought food or shelter, even though he were a
foe--these were other broad principles of the Northman's life, further
features of that steadfast faithful spirit which he brought with him to
his new home....

DAILY LIFE