Wanderings in Arnold's Balder Dead

Sleipnir depicted on the Tjängvide stone, Gotland

[Image source: Wikipedia .]

  But the blind Hoder left the feasting gods

In Odin's hall, and went through Asgard streets,

And past the haven where the gods have moored

Their ships, and through the gate, beyond the wall;

Though sightless, yet his own mind led the god.

Down to the margin of the roaring sea

He came, and sadly went along the sand,

Between the waves and black o'erhanging cliffs

Where in and out the screaming seafowl fly;

Until he came to where a gully breaks

Through the cliff-wall, and a fresh stream runs down

From the high moors behind, and meets the sea.

There, in the glen, Fensaler stands, the house

Of Frea, honored mother of the gods,

And shows its lighted windows to the main.

There he went up, and passed the open doors;

And in the hall he found those women old,

The prophetesses, who by rite eterne

On Frea's hearth feed high the sacred fire

Both night and day; and by the inner wall

Upon her golden chair the mother sate,

With folded hands, revolving things to come.

(Matthew Arnold's Balder Dead I.72-93)

Complete text of Balder Dead.

Death is somewhere we live in, whether as mourned or mourner; death turns out to be a place. I've lost count of how many times I've read Balder Dead recently, but now it too has the quality of a place for me; a place of wandering, endlessly searching for something lost, whether in the plains of Hela's realm or in Asgard streets. 

Where are we here? In Norse myth, in a classical harbour, on a nineteenth-century English seashore? In all three, as seamlessly as in a dream. 

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The Prose Edda uses the term "Æsir" to refer to Odin and the other gods. Arnold just calls them "the Gods"; he never uses the word "Æsir". Why not? 

I suppose one answer might be that Arnold's epic verse bans all feminine endings with the semi-exception of a small group of (so to speak) honorary monosyllables: Heaven, prayer, power, fire.... ("Heaven" is of course a very important word in Balder Dead.) This practice is just as in Milton's Paradise Lost or Keats' Hyperion, but Arnold goes even further, by avoiding ending lines with multisyllabic words whose endings are only stressed from a metrical perspective. For instance "His eye surveyed the dark idolatries", "Of thundering Etna, whose combustible" (Milton), "And wandering sounds, slow-breathèd melodies", "He utter'd, while his hands contemplative" (Keats) ... There's none of that in Balder Dead. Every line ends with a syllable that has a firm and definite stress, not just a metrical one. The vast majority of the line-endings are monosyllabic words; the others are mostly words with prefixes, like "forlorn" or "obtained". (About 80% of the lines have some kind of end-stop, too.) 

So you can see that, while Arnold can end a line with "gods", he couldn't end it with "Æsir". Maybe that's also why Arnold has "Lok" instead of "Loki" or "Loke" (the Percy/Mallet version). And why he uses "wail" in the sense of "wailing".

But the simpler answer is that Arnold had never heard of the Æsir. Bishop Percy translates the Icelandic word as "the Gods" and Arnold merely follows him, just as he does with the "Nornies", and with the words "grate" and "limber", both discussed later. 

*

And on the conjuring Lapps he bent his gaze,

Whom antlered reindeer pull over the snow;

And on the Finns, the gentlest of mankind,

Fair men, who live in holes under the ground; ...

(Matthew Arnold's Balder Dead (1855), I.53-56)

You could infer the conjuring Lapps from reading Mallet's/Percy's Northern Antiquities, but not the hole-dwelling Finns. From where, if anywhere, did Arnold take that idea? 

*

But fiercely Odin galloped, moved in heart;

And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came;

And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang

Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets;

And the gods trembled on their golden beds

Hearing the wrathful Father coming home,—

For dread, for like a whirlwind, Odin came.

(I.258-264)

Odin's midnight return follows Hoder's suicide and precedes Nanna's death. The poet doesn't explain Odin's passion. Does he whose "eye surveys the world" already know something of these other events? Is it a father mourning a beloved son, or a chief mourning the latter days of his tribe? Having made his speech forbidding prolonged tears, does he, after a day spent apart on Lidskialf, finally vent his own emotion in this rage?

*

In the Prose Edda the funeral of Balder follows close on his death; Hermod meanwhile has set off on his mission to Hela's realm.

But Arnold delays the funeral for twelve days, i.e. until after Hermod's return. Why? As G.C. Macaulay (1896) remarked: "it is questionable whether according to that system [Norse beliefs] Balder would have been found in Hela's realm until his funeral rites had been accomplished.." Furthermore the change of sequence means that the ring Balder sends to Odin (II.274) cannot be the same one that Odin throws on the pyre (III.173). In the Prose Edda they are one and the same: the ring Draupnir. 

Arnold's change of sequence isn't unobtrusive. In fact the timing of the funeral receives a lot of attention, Odin making no less than four speeches in which he specifies, and sometimes alters, the timing.  

In the first (I.40ff) he commands it for the day after Balder's death (basically, just as in the Prose Edda). That night the gods, who have memorably feasted while Balder's body still lies where it fell (apparently trying to live up to Odin's dry-eyed command), then take up the corpse and move it to Breidablik, Balder's home. Later the ghost of Balder himself, tenderly watching his sleeping wife, assumes that his funeral could be as early as next day (I.295)

But the next morning it appears that Odin's plans have changed (perhaps Frea is his "unseen guide", as she will be for Hermod). He now says:

Go quickly, gods, bring wood to the seashore,

With all which it beseems the dead to have,

And make a funeral-pile on Balder's ship;

On the twelfth day the gods shall burn his corpse.

But, Hermod, thou take Sleipner, and ride down

To Hela's kingdom, to ask Balder back.

(II. 41-46 Like any good politician, Odin makes no acknowledgement of a change of plan.)

The deferrent gods do indeed go quickly to work. And when you have Thor as a woodsman, gathering wood shouldn't take very long (why bother with an axe if you have a hammer to knock down the trees?). They "ranged the wood in stacks by Balder's ship" (II.68), but there they leave it. It looks like it takes them all day. Despite Odin's seemingly clear instructions, no funeral-pile is made on that day.

Twelve days later, when Hermod returns, he finds that the gods have brought Balder's corpse down to the sea-shore. Odin now gives his third command (III.49-56) for the funeral, including "then build a pile / Of the heap'd wood" (III.53-54). 

A prolonged sequence of laments follow, and then comes Odin's fourth command:

  "Ye gods, there well may be too much of wail!
Bring now the gathered wood to Balder's ship;
Heap on the deck the logs, and build the pyre."
⁠   But when the gods and heroes heard, they brought
The wood to Balder's ship, and built a pile,
Full the deck's breadth, and lofty; then the corpse
Of Balder on the highest top they laid, ...

(III.157-163) 

Arnold, as part of his general Homeric colouring, often begins lines with "But", and sometimes when you wouldn't expect it. Since the gods do exactly what Odin has commanded, you might expect "And" here. Maybe the word "But" is saying: But this time (contrary to all the previous speeches) the gods actually do build the funeral pile....

It's a strange situation, this funeral, though it does not seem strange as you read it. Just as the gods have been told of a way by which they might very possibly bring Balder back to life, they put that hope to one side and sincerely immerse themselves in the long and passionate ceremony of his cremation. Evidently Arnold delayed the funeral because it was in some ways the crowning image of his poem. 

...  And the gods stood upon the beach, and gazed.

And while they gazed, the sun went lurid down

Into the smoke-wrapt sea, and night came on.

Then the wind fell, with night, and there was calm;

But through the dark they watched the burning ship

Still carried o'er the distant waters on,

Farther and farther, like an eye of fire.

And long, in the far dark, blazed Balder's pile;

But fainter, as the stars rose high, it flared;

The bodies were consumed, ash choked the pile.

And as, in a decaying winter-fire,

A charred log, falling, makes a shower of sparks,—

So with a shower of sparks the pile fell in,

Reddening the sea around; and all was dark.

(III.193-206)

Yet part of the powerful impact of the scene is the consideration, in the circumstances, that it doesn't actually achieve anything. The sense of meaninglessness, which unlocks a deeper meaning. 

This funeral scene can be accounted Odin's triumph, but the Father of the Gods does not have the most authoritative voice in Balder Dead. Though the Gods show no sign of insubordination, there's something unhealthy in the relationship of this commander to his commanded. Where should we look for a deeper authority in Balder Dead? Balder is wiser than Odin, but only by the end of the poem. Hela is wiser too, but she's also devious. The most authoritative voice is probably Frea's, for instance when she says:

Nor do I judge if it shall win or fail ;

But much must still be tried, which shall but fail.  

(I.129-130)

(Arnold was not afraid of "ten low words", a point sometimes mentioned in critical views of Balder Dead. The poem has been largely ignored, but those who do write about it show a range of opinions from curt dismissal to unbalanced fervour. I'm in the latter camp.)

*

Hermod led Sleipner from Valhalla forth,

And saddled him: before that, Sleipner brooked

No meaner hand than Odin's on his mane,

On his broad back no lesser rider bore;

Yet docile now he stood at Hermod's side,

Arching his neck, and glad to be bestrode,

Knowing the god they went to seek, how dear.

But Hermod mounted him, and sadly fared

In silence up the dark untravelled road ...

(II.71-79)

Another creative use of "But" .... I won't attempt an explanation this time. 

Hermod needs Sleipner, the best of all horses, for his first journey to Hel, in order to leap what Arnold (following Percy) calls the "grate"; most later translations call it the Hel-gate. After he has returned from this journey, normality resumes: Odin rides Sleipner (III.59). When Hermod makes his second journey to Hel, he sets off straight from Thok's iron wood, so he must be riding his own horse, but it doesn't matter, because the grate is still lifted (III.378), just as when he left Hel the first time (II.287). 

Arnold doesn't mention that Sleipner has eight legs (as portrayed above, and as stated in the Prose Edda). On the whole he dispenses with many of the freakish colours of Norse mythology. For instance his account of the launching of the funeral ship makes no mention of the giantess Hyrrokkin nor the dwarf Litr. Nor do we hear about the ring that Odin lays on the pyre, "that every ninth night there dropped from it eight gold rings of equal weight" (this detail is in Percy's translation). In Balder Dead rings are just rings, their magic properties concealed (and perhaps heightened) by the absence of detail. 

*

While on his island in the lake afar,

Made fast to the bored crag, by wile not strength

Subdued, with limber chains lives Fenris bound.

(II.214-216)

Arnold cannot have expected most of his readers to know the Prose Edda, but you can only really appreciate "limber" (flexible, pliant; Arnold adopts Percy's word) if you know the story of the binding of Fenris-wolf with the fetter Gleipnir (Gylfaginning XXXIV). 

*

Nine days he took to go, two to return,

And on the twelfth morn saw the light of heaven.

(II.293-294)

Nine days to go there, but only two to come back...that sounds a bit unlikely, doesn't it? And it isn't in the Prose Edda, which only mentions the nine days that it took Hermod to get to Hel, but says nothing about how long it took him to get back. It was Arnold himself who, fixing the funeral for the twelfth day, decided that Hermod and Sleipnir would do the return journey in such an astonishingly short time. Evidently Arnold's adaptation was not simply about eliminating the fantastic; sometimes he chose to add it himself. 

* 

"Mallet and his version of the Edda is all the poem is based on", Arnold wrote in a letter to his sister. 

One of the appendices of Paul Henri Mallet's 1756 book, as translated by Bishop Percy in 1770 and titled Northern Antiquities, is the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda. It is a double or even triple translation. Bishop Percy didn't know Old Norse; he was translating M. Mallet's French. But Mallet didn't know Old Norse either. He did know modern Danish, and he could puzzle out the gist of Snorri's meaning with the help of his Scandinavian friends. But he also made extensive use of Göranson's less-than-perfect translation into Latin. 

Small wonder, then, that the "Edda" read by Arnold differs quite a lot from what Snorri wrote!

Percy's version is here:

http://www.germanicmythology.com/ProseEdda/Mallet1770Edda.html

The story of Balder is the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth fables, equating to Gylfaginning chapter 49. However Arnold draws on the rest, too. For instance the names of Hel's rivers come from the first fable, the "limber" chains that bind Fenris-wolf come from the seventeenth fable. The "golden dice" that Balder says he will find in the new heaven (III.539) are also from Percy (thirty-third fable). 

Percy's translation fails to connect the ring that Odin lays on the funeral pile (Fable 28) with the ring sent to Odin by Balder (Fable 29). And therefore, nor does Arnold. In fact in the Prose Edda they are the very same ring, which is called Draupnir in Brodeur's translation (see below). Percy's translation did not include names of objects like the ring Draupnir and the fetter Gleipnir, so don't blame Arnold for not using them. 

Most significantly, Mallet (and hence Percy) disentangled Gylfaginning 49 into two separate fables (one of Balder's death and funeral, the other of Hermod's journey to hell and its outcome). Arnold could not know that the two fables were originally interleaved, nor how. In Balder Dead he recombined them, but in a slightly different way.  

If you want to read the whole of Mallet's book, it's here:

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Northern_Antiquities.html?id=DvUBAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y

[However, note that this is the 1847 Bohn edition, for which the new editor I.A. Blackwell translated the Prose Edda afresh. Arnold might have read this edition, but he didn't. He must have been reading one of the earlier editions (1770 or 1809), containing Bishop Percy's translation. (As was demonstrated by Mary W. Schneider, "The Source of Matthew Arnold's 'Balder Dead'", Notes and Queries 14 (1967), pp. 56-61.)]

[And here's a handy translation of the whole of the Prose Edda in Arthur G. Brodeur's 1916 translation:

https://mythopedia.com/library/prose-edda-brodeur-1916

.]

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On Matthew Arnold's The Scholar-Gipsy:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2019/02/notes-on-scholar-gipsy.html

On Matthew Arnold's Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/11/strike-leftward.html