“Life, Simple and Heroic”: H. Rider Haggard's Unfulfilled Nordic Vision

ABSTRACT

This essay reads H. Rider Haggard's adaptation of the Icelandic Sagas, Eric Brighteyes, as an ultimately unsuccessful imaginative flight from modernity. Haggard simplifies the saga model to create a fictional world free of what he sees as modernity's complexity and corruption. However, this anti-modern vision of the past is consistently undercut by the very ambiguities Haggard seeks to avoid. The titular protagonist of the novel is an equivocal hero whose adventures can be described as a series of betrayals and failures. He is a mighty warrior, but is unable to control his capacity for violence; a romantic lover, but is unable to repress his carnal proclivities; a hyper-masculine figure who wavers between assertive heteronormative behaviour and a homosocial identity; and a fatalist unable to resign himself to his destiny. Haggard's fictional saga-world is a modern, transitional space in which religious and social ideals are under increasing pressure.

KEYWORDS:

• H. Rider Haggard
• Viking novels
• Icelandic sagas
• gender
• modernity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Katz, 33.

2 Reeve, “H. Rider,” 153.

3 Mazlish, 734.

4 Ellis, 2.

5 Wawn, 313.

6 Hammer, 137–138.

7 Helgason, 48. Haggard read Dasent's translation, and this is the version I quote throughout. I refer, however, in the text to Njal's Saga, which is now the accepted English title of the work.

8 Wawn, 6.

9 Helgason, 60.

10 Haggard, Dedication, 5.

11 Morris, xi.

12 Haggard, Introduction, 9.

13 Haggard, Days, vol. 2, 7.

14 Cohen, 128.

15 Pocock, 76.

16 Haggard, Days, vol. 1, 285.

17 Hammer, 141.

18 Pocock, 79.

19 Haggard, King Solomon's, 141.

20 Ibid. 11.

21 Ibid.

22 Monsman, “Diamonds” 282.

23 Ibid., 292.

24 Orel, 55.

25 Butts, xv.

26 Harris, 336, 334.

27 Haggard, Days, vol. 2, 104.

28 Ibid., 104–105.

29 Orel, 56.

30 Brooke, 4–5.

31 Fussell, 130.

32 Mazlish, 742–743.

33 Haggard, Allan 419–420.

34 Haggard, Private Diaries 134.

35 Daly, 8.

36 Katz, 36.

37 Orel, 40–42.

38 Katz, 36.

39 Haggard, “About,” 172.

40 Ibid., 173–174.

41 Ibid., 175–177.

42 Ibid., 178, 180.

43 Ibid., 180. Haggard's proviso is somewhat disingenuous, as he goes on to proclaim a number of works of romance “lasting triumphs of literary art” (Ibid.) – the romance is not for Haggard, despite his apparent modesty, an inherently debased form.

44 Ibid., 173.

45 Monsman, “Diamonds,” 292–293.

46 Fraser, 6.

47 Haggard, “About,” 180.

48 Gold, 305.

49 Haggard, Introduction, 7.

50 Ibid., 9.

51 Ibid., 9–10.

52 Ibid., 9.

53 Haggard, Eric, 18.

54 Ibid., 19.

55 Monsman, “Nada,” 390.

56 Haggard, King Solomon's, 11.

57 Hammer, 140.

58 Reeve, Sexual, 34.

59 Haggard, Eric, 91.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., 131.

62 Ibid., 152.

63 Reeve, “H. Rider,” 154.

64 Ibid., 158.

65 Haggard, Days, vol. 2, 104.

66 Ibid., 71–72.

67 Ibid., 195.

68 Ibid., 185.

69 Ibid., 217.

70 Katz., 90.

71 Magnusson, 16.

72 Gropper, 198.

73 Ranković, 408.

74 Ibid., 409.

75 Kipling, 230.

76 Dillingham, 4.

77 Gropper, 201–202.

78 Haggard, Eric, 16.

79 Story of Burnt Njal, 219. In Frans G. Bengtsson's 1954 novel Röde Orm (Translated as The Long Ships), which is also richly indebted to Njal's Saga, this freedom within a prophetic framework is exploited to comic effect when the seven surviving Sone brothers decide to extend their travels after four of their brothers have died. Their father's prophecy that four of them would die before they return home in effect guarantees them immortality: “[…] we cannot die before we reach home” (487).

80 Hammer, 156.

81 Stot, 71.

82 Reeve, “New Woman” 161.

83 Murphy, 747–748.

84 Haggard, Eric, 20.

85 Ibid., 13.

86 Murphy, 748.

87 Story of Burnt Njal, 33.

88 Ibid., 34, 76.

89 Haggard, Eric, 18.

90 Ibid., 45.

91 Ibid., 168.

92 Ibid., 101.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid., 43, 158.

95 Story of Burnt Njal, 226.

96 Hammer 153–154.

97 Haggard, Eric, 61–62.

98 Ibid., 68.

99 Hammer, 153.

100 Haggard, She, 12.

101 Haggard, Eric, 213.

102 Hammer, 152.

103 Haggard, Eric, 61.

104 Ibid., 140.

105 Hammer, 155.

106 Armstrong, 121.

107 Haggard, Eric, 164.

108 Ibid., 203.

109 Ibid., 11.

110 Ibid., 216.

111 Gramsci, 276.

112 Ibid.

113 Haggard, Eric, 236.