Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/134

116 whole as the friends of men, were in the middle age to some extent classified with the giants, the foes of mankind, and like the latter they were turned into wizards and mountain-spirits, who as a rule are friendly neither to God nor to men, though some of them, for instance the gnomes, the nisses, the underground spirits and the like, were regarded in a somewhat more favorable light. All these ideas, which are most intimately connected with the faith of the heathen age, we rediscover in a large number of the ballads. It will be sufficient to mention "Elveskud," the ballad concerning Olaf the Knight, who through his encounter with the elf-maid forfeits his life; the ballad which tells of Bösmer the Knight in Alfheim, who is enticed into the mountain, where he is made to forget all that was dear to him; the ballads of the merman Rosmer; of Germand Gladensvend (both of which remind us of the grand conceptions the ancients had of the giants), and of Agnete and the merman, etc.

In all these ballads, and as a rule in all the popular poetry of the middle age, we find in addition to these echoes from antiquity a new element which was entirely foreign to the ancient time, namely a, which is characteristic of the cosmic conception prevailing throughout the middle age. In the ballad-world imagination reigns almost supreme, and lends a peculiar color to all forms and ideas. Hence it was that this poetry acquired so great importance, and was, so to speak, regenerated, when in the beginning of this century romantic poetry became predominant, and borrowed its material to so great an extent from the popular poetry. In the North people are generally familiar with this popular poetry, not only from the original ballads themselves, but perhaps especially from the poems which Oelenschlæger and other northern poets of modern times have produced in imitation of them.

The same points of contact between the middle age and the heathen time appear even in a more marked degree in the numerous ballads which tell of metamorphoses and of incan-