The scenario is classic, even hackneyed. Two families have been
feuding for generations. Then a young man from one family meets a
young woman from the other, and by their marriage the parties are
reconciled. Peace reigns. Children (one imagines) run, laughing,
through sunny fields of flowers. Bees buzz, lambs gambol, and crops
flourish. Then, at a party, an old man rises to address the young
man and says…
“Thinkest thou, Ingiald, as at ease thou sittest, to avenge
Fróthi, thy father, on his banesmen?
Or are you pleased, rather to fill your paunch than to make
stern war on the murderers of your father?”
This old man, you see, is Starkath, once a warrior in the
service of Ingiald’s father. Starkath has pretty simple ideas about
the meaning of life, and they have nothing to do with love and
peace. They center on honor. And honor is expressed in vengeance.
Any man who trades honor for love is contemptible in Starkath’s
world.
The speech comes from “The Lay of Ingiald,” as translated in Lee
M. Hollander’s
Old Norse Poems. It’s an effective speech; Ingiald
puts his wife away and slaughters her kinsmen. I read this sort of
thing quite a lot in researching my novels, but I’ll admit this
particular Viking poem shocked even me a little. In spite of the
history I’ve studied, I’m still a man of my time, and I have to
confess to a prejudice for peace over war, and for the boy getting
the girl over blood vengeance.
But people haven’t always thought that way, as “The Lay of
Ingiald” demonstrates. Disclaimer: The ideas and opinions
expressed in “Ingiald” are offered for informational purposes only,
and do not necessarily reflect those of this writer, the American
Spectator Online, its management or employees.
Still, it’s worth knowing that such ideas exist, and that
they’re as human as — or more human, in terms of historical
provenance, than — the tropes of contemporary literature, music,
and drama.
There are very few things that make a person more provincial, as
I see it, than a liberal arts education. It’s one of the tragedies
of our time that so many Americans (like me) were fitted for
cultural blinkers in college. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to
prefer love to war. I’m all for that. What’s dangerous in the
extreme is assuming that it just comes naturally to human beings to
feel that way.
I recall a song I used to hear on Christian Contemporary radio.
I don’t remember the title, but it was about how we’re all
essentially alike around the world. There was a line about how
fathers all feel the same way at their daughters’ weddings.
“Well, I suppose,” I thought when I heard it. “Except for those
fathers in the Far East, for instance, who sell their daughters as
prostitutes, just happy to be rid of a mouth to feed.”
“Human,” you see, has more than one definition. Add an “e” to
the word and you’ve got “humane,” but that “e” doesn’t come as
standard equipment. You’ve got to pay extra for it. You pay for it
through centuries of cultural reconditioning and education. Our
novels and movies lie when they try to tell us that people thought
as we do a thousand or two thousand years ago. Dueling was
acceptable in parts of the U.S. well into the 19th century.
Slavery still exists in the Middle East. Tribal wars rage in Africa
right now.
Too much of our thinking is rooted in clichés, reinforced by
Humanities classes in college, or worse, movies and TV shows.
George W. Bush, for whom I have great respect, made this kind of
error when he declared that “The desire for freedom resides in
every human heart.” A noble sentiment, but it’s based on the
original “Star Trek” pilot, not actual history. Patrick Henry was a
spokesman for the American ideal, not for the majority of human
beings, who generally choose slavery over death when given the
option.
The Left, of course, is especially deluded. Liberals are still
waiting for the postman to bring the good news of how the Arab
Spring is flowering in equal rights for women and gays. They might,
when cornered, admit that all the welfare money they’ve poured into
the inner cities hasn’t yet produced the perfect, Rousseauean Free
Citizen they’ve been expecting all these years, but they’re
confident such an evolutionary mutation will appear any moment
now.
In a way, as a Christian, I see all this as a kind of
overachievement of Christian civilization. While Christian faith
itself seems to be diminishing in the western world, a naïve
misunderstanding of the Golden Rule — one that sees it as a
description rather than a challenge — lingers in the popular
consciousness, and seems to have left us with precisely the wrong
message.
Which can be pleasant while it lasts.
But Starkath is still out there, and I think he’s planning to
crash the party again.
