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[Illustration: "It was Rolf in his weapons"]




THE STORY OF ROLF

AND THE VIKING'S BOW


BY

ALLEN FRENCH

AUTHOR OF "THE JUNIOR CUP," "SIR MARROK," ETC.


ILLUSTRATED BY

BERNARD J. ROSENMEYER


BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1918

_Copyright, 1904_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

_All rights reserved_

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




TO MY BROTHER

HOLLIS FRENCH




PREFACE


From thirty to sixty years ago appeared the greater number of the
English translations of the Icelandic sagas. Since then the reading of
these heroic tales has so completely gone out of style that their
names are rarely mentioned in schools or even colleges. What boy feels
his blood stir at the mention of Grettir? How many lovers of good
reading know that the most human of all epics lie untouched on the
shelves of the public libraries? The wisdom of Njal, the chivalry of
Gunnar, the villainy of Mord, the manhood of Kari, the savagery of
Viga-Glum, the craft of Snorri, and the fine qualities of Biarni, of
Biorn, of Skarphedinn, of Illugi, of Kolskegg, of Hrut, of
Blundketil--all these are forgotten in the curious turn of taste which
has made the stories of a wonderful people almost a lost literature.

For the Icelanders were a wonderful people. To escape the tyranny of
kings they settled a new land, and there built up the laws and customs
in which we see the promise of modern civilization. Few early peoples
had such a body of laws; few developed such manhood. No better
pictures of a law-abiding, rural, and yet valiant race have ever been
made than in the tales which the Icelanders had the skill to weave
about their heroes, those men who, at home in their island, or so far
abroad as Constantinople, made the name of Icelander respected.

We read of these men and this people in stories which, somewhat too
"old" for boys and girls, reveal the laws, customs, habits of a
thousand years ago. The Njal's Saga, the Grettir's Saga, the
Ere-Dwellers' Saga, and the Gisli's Saga are perhaps the greatest of
those which have been translated. They are reinforced by such shorter
pieces as Hen Thorir's Saga, and the Stories of the Banded Men, the
Heath-Slayings, Hraffnkell Frey's Priest, and Howard the Halt. The
spirit of those days is particularly well given in that wonderful
fragment of Thorstein Staffsmitten which (not being part of any
complete saga) has been drawn upon for the closing incidents of the
present story. Many other such incidents are preserved, a reference to
one of which (in a footnote to--I think--the Ere-Dwellers' Saga) gave
the suggestion for the main plot of this book. At the same time, in
contemporary writings, we may read of the life of other divisions of
the Scandinavian race; the story nearest to this book is the
Orkneyingers' Saga.

The main interest of all these tales is the same: they tell of real
men and women in real circumstances, and show them human in spite of
the legends which have grown about them. The sagas reveal the
characteristics of our branch of the Aryan race, especially the
personal courage which is so superior to that of the Greek and Latin
races, and which makes the Teutonic epics (whether the Niebelungen
Lied, the Morte Darthur, or the Njala) much more inspiring than the
Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid.

The prominence of law in almost every one of