Triumphal Death Chant of Ragnar Lodbrock
WE FIGHT WITH THE SWORD!
TRIUMPHAL DEATH CHANT OF RAGNAR LODBROCK
TRIUMPHAL DEATH CHANT OF RAGNAR LODBROCK By Arthur Desmond (Ragnar Redbeard)
In their coverts the brood of false Loki, abhorred,
Have stirred! the wolf Feuris hath shaken his cord!
With Medgard the snake, from the desolute fen
Page Hela* comes, hated of gods and of men;
With fang ready flashing ere yet we are ware,
Comes forth the old dragon, all mailed from his lair.
His captains are chosen, his legions are ten:
They throng the waste moorlands, they steal down the glen.
Wake, sons of the mighty! Wake, Arm of the Lord!
Divide them! deride them!
WE FIGHT WITH THE SWORD.
Down the Niger, the black silver steals, early and late.
What beareth she? careth she? be it a feright
Of anguish and infamy; reckoned by weight
Is its worth in the slave mart. “Come, prize me a man;
And be he a Christian‡ (the wording so ran)
“The better for him and for thee.” Lo! a soul
Flung in with the muscles and sinews—the whole
Who bids for the highest? Up! Arm of the Lord,
And smite the slave traders! Yea, once and again,
The spoilers of nations, the stealers of men,
Their chain they have strengthened, have lengthened their cord.
Break, break! overtake them!
WE FIGHT WITH THE SWORD!
For the souls of the needy the crafty** have set
The snare and the pitfall, he springe and the net;
For the poor of the land they have poisoned the bowl
To madden the senses, to murder the soul.
There is death in the cup. O ye simple, beware!
Like the witch o’er her caldron they mutter a spell
That genders to bondage, that bindeth to hell.
Wake, Wisdom! Wake, Mercy! O come with thy line,
O come with thy plummet, thou Justice divine,
And sound their dark secret, and scatter abroad
The webs they have woven!
WE FIGHT WITH THE SWORD!
From the land comes a groaning! It is not the sound
Of the voice of our brother that speaks from the ground;
‘Tis the cry of dumb anguish, the yell and the shriek;
‘Tis the pitiful whine of the trustful and weak.
The victims are captured, the shambles are set,
But these are not butchers their weapons that whet;
They bring not death’s mercy that sharpen the knife
To track in the living the secret of life.
O come not my soul in their secret: nor thou
Mine honor, be joined to their merciless vow!
Wake, soul of my country! Wake, Feeling! wake, Thougt!
And scatter their counsels and bring them to naught.
Up! At them and smite them, O Arm of the Lord!
Divide, disunite them, that come with the cord,
The nail, and the pincer.
WE FIGHT WITH THE SWORD!
[From Series Vikings]
* Hela, the Goddess of Death.
‡ An allusion of John Greenleaf Whittier’s remarkable poem, “A Christian Going, Gone” which was written through the poet seeing an advertisement “A Negro For Sale!” in which his being described as a “desirable point” adding to the slave’s value.
** Referring to the modes of the adulteration of spirits and watering of beer, which has been attested as often taking place in the country districts of England.
“He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages, privily in lurking dens doth he ravage the innocent, his eyes are set against the poor. He liveth in wait as a lion in his den. He lieth in wait to catch the poor. He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net.”
—the Pslams of David
“Awake, O Sword, against thy fellows.”
—Book of the Prophet, Zechariah.
[Ragnar Lodbrock is the favorite hero of Scandinavia. At Elpsala,¹ the ancient capital city of Sweden, Ragnar was claimed as their hero king, but it is supposed by others who have made a study of the Scandinavian sagas that Ragnar was a Danish monarch. He flourished in the 8th century, and as a Viking rendered himself the terror of the countries on the Northern coasts of Europe. At length, during one of his raids on Northumbia (Northumberland) Ragnar was overcome and taken prisoner by King Ella, who cast him into a pit full of vipers, on his way towards which the pagan warrior, Ragnar sang his triumphal death song (from which the above lines are a free translation). The original verses are of extraordinary poetical vigor, celebrating in lofty triumph his past exploits and victories, especially the slaying in Ragnar’s early outh of an enormous serpent or dragon which had laid the country of Gothland to waste. Arthur Desmond says that in W.B. Scott’s translation the line,
“We hewed with our swords,”
or “With our hangars hewed we.”
as in the original
“Hinngum vict med hiorve,”
begins each separate stanza and seems like a cymbal clash, followed by a pause, awful in its reiteration, to lead in a strain of exultation yet more fierce than which has gone before it.]
¹ Old Uppsala, the centre of worship in Sweden until the temple was destroyed in the late 11th century. Click link
Windsor and Richmond Gazette 8 August 1930.
Ragnar Lodbrock meets Kráka (Áslaug) by August Malmström 1880
