Northman Quotes

“An admiral without ships, a hand without fingers, in service of a king without a throne. Is this a knight who comes before us, or the answer to a child's riddle?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“He [The Northman] has but one view of man; man asserting himself, maintaining his honour, as he calls it. All that moves within a man must be twisted round until it becomes
associated with honour, before he can grasp it; and all his passion is thrust back
and held, until it finds its way out in that one direction. His friendship of man and
love of woman never find expression for the sake of the feeling itself; they are
only felt consciously as a heightening of the lover's self-esteem and consequently as an increase of responsibility. This simplicity of character shows in his poetry, which is at heart nothing but lays and tales of great avengers, because revenge is the supreme act that concentrates his inner life and forces it
out in the light. His poems of vengeance are always intensely human, because
revenge to him is not an empty repetition of a wrong done, but a spiritual self-assertion, a manifestation of strength and value; and thus the anguish of an affront or the triumph of victory is able to open up the sealed depths of his mind and suffuse his words with passion and tenderness. But the limitation which creates the beauty and strength of Teuton poetry is revealed in the fact that only
those feelings and thoughts which make man an avenger and furthers the
attainment of revenge, are expressed; all else is overshadowed. Woman finds a
place in poetry only as a valkyrie or as inciting to strife; for the rest, she is
included among the ordinary inventory of life. Friendship, the highest thing on
earth among the Teutons, is only mentioned when friend joins hands with friend
in the strife for honour and restitution.”
― Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

“And there is but one passion that can let loose this accumulated force: his
passion for honour. For the Northman to be affected by this or that in what he
meets depends on something that has happened, something past, and
something ahead, an event which has happened to himself or his ancestors,
and an event which must be brought to pass for the betterment of himself and
his descendants. He does not live in the moment; he uses the moment to
reckon out: how can it serve him to the attainment of his end? He does not hate
a thing for its own sake, or on his own account; for if he can purchase a chance
of revenge by giving up his dislike, he tears his hate away, and where he can
gain a chance by enmity, the hate wells up again in undisguised power. This
does not mean that the Northman is temporarily beside himself when he is
seeking redress for his wrongs.”
― Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

“The Northmen had a keen eye for psychological signs of mixed race; a saying often on their lips was: "Who is it you take after?" And we have no grounds for supposing that it was only the one side that counted. Thorolfs opponents, the Sons of Hilderid already mentioned, never got over the disability in their birth, that their mother was of an inferior stock to their father's; it was a fault plainly seen in every word they spoke, when they stole into the hall from behind as soon as Thorolf had strode out of the front, and explained and interpreted the action of their enemy, while Thorolf let his act carry its own interpretation. The sagas also have an argument, to the effect that a man's rascality is due to the mother's blood.”
― Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2