7 Quotes by Vilhelm Grönbech

The laws of Iceland allow of killing on the spot in return for attack or for ablow, even though they may leave no mark on the skin.

For partners in frith, vengeance is a duty; the law sanctions this duty as a right. The laws of Iceland allow of killing on the spot in return for attack or for a blow, even though they may leave no mark on the skin.

Honour at once brings up the thought of vengeance. It must be so; he who thinks of honour must say vengeance, not only because the two are always found together in the stories, but more because it is only through vengeance that we can see the depth and breadth of honour. Vengeance contains the illumination and the explanation of life; life as it is seen in the avenger is life at its truest and most beautiful, life in its innermost nature.

Without honour, life is impossible, not only worthless, but impossible to maintain. A man cannot live with shame; which in the old sense means far more than now, — the "can not" is equal to "is not able to". As the life is in the blood, so actually the life is in honour; if the wound be left open, and honour suffered to be constantly oozing out, then follows a pining away, a discomfort rising to despair, that is nothing but the beginning of the death struggle itself.

Words were dangerous. They could bite through luck and fix themselves in a man. They were not to be likened to sharp arrows which wounded, but might then be drawn out and flung to the ground. For they had life in them, they would creep about inside the victim, hollowing him out till there was no strength left in him, or they would change him and mould him according to their own nature.

Frith is something that underlies all else, deeper than all inclination. It is not a matter of will, in the sense that those who share it again and again choose to set their kinship before all other feelings. It is rather the will itself. It is identical with the actual feeling of kinship, and not a thing deriving from that source.

The power of frith is apparent, in the fact that it does not count as a virtue, something in excess of what is demanded, but as an everyday necessity, the most obvious of all, alike for high and low, heroic and unheroic characters. And the exceptions, therefore, show as something abhorrent, uncanny.