16 February 1852 – 22 February 1852

Laing says that “the Heimskringla has been hardly used by the learned men of the period in which it was first published. It appeared first in the hterary world in 1697, frozen into the Latin of the Swedish antiquary, Peringskiold.” Snorro Sturleson says, “From Thor’s name comes Thorer, also Thorarinn.”” Again: “Earl Rognvald was King Harald’s dearest friend, and the king had the greatest regard for him. He was married to Hilda, a daughter of Rolf Naefia, and their sons were Rolf and Thorer. ... Rolf became a great viking, and was of so — a growth that no horse could carry him, and wheresoever he went he must go on foot; and therefore he was called Gange-Rolf.” (Laing says in a note, what Sturleson also tells in the text, Gange- Rolf, Rolf Ganger, Rolf the Walker, was the conqueror of Normandy.) “ Gange-Rolf’s son was William, father to Richard, and grandfather to another Richard, who was the father of Richard Longspear, and grandfather of William the Bastard, from whom all the following English kings are descended.” King Harald “set Earl Rognvald’s son Thorer over Mére, and gave him his daughter Alof in marriage. Thorer, called the Silent, got the same territory his father Rognvald had possessed.”’ His brother Einar, going into battle to take vengeance on his father’s mur- derers, sang a kind of reproach against his brothers Rollang and Rolf for their slowness and concludes, — “And silent Thorer sits and dreams At home, beside the mead-bowl’s streams.” Of himself it is related that he cut a spread eagle on the back of his enemy Halfdan. So it seems that from one branch of the family were de- scended the kings of England, and from the other myself. Down Turnpike. Itis interesting to meet an ox with handsomely spread- ing horns. There is a great variety of sizes and forms, though one horn commonly matches the other. I am willing to turn out for those that spread their branches wide. Large and spreading horns methinks indicate a certain vegetable force and naturalization in the wearer; it softens and eases off the distinction between the ani- mal and vegetable, the unhorned animals and the trees. I should say that the horned animals approached nearer to the vegetable. The deer that run in the woods, as the moose for instance, carry perfect trees on their heads. The French call them bors. No wonder there are fables of centaurs and the like. No wonder there is a story of a hunter who, when his bullets failed, fired cherry-stones into the heads of his game and so trees sprouted out of them, and the hunter refreshed himself with the cher- ries. It is a perfect piece of mythology which belongs to these days. Oxen, which are de-animalized to some extent, approach nearer to the vegetable, perchance, than bulls and cows, and hence their bulky bodies and large and spreading horns. Nothing more natural than that the deer should appear with a tree growing out of his head. Thus is the animal allied to the vegetable kingdom and passes into it by insensible degrees. These appendages are indispensable to the beauty of the ani- mal, as appears from the great calf look of a cow without horns, or a “bunter.”’ Man’s relation to oxen is the same that it was in primitive ages. It is equally primitive. He has got no nearer to them. If his ox breaks through the ice, he knows no better how to get him out than if it had never happened. The helpless unwieldiness of the oxen is re- markable. I was told yesterday that when a man had got his ox out of Bateman’s Pond, the latter gave a spring, and, coming down, his hind legs slipped and spread apart on the ice, and he was split up so that he had to be killed. This afternoon there is a clear, bright air, which, though cold and windy, I love to inhale. I see mother- o’-pearl tints, and I am not sure but this will be such a sunset as we had a month ago. The sky is a much fairer and [more] undimmed blue than usual. The surface of the snow which fell last night is coarse like bran, with shining flakes. I see the steam-like snow- dust curling up and careering along over the fields. As I walk the bleak Walden road, it blows up over the highest drifts in the west, lit by the westering sun like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind. This drifting snow-dust has formed long, flattish drifts a few feet wide by some rods [long], with a rounded, swelling surface where it has lodged. The intermediate spaces, a rod or two wide, being swept clean and left uneven and naked, over these rollers it sweeps on to fill the road. By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, - by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department. Linnzeus says elementa are simple, naturalia com- posed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia.

Perhaps the peculharity of those western vistas was partly owing to the shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper’s axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o’clock p. M., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day, when I travelled, as it were, between the portals of the night, and the path was narrow as well as blocked with snow. Then, too, the sun has the last opportunity to fill the air with vapor. I see on the Walden road that the wind through the wall is cutting through the drifts, leaving a portion ad- hering to the stones. It is hard for the traveller when, in a cold and blus- tering day, the sun and wind come from the same side. To-day the wind is northwest, or west by north, and the sun from the southwest. The apothecium of lichens appears to be a fungus, — all fruit. I saw Patrick Riordan carrying home an armful of fagots from the woods to his shanty, on his shoulder. How much more interesting an event is that man’s sup- per who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, or perchance to steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and meat must be sweet.! It was something to hear that the women of Waltham used the Parmelia saxatilis (?) in dyeing. If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science. Read Linnzeus at once, and come down from him as far as you please. I lost much time reading the florists. It is remarkable how little the mass of those interested in botany are acquainted with Linnzeus. His “Philosophia Botanica,” which Rousseau, Sprengel, and others praised so highly, — 1 doubt if it has ever been translated into English. It is.simpler, more easy to understand, and more comprehensive, than any of the hundred manuals to which it has given birth. A few pages of cuts representing the different parts of plants, with the botanical names attached, is worth whole volumes of explanation. According to Linnzeus’s classification, I come under the head of the Miscellaneous Botanophilists, — “ Bo- tanophili sunt, qui varia de vegetabilibus tradiderunt, licet ea non proprie de scientiam Botanicam spectant,”’ —either one of the Biolog: (Panegyrica plerumque ex- clamarunt) or Poete.

When Eystein the Bad ravaged the land of Drontheim, “he then offered the people either his slave Thorer Faxe, or his dog, whose name was Sauer, to be their king. They preferred the dog, as they thought they would sooner get rid of him. Now the dog was, by witchcraft, gifted with three men’s wisdom; and when he barked, he spoke one word and barked two. A collar and chain of gold and silver were made for him, and his courtiers carried him in their hands when the weather or ways were foul. A throne was erected for him, and he sat upon a high place, as kings are used to sit. . . . It is told that the occasion of his death was that the wolves one day broke into his fold, and his courtiers stirred him up to defend his cattle; but when he ran down from his mound, and attacked the wolves, they tore him to pieces.” Now I think if he had spoken two words and barked only one, he would have been wiser still and never fallen into the clutches of the wolves. By some traits in the saga concerning King Hakon the Good, I am reminded of the concessions which some politicians and religionists, who are all things to all men, make. Hakon was unpopular on account of his attempts to spread Christianity, and to conciliate his subjects he drank out of the horn which had been blessed in Odin’s name at a festival of sacrifice, but as he drank he made the sign of the cross over it. And one of his earls told the people that he was making the sign of Thor’s hammer over it. ‘‘On this,” it is said, “there . was quietness for the evening. The next day, when the people sat down to table, the bonders pressed the king strongly to eat of horse flesh [this was an evidence of paganism]; ' and as he would on no account do so, they wanted him to drink of the soup; and as he would not do this, they insisted he should at least taste the gravy; and on his refusal they were going to lay hands on him. Earl Sigurd came and made peace among them, by asking the king to hold his mouth over the handle of the kettle, upon which the fat smoke of the boiled horse flesh had settled itself; and the king first laid a linen cloth over the handle, and then gaped over it, and returned to the throne; but neither party was satis- fied with this.” On another day the Earl “brought it so far that the king took some bits of horse liver, and emptied all the goblets the bonders filled for him.”’ This Hakon had a daughter Thora. Thorer Klakke was one “who had been long on Viking expeditions.” Thorer Hiort “was quicker on foot than any man.” I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth to heaven. I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, — perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind, — I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all. P. M.—To Fair Haven Hill. One discovery in meteorology, one significant obser- vation, is a good deal. I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds. I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes. | It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet’s point of view and that of the man of science. ‘The poet’s second love may be science, not his first, — when use has worn off the bloom. I realize that men may be born to a condition of mind at which % others arrive in middle age by the decay of their poetic faculties.

The sky appears broader now than it did. The day has opened its eyelids wider. The lengthening of the days, commenced a good while ago, is a kind of forerunner of the spring. Of course it is then that the ameliorating cause begins to work. To White Pond. Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to lie in this direction oftenest. The strains from my muse are as rare nowadays, or of late years, as the notes of birds in the winter, — the. faintest occasional tinkling sound, and mostly of the woodpecker kind or the harsh jay or crow. It never melts intoasong. Only the day-day-day of an inquisi- tive titmouse. Everywhere snow, gathered into sloping drifts about the walls and fences, and, beneath the snow, the frozen ground, and men are compelled to deposit the summer’s provision in burrows in the earth hke the ground squirrel. Many creatures, daunted by the prospect, migrated in the fall, but man remains and walks over the frozen snow-crust and over the stiffened rivers and ponds, and draws now upon his summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. There is no home for you now, in this freezing wind, but in that shelter which you prepared in the summer. You steer straight across the fields to that in season. I can with difficulty tell when I am over the river. There is a similar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in the summer and gath- ered flowers and rested on the grass by the brook-side in the shade, now no grass nor flowers, no brook nor shade, but cold, unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit. Look at White Pond, that crystal drop that was, in which the umbrageous shore was reflected, and schools of fabulous perch and shiners rose to the surface, and with difficulty you made your way along the pebbly shore in a summer afternoon to the bathing-place. Now you stalk rapidly across where it was, muffled in your cloak, over a more level snow-field than usual, furrowed by the wind, its finny inhabitants and its pebbly shore all hidden and forgotten, and you would shudder at the thought of wetting your feet in it. Returning across the river just as the sun was setting behind the Hollowell place, the ice eastward of me a few rods, where the snow was blown off, was as green as bottle glass, seen at the right angle, though all around, above and below, was one unvaried white, — a vitre- ous glass green. Just as I have seen the river green in a winter morning. This phenomenon is to be put with the blue in the crevices of the snow. So, likewise, give me leave, or require me, to mend my work, and I will chip down the vessel on both sides to a level with the notches which I have made. A fine display of the northern lights after 10 Pp. M., flashing up from all parts of the horizon to the zenith, where there was a kind of core formed, stretching south- southeast [and] north-northwest, surrounded by what looked like a permanent white cloud, which, however, was very variable in its form. The light flashes or trem- bles upward, as if it were the light of the sun reflected from a frozen mist which undulated in the wind in the upper atmosphere.

Erling had a son Thorer. It is said of the former that “both winter and summer it was the cus- tom in his house to drink at the mid-day meal accord- ing to a measure, but at the night meal there was no measure in drinking.” Kings are not they who go abroad to conquer king- doms, but who stay at home and mind their business, proving first their ability to govern their families and themselves. ‘‘ King Sigurd Syr was standing in his corn-field when the messengers came to him... . He had many people on his farm. Some were then shearing corn, some bound it together, some drove it to the build- ing, some unloaded it and put it in stack or barn; but the king and two men with him went sometimes into the field, sometimes to the place where the corn was put into the barn.” He “attended carefully to his cattle and husbandry, and managed his housekeeping him- self. He was nowise given to pomp and was rather taciturn. But he was a man of the best understanding in Norway.’ After hearing the messengers, he replied: “The news ye bring me is weighty, and ye bring it forward in great heat. Already before now Aasta has been taken up much with people who were not so near to her; and I see she is still of the same disposition. She takes this up with great warmth; but can she lead her son out of the business with the same splendor she is leading him into it?” Fate will go all lengths to aid her protégés. When the Swedish king and Olaf, king of Norway, threw lots for the possession of a farm, “the Swedish king threw two sixes, and said King Olaf need scarcely throw. He replied, while shaking the dice in his hand, ‘ Al- though there be two sixes on the dice, it would be easy, sire, for God Almighty to let them turn up in my favor.’ Then he threw, and had sixes also. Now the Swedish king threw again, and had again two sixes. Olaf, king of Norway, then threw, and had six upon one dice, and the other split in two, so as to make seven eyes In all upon it; and the farm was adjudged to the king of Norway.” There was a Thorer Sel, who “was a man of low birth, but had swung himself up in the world as an active man.” There was a Northman named “Rane Thin-nose.” There is a long story about Thorer Hund’s expedi- tion to Biarmeland. “ Eudr, the lure,” says Laing in note, “is a long tube or roll of birch-bark used as a horn by the herdboys in the mountains of Norway.” There was a “Thorer the Low.” There was a giant of a man named Ganka-Thorer and his brother, who joined King Olaf’s army. The king inquired if they were Christians. “ Ganka-Thorer replies, that he is neither Christian nor heathen. ‘I and my comrades have no faith but on ourselves, our strength, and the luck of victory; and with this faith we slip through sufficiently well.’ “The king replies, ‘A great pity 1t is that such brave slaughtering fellows do not believe in Christ their Cre- ator.’ “Thorer replies, ‘Is there any Christian man, king, in thy following, who stands so high in the air as we two brothers ?’” In King Olaf’s last battle, he “ hewed at Thorer Hund, and struck him across the shoulders; but the sword would not cut, and it was as if dust flew from his rein- deer-skin coat.”” There are some verses about it. But Thorer, having had a hand in the death of the king, left the country. “He went all the way to Jerusalem, and many people say he never came back.” Poeta nascitur non fit, but under what conditions is the poet born? Perchance there is such a thing as a perpetual propagation or reproduction of the human without any recreation, as all botanists assert respecting plants, and as Meyer in particular concerning lichens, who says that “the pulverulent matter of Lichens is that which is subject to this kind of indefinite propaga- tion, while the sporules lying in the shields are the only part that will really multiply the species.” Every gardener practices budding and grafting, but only Van Mons and his equals cultivate seedlings and produce new and valuable varieties. The genius is a seedling, often precocious or made to bear fruit early, as Van Mons treated his pears. The common man is the Baldwin, propagated by mere offshoots or repeti- tions of the parent stock. At least, if all men are to be regarded as seedlings, the greater part are exceedingly like the parent stock. The slope from the last generation to this seems steeper than any part of history. I hear with surprise this afternoon that the ox-wagon was rarely seen fifty years ago; they used the ox-cart here almost exclusively then, even to team wood to Boston. The law requires wood to be four feet long from the middle of the carf to the middle of the carf, yet the hon- est deacon and farmer directs his hired men to cut his wood “four feet a little scant.’’ He does it as naturally as he breathes. We love to see nature clad, whether in earth or a human body. Nobody likes to set his house under that part of the hill where the sod is broken and the sand is flowing. P. M.—To Flint’s Pond. The last two or three days have been among the coldest in the winter, though not so cold as a few weeks ago. I notice, in the low ground covered with bushes near Flint’s Pond, many little rabbit-paths in the snow, where they have travelled in each other’s tracks, or many times back and forth, six inches wide. This, too, is probably their summer habit. The rock by the pond is remarkable for its umbilicaria (?).

“As fat as a hen in the forehead,’ —a saying which I heard my father use this morning.

Went to Plymouth to lecture or preach all day. Beomyces roseus (Batos, small, and pixys, a fungus). Saw in Plymouth, near Billington Sea, the Prinos glaber, or evergreen winterberry. It must be the same with the black-berried bush behind Provincetown. A mild, misty day. The red (?) oaks about Billing- ton Sea fringed with usneas, which in this damp air appear in perfection. The trunks and main stems of the trees have, as it were, suddenly leaved out in the win- ter, — a very lively light green, — and these ringlets and ends of usnea are so expanded and puffed out with light and life, with their reddish or rosaceous fruit, it is a true lichen day. They take the place of leaves in the winter. The clusters dripping with moisture, expanded as it were by electricity, sometimes completely investing the stem of the tree. I understood that there were two only of the sixth generation from the Pilgrims still alive (in Plymouth ?). Every man will take such views as he can afford to take. Views one would think were the most expen- sive guests to entertain. I perceive that the reason my neighbor cannot entertain certain views is the narrow limit within which he is obliged to live, on account of the smallness of his means. His instinct tells him that it will not do to relax his hold here and take hold where he cannot keep hold.