“The Skeleton in Armor” Diagnostic Paper—Land and Sea

Last week, I started my summer class to kill off the rest of my Reading and Composition requirement for the university. I picked the easiest and most interesting course I could (Scandinavian R5B), and this was the first assignment. It is a travesty.

           

The thrilling and brutal life of a Viking of old, free from common law, is the fodder for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Skeleton in Armor.” Roused from death, the spirit of a long-dead Viking appears to the narrator as a skeleton in armor, entreating him to tell his tale true. Longfellow’s poem speculates on the Norse origin of Newport Tower in Rhode Island, identified in the accompanying plates, and attributes its construction to a heavily romanticized, tragic saga of a Viking of old. The Viking’s declaration of his life story is rife with metaphors and motifs, the most prevalent of which are references to water in the form of ice and sea, and land, in stone halls and forests. Water and its many forms is a recurring motif that conveys the changes that the Viking and his environment undergo throughout his life—combatant images of sea and land relate the Viking’s struggle between his true nature as a chaotic, lawless marauder, and his desire for a steadfast and grounded love with a lady. 

The skeleton is the spirit of a vicious Norse sea-rover: Longfellow affirms his relationship with the ocean through frequent use of metaphors associated with water and its many forms. The first is that the Viking’s death is frozen calm. The narrator thaws him from death, drawing speech “…like the water’s flow/Under December’s snow…” (Longfellow, lines 13-14); his resurrection is a transition from tranquility to action. Similarly, Longfellow, by describing the Viking’s childhood along the “…wild [Baltic]…the half-frozen Sound…,” indicates that a sheet of ice, calmness and purity, barely restrains the uncontrollable sea that the child will grow into (26-30). The subsequent stanzas detail his adult life as a marauding Viking, and the water imagery changes: the “…dark sea…” described in the context of the “…souls that spend…the hearts that bled…” suggest that his adulthood is tumultuous and chaotic compared to the placid frozen Baltic of his youth (43-47). Longfellow’s metaphors create a vivid dramatization of a Viking’s violent and reckless existence, while his tales of “…stormy [seas]…” that seduce a timid but curious maiden, thus establishing the Viking’s inherent nature as a being of uncontrollable, free chaos (58).

While Longfellow’s use of water to convey the changes in the Viking’s life and environment is evident, he also uses the sea as a foil to frequent mentions of land, particularly forests and buildings. The Viking is no beast of land—he is a seafarer at heart, unrestrained by and uncommitted to the traditions and laws that hold true on solid ground. As such, the trees and structures that stand on the earth represent order and stability that directly conflict with the free and vicious sea, the true nature of the Viking. In spite of this powerful identity, the Viking is willing to relinquish his freedom for love: he exchanges his vows with his fair maid under the cover of “…the forest’s shade…” far from his beloved sea (67). Even more, the Viking stands in the very bastion of order and civilization when he asks Hildebrand for the maiden’s hand—the “…father’s hall/Shields…upon the wall…” reflects the Viking’s own commitment to forsaking his roving ways, to abide by the laws of the land, to settle and commit to the contract of marriage (73-74). However, Hildebrand’s refusal compels the Viking to fly back to his natural element, and carries the maiden off, defending his spoils in a violent and harrowing sea battle against her father. The struggle between the two aspects—the land, his desire wed and commit to his love, and the sea, his inherently transient and wild Viking persona—continues when they make landfall in what Longfellow suggests is Rhode Island. There by the sea, he erects a tower as a testament to his love, solidifying his willingness to cast aside his bold, seafaring ways for a tender, steadfast life with his lady. By placing every instance of the Viking’s temptation to settle and cast away his plunderer’s lifestyle in the forests or behind walls, Longfellow uses images of land and sea to show the Viking’s conflict between his bold nature and his desire for committed, dedicated love.

The conflict sees no resolution, even after “…the storm was o’er…” and they make landfall (130). The shore is “…cloud-like…,” indicating an uncertain future straddling between the warring desires that Longfellow have land and sea represent (131). While free from the law and order of rightful marriage in Hildebrand’s court, the Viking is forced to adopt a straightforward, honest, land-bound life for the sake of his lady. The “…lofty tower…stands looking seaward…,” showing that though the Viking agrees to live reliably and responsibly, he still craves the bold and unruly pirate’s life, and the conflict is still unresolved. With the death of his lady love, his heart becomes “…still as a stagnant fen…” (146). This is a return to the water metaphors, but is a far cry from the bold seas that he once was. The fen, a brackish marsh half-claimed by land and sea both, mirrors the half-frozen Sound of his youth—his wild spirit is restrained, but this time, he is defeated. Robbed of his wife, his sole motivation for turning away from the sea, the Viking seeks his last battle. “Clad in…warlike gear…,” the Viking takes his own life in the forest, a marriage between his two warring worlds as a final attempt to make sense of what his life had become (150).

The Viking dies a long way from home, from both his beloved Northland and his true and natural state of being. His land-bound and domestic life, so unlike his Viking’s life, becomes meaningless and dull in his lady’s death, and he faces his own end dressed for battle, but with no adversary but himself. He dies in conflict, and it is from this conflict that he, as a skeleton in armor, rises to recall his life. Only after acknowledging his wrongs to others and his internal war does he find reprieve. In death, “…from the flowing bowl/Deep drinks the warrior’s soul…”—the Viking reclaims his identity. This last invocation of the water imagery affirms the savage, unshackled Viking warrior image that Longfellow cultivated throughout the poem.