Tales Of A Wayside Inn Part 1 The Musicians Tale The Saga Of King Olaf 4 - Analysis

A fleet made to look like a legend

The poem’s main work is myth-making: it turns King Olaf’s crew into something larger than life, a company so visually striking and so loudly confident that the North Sea itself seems like their natural stage. From the first lines, the fleet is not merely parked but Safe at anchor in Drontheim bay, with sail and banner fluttering like a hunting bird, the screaming lanner. That comparison matters: it casts the ships as predators poised to strike, and it makes the spectacle feel instinctive rather than political. The tone is celebratory and loud from the start—Lustily cheered—as if the poem wants us to hear the roar before we understand who is roaring.

Faces as emblems: the crew becomes a gallery of force

Longfellow builds the crew member by member, and each man is introduced like an emblem on a shield. Ulf the Red has a shaggy head like a wolf’s, with teeth as large and white; even his beard is shaped into an image, Round as a swallow’s nest. Kolbiorn gleams with display—his cloak of scarlet draws the attention of Every cabin-boy and varlet—and his armor shines Like a river, frozen and star-lit, a metaphor that turns metal into a whole landscape. Thrand Rame’s identity is literally stamped onto his body: an anchor, azure-tinted is imprinted on his arm, as if seamanship is fate rather than occupation. These portraits don’t aim for psychological depth; they aim for instant recognizability, like characters in a saga whose bodies announce their roles.

The tender eye inside the war-ship

The most interesting wrinkle in this masculine panorama comes with Einar Tamberskelver. He stands bare / To the winds with golden hair, but the poem pauses on a detail that complicates the prevailing roughness: his eyes are deep and tender / As a woman’s, specifically in the splendor / Of her maidenhood. That comparison isn’t just decorative. It introduces a tension between the crew’s brute energy and a surprising capacity for softness or inwardness. In a poem otherwise crowded with wolf-teeth, huge hands, and swearing, Einar’s gaze suggests that the saga-hero is not only made of aggression. The poem still admires him, but it admires him for a different kind of power: a calm, almost intimate presence at the mainmast, the ship’s spine.

The ocean as a maker of devotion—and of noise

Midway through, the poem shifts from cataloging individuals to explaining what binds them. They sail Till the waters vast fill them with a vague devotion: not a named religion or a clear cause, but an emotional surrender to the freedom and the motion and to the roll and roar of ocean. The devotion is vague because it isn’t moralized; it’s physical, born from rhythm, danger, and scale. Yet when they land, the same force becomes social disruption. They roared through Drontheim’s street, Boisterous as the gale, and they turn the tavern into an echo chamber—laughed and stamped and pounded until the tavern roof resounded. The sea’s roar has followed them onto land. The poem’s admiration doesn’t disappear, but it edges toward comedy and menace: the host looked on astounded, suggesting that their fellowship is exhilarating to witness and exhausting to contain.

A boast that tries to outrun history

The ending doubles down on superlatives—Never saw the wild North Sea / Such a gallant company—and even names rivals like Old King Gorm and Blue-Tooth Harald to sharpen the claim. This final boast is where the poem’s central contradiction becomes clearest: it wants to praise the crew as unmatched, yet it also shows them cruised and quarrelled, a phrase that admits restlessness and infighting inside the glamour. The ship is so well apparelled and the crew so loud and strong that the poem risks turning violence into pageantry. But the repeated emphasis on noise—cheers, oaths, roaring streets—quietly hints that what makes them great is also what makes them dangerous: their identity depends on being heard as much as on being brave.

What does vague devotion really excuse?

If the ocean gives the men devotion through freedom and motion, the poem also suggests that this devotion has no clear object except intensity itself. The same energy that fills them at sea becomes a force that overwhelms a town and astonishes a host. The poem invites admiration, but it also leaves a hard question hanging: is this devotion a kind of nobility, or simply a beautiful name for the habit of living at full volume?