Наумлюк, М. В. Региональная литература Кольского Севера XX-XXI века в аспекте идентичности и мультикультурности. Страницы истории и современность / М. В. Наумлюк ; М-во образования и науки Рос. Федерации, Мурм. гос. гуманитар. ун-т. - Мурманск, 2013.

wintering grounds. In the “Saga of Greenlanders” Vikings first opened the coun try they did not like, returned to the ship, sailed out to the sea and opened an other country, then went on from there to the North-East and again saw the land [Saga of Greenlanders, 1973, p. 90]. Some of them had no graves but only epi taph: “Somebody did not return”. Naturally, Time and Space in the sagas are seen as limitless and universal. As for Space in sagas, you can see a very strik ing landscapes reminding us of the early days of the creation of the world: ice fields, stone slabs, snow-covered hills, fogs and extreme cold. Ancient Norwegians and Icelanders embodied the best features of the suc cessive generation of their ancestors as mythological heroes had been. As a well-known Russian historian A. Gurevich believed, Vikings “kept the universal examples of human behavior, requirement of morality, belief in destiny, which was considered as the main force, ruling the world, life and human beings... Their inner life was determined by destiny, but without fatality, they believed in fortune and were freed for everyday struggle” [Gurevich, 1990, p. 72]. Self- reliance was the main characteristic of their behavior. That’s why the motive of prophetic dream was so important in sagas. Probably later epics put their impact on literature and painting of the 19th century correlating North only with Cold, Death and Horror. Jane Eyre, the main hero of the novel of Charlotte Bronte, reads the book and observes the land scapes of Norway and perceives them as lifeless and deserted edge reminding of cold and death. But much more later sagas will become the foundation of the na tional identity of the Norwegian literature. § 2. The Theme of Man - Nature - Civilization in the Norwegian, the American and the Russian Literature in the second half of the 19 century to the beginning of the 20s On a boundary of the 19-20 centuries the interest to the North appeared in the world literature, and writers in different countries recreated its image as ma jestic Universe in which unites natural, spiritual, human, and aesthetic qualities. It was not accidentally that the image of the Far North appeared in the lit erature of a boundary of 19-20 centuries. Most artists and intellectuals (such as Schopenhauer, Spengler, Nietzsche) had by that time felt the inevitability of the decay of bourgeois civilization. Disappointments in life, moral nihilism, apoca lyptic mood were typical of European decadence in general. On the other hand, in a counterbalance to the tragic attitude of an epoch many writers aspired to represent heroic and positive basis in human being. Feelings of the end of civili zation induced them to return to eternal sources of human life, to the natural principles of life, which could remain in the North. At that time writers creating the northern world were released from the standard conventions, the North theme became popular, thanks to the Norwegian writers: Henrik Ibsen’s dramas, novels of Knut Hamsun and Sigrid Unset. 101