The dramatic poet has been reproached, as his biographer asserts, for "degrading the demi-gods" of the Völsung Saga into mere Norwegian and Icelandic Vikings of the age of Erik Blodöx--or Bloody Axe. Other critics, again, have commended him for making Vikings out of the Völsung Saga. Be it as it may, the result is drama of an excellent sort; romantic drama if you will, yet informed by a certain realistic quality. Here again the woman is the wielder of the power, and not the man. Hjördis is the very incarnation of violence, of the lust of conquest, of hate, revenge. She would overthrow kingdoms to secure the man she loved, and that man is only a tool for her passionate ambitions. The Vikings at Helgeland, then, is not exactly a dramatic paraphrase of the Völsung Saga. Ibsen absorbed the wisdom of the ancients of his race and made of them an organic work full of the old spirit, heroic, powerful, and informed with the harsh romance of the time. This play is not among his greatest, but it is none the less interesting as a connecting link of his youth and early manhood. Let us follow the piece scene by scene, noting the easy grasp of character, the pithy dialogue, the atmosphere of repressed passion and ferocious cruelty. There are evidences of crude power from first to last. Upon the purple spotted rocks near the home of Gunnar Headman on the island of Helgeland--in the north of Norway--Sigurd comes up from his two war-ships which lie down in the misty cove. In the person of Oscar Asche--familiar to New York theatre-goers as the appalling Hebraic millionaire in Pinero's Iris--this Sigurd is a formidable warrior, with hair in two blond plaits, steel-spiked cap, and fighting harness. He resembled Van Dyck's Siegmund as to girth, and with his big bare arms, his bracelets, sword, and heavy stride, he gave one the impression of clanking grandeur, of implacable phlegm. At once a row begins, for Oernulf of the Fjords, an Icelandic chieftain, bars the passage of the Viking. The pair fight. Fast from ship and cavern pour warriors, and Dagny, the wife of Sigurd. Then hostilities cease. In the young woman Oernulf recognizes a daughter wed without his consent by Sigurd; for this hero, after giving up Hjördis--the foster daughter of Oernulf--to Gunnar, marries Oernulf's real child, Dagny. As already indicated, this scene was managed with remarkable deftness at the Imperial. That sterling actor, Holman Clark, no stranger in America, as Oernulf, carried away the major honours in this stirring episode. His very mannerisms lent themselves to an amiable complicity with the lines and gestures. We soon learn from his words that he means to extort his pound of flesh from Gunnar for carrying off Hjördis. Sigurd placates him with presents, with assurances of esteem. Dagny pleads for forgiveness, and wins it.