The Heimskringla (Volume 1); Or, the Sagas of the Norse Kings from the Icelandic of Snorre Sturlason

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE HEIMSKKINGLA; CHEONICLE OF THE KINGS OF NOEWAY, PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. CHAPTER I. OF THE LITERATURE AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF THE NORTHMEN. Snorre Sturlason's Heimskringla is a work known to few English readers. Heimskringla?the world's circle?being the first prominent word of the manuscript that catches the eye, has been quaintly used by the northern antiquaries to designate the work itself. One may well imagine that the librarian, or the scholar, in the midst of the rolls and masses of parchments of the great public and private libraries of Copenhagen and Stockholm, has found his advantage in this simple way of directing an unlettered assistant to the skin he wishes to unfold. It is likely that the illuminated initial letters of ancient manuscripts, and of the early printed books, may have had their origin in a similar use or convenience in the monastic libraries of the Middle Ages. Snorre VOL. I. A himself is guiltless of this pedantic conceit; for he U calls his work the Saga or Story of the Kings of Norway. (It is in reality a chronicle, or rather a connected series of memoirs, of kings and other personages, and of the events in which they have been engaged in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England, and other countries, from those earlyages in whichjnythology and historyjire undistinguishably blended togetherdown to the period nearly qfJSnorre Sturlason's own birth, to 1177 Snorre begins with Odin and the half-fabulous tales of the Yngling dynasty, and, showing more judgment than many of the modern Saga scholars and antiquaries, passes rapidly over these as an unavoidable introduction to authentic historical times and narratives. From the middle of the ninth century, from Halfdan the Black, who reigned from about the year 27to aboutSo down to Magnu...