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Read which you will of the old sagas heathen or half-Christian the Eyrbiggia, Viga Glum, Burnt Niall, Grettir the Strong, and, above all, Snorri Sturluson's "Heimskringla" itself and you will see at once how sad they are. There is, in the old sagas, none of that enjoyment of life which shines out everywhere in Greek poetry, even through its deepest tragedies.
The old Norsemen laid their spell upon him; he was bitten with a zeal for saga-hunting, studied vigorously the Northern tongues, went off to Iceland, returned to rummage in the libraries of Copenhagen, began to translate the Heimskringla, planned a History of the Vikings. Emphatically, this kind of thing suited him.
As to the influence of the Northmen on the development of the countries visited in this last period, the eminent English writer, Samuel Laing, the translator of the Heimskringla, or the Sagas of the Norse kings, says: "All that men hope for of good government and future improvement in their physical and moral condition all that civilized men enjoy at this day of civil, religious, and political liberty the British constitution, representative legislation, the trial by jury, security of property, freedom of mind and person, the influence of public opinion over the conduct of public affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age all that is or has been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either in Europe or in the New World, may be traced to the spark left burning upon our shores by these northern barbarians."
The Mythology. 3. The Scandinavian Languages. 4. Icelandic, or Old Norse Literature: the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Scalds, the Sagas, the "Heimskringla," The Folks-Sagas and Ballads of the Middle Ages. 5.
Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus, the Heimskringla, Froissart, Joinville and Villehardouin, Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and Ranke why! there are scores and scores of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as absorbing as the best of all the novels, and of as permanent value.
The authentic history begins with Halfdan the Swarthy, who reigned from the year 821 to 860. The Icelander Snorre Sturlason, who, in the twelfth century, wrote the Heimskringla, or Sagas of the Norse Kings, gives a long line of preceding kings of the Yngling race, the royal family to which Halfdan the Swarthy belonged; but that part of the Saga belongs to mythology rather than to history.
Snorre Sturleson, already spoken of as the collector of the Prose Edda, was the author of a great original work, the "Heimskringla," or Home-Circle, so called from the first word of the manuscript, a most admirable history of a great portion of northern Europe from the period of the Christian Era to 1177, including every species of Saga composition.
A continuation of the Heimskringla, to which several authors have contributed, among them Snorre Sturlason's relative, Sturla Thordson, contains the history of the later kings down to Magnus Law-Mender.
This Saga is a splendid epic in prose, and is particularly interesting to the English race. The first part of the "Heimskringla" is necessarily derived from tradition; as it advances fable and fact all curiously intermingle, and it terminates in authentic history.
And it is to Alfred the Great that we owe this slender thread which binds our English literature of to-day with the literature of a thousand years ago. "William came o'er the sea, With bloody sword came he. Cold heart and bloody sword hand Now rule the English land." The Heimskringla Norman knights and nobles filled all the posts of honor at court, all the great places in the land.
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