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His march towards Sweden, and from that towards Norway and the passes of the mountains, down Vaerdal, towards Stickelstad, and the crisis that awaited, is beautifully depicted by Snorro. Singularly visual all of it, too, brought home in every particular to one's imagination, so that it stands out almost as a thing one actually saw.
Writing by Runes has some air of being original among the Norsemen: not a Phoenician Alphabet, but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us farther that Odin invented Poetry; the music of human speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it.
It has been asserted that the Norwegians, as early as the ninth century, discovered a great tract of land to the west of Iceland, which they called Grand Iceland; but this has been pronounced a fabulous tradition. The most plausible account is one given by Snorro Sturleson, in his Saga or Chronicle of King Olaus.
English books do not mention him at all that I can find; but it is fairly credible that, as the Norse records report, in the end of Ethelred's reign, he was the ally or hired general of Ethelred, and did a great deal of sea-fighting, watching, sailing, and sieging for this miserable king and Edmund Ironside, his son. The Bridge, as usual, Snorro says, offered almost insuperable obstacles.
Olaf's chief captains, seeing the enemy's huge fleet come out, and how the matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of treachery, and, with all sail, hold on his course, fight being now on so unequal terms. Snorro says, the king, high on the quarter-deck where he stood, replied, "Strike the sails! never shall men of mine think of flight. I never fled from battle.
If I sail no more wi' Ragon, I must quit Peter's employ; for he loves Ragon as he loves no ither lad i' Stromness or Kirkwall. The Norse blood we think little o', Peter glories in; an' the twa men count thegither o'er their glasses the races o' the Vikings, an' their ain generations up to Snorro an' Thorso." "Is there no ither master but Peter Fae? ask theesel' that question, John."
A brave old book is that of Snorro, containing the histories and adventures of old northern kings and champions, who seemed to have been quite different men, if we may judge from the feats which they performed, from those of these days.
But more I will not do." So Tosti sulked through the winter at St. Omer, and then went off to get help from Sweyn, of Denmark, and failing that, from Harold Hardraade of Norway. But how he sped there must be read in the words of a cunninger saga-man than this chronicler, even in those of the "Icelandic Homer," Snorro Sturleson.
In order that you may understand why the forlorn barrack we had just left, and its solitary inmates, should have set me thinking of the men and women "of a thousand summers back," it is necessary I should tell you a little about this same Snorro Sturleson, whose memory so haunted me.
Snorro gives vividly enough his view of it from the Icelandic side: A ring of stalwart Norsemen, close ranked, with their steel tools in hand; English Harold's Army, mostly cavalry, prancing and pricking all around; trying to find or make some opening in that ring.
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