Successors of Ari. Evil-deacon and the sons of Harold Gille, in his Hryggiar-Stykki (Sheldrake), of which parts remain in the MSS. collections of Kings' Lives, Morkin-skinna, &c. Karl Jonsson, abbot of Thingore the Benedictine minister, wrote (c. 1184) a Life of Swerri from the lips of that great king, a fine racy biography, with a style and spirit of its own. Böglunga-Sögur tell the story of the civil wars which followed Swerri's death. They are probably by a contemporary.
The Latin Lives of St Olaf, Odd's in Latin (c. 1175), compiled from original authorities, and the Legendary Life, by another monk whose name is lost, are of the mediæval Latin school of Sæmund to which Gunnlaug belonged.
Snorri. Snorri was known to his contemporaries as a statesman and poet; to us he is above all an historian. His position as a poet and his authorship of the prose Edda have been noticed above. Snorri was born in 1178, being on his mother's side sprung from the Myra family of Borg; he was brought up in fosterage with Sæmund's great grandson Jon Loptsson, a great chief. His career begins with his marriage, 1199, which made him a wealthy man. In 1205 he moved from Borg to Reekholt. He was twice lawman, and twice visited Norway, where he gained great influence with the king; but when the civil war broke out he sided with Duke Skuli and disobeyed the king's orders, whereupon letters were sent out to his enemies to slay him (Skuli his patron having fallen), which command was carried out on the night of 22d Sept. 1241, his own friends and kinsmen being his murderers. Snorri wrote the Lives of the Kings, from Olaf Tryggvason to Sigurd the Crusader inclusive; and we have them substantially as they came from his hand in the Great King Olaf's Saga, which has been interpolated with thættir and bits of other sagas in such a way as that they can be easily omitted; St Olaf's Saga, as in Heimskringla and the Stockholm MS.; and the succeeding Kings' Lives, as in Hulda and Hrokkinskinna, in which, however, a few episodes have been inserted.
These works were no doubt indebted for their facts to Ari's labours, and to sagas written since Ari's death; but the style and treatment of them are Snorri's own. The fine Thucydidean speeches, the dramatic power of grasping character, and the pathos and poetry that run through the stories, along with a humour such as is shown in the Edda, and a varied grace of style that never flags or palls, make Snorri one of the greatest of historians.
Here it should be noticed that Heimskringla and its class of MSS. (Eirspennil, Jofraskinna, Gullinskinna, Fris-bok, and Kringla) do not give the full text of Snorri's works. They are abridgments made in Norway by Icelanders for their Norwegian patrons, the Life of St Olaf alone being preserved intact, for the great interest of the Norwegians lay in him, but all the other Kings' Lives being more or less cut down and mutilated, so that they cannot be trusted for historic purposes; nor do they give a fair idea of Snorri's style. As Englishmen's knowledge of these works is often derived from Mr Laing's translation of a Danish version of Heimskringla (“Sea-Kings of Norway”), this caution is needed.
Kings' Lives brother authors. Agrip is a 12th century compendium of the Kings' Lives from Harold Fairhair to Swerri, by a scholastic writer of the school of Sæmund. As the only Icelandic abridgment of Norwegian history taken not from Snorri but sources now lost, it is of worth. Its real title is Konunga-tal.
Noregs Konunga-tal, now called Fagrskinna, is a Norse compendium of the Kings' Lives from Halfdan the Black to Swerri's accession, probably written for King Hakon, to whom it was read on his death bed. It is an original work, and contains much not found elsewhere. As non-Icelandic it is only noticed here for completeness.
Styrmi Karason, a contemporary of Snorri's, dying in 1245, was a distinguished churchman (lawman twice) and scholar. He wrote a Life of St Olaf, now lost; his authority is cited. He also copied out Landnamabok and Swerri's Life, from his MSS. of which our surviving copies were taken.
Sturla, Snorri's nephew, of whom more must be said below, wrote the Lives of Kings Hakon and Magnus at the request of the latter, finishing the first c. 1265, the latter c. 1280. King Hakon's Life is preserved in full; of the other only fragments remain. These are the last of the long and valuable series of historic works which Ari's labours began, from which the history of Norway for 500 years must be gathered.
A few books relating the history of other Scandinavian realms will complete this survey. In Skioldunga-bok was told the history of the early kings of Denmark, perhaps derived from Ari's collections, and running parallel to Ynglinga. The earlier part of it has perished save a fragment Sogu-brot, and citations and paraphrases in Saxo, and the mythical Ragnar Lodbrok's and Gongu-Hrolf's Sagas; the latter part, Lives of Harold Blue-tooth and the Kings down to Sweyn II., is still in existence and known as Skioldunga.
The Lives of St Knut and his Brethren are of later origin and separate authorships, parallel to Snorri's Lives of the great Norwegian Kings, but earlier in date. The Lives of King Waldimar and his Son, written c. 1185, by a contemporary of Abbot Karl's, are the last of this series. The whole were edited and compiled into one book, often quoted as Skioldunga, by a 13th century editor, possibly Olaf, the White Poet, Sturla's brother, guest and friend of King Waldimar II., as Dr Vigfusson has guessed. Jomsvikinga Saga, the history of the pirates of Jom, down to Knut the Great's days, also relate to Danish history. Several versions of it exist.
The complex work now known as Orkneyinga is made up of the Earls' Saga, lives of the first great earls, Turf-Einur, Thorfinn, &c.; the Life of St Magnus, founded partly on Abbot Robert's Latin life of him, c. 1150, an Orkney work, partly on Norse or Icelandic biographies; a Miracle-book of the same saint; the Lives of Earl Rognwald and Sweyn the last of the vikings, and a few episodes such as the Burning of Bishop Adam. A scholastic sketch of the rise of the Scandinavian empire, the Foundation of Norway, dating c. 1120, is prefixed to the whole. The Flatey-book text of this work has been translated by Mr Hjaltalin in Mr Anderson's Orkneyinga Saga.
Færeyinga tells the tale of the conversion of the Færeys or Faroes, and the lives of its chiefs Sigmund and Leif, composed in the 13th century from their separate sagas by an Icelander of the Sturlung school.
Biographies. The saga has already been shown in two forms, its original epic shape and its later development applied to the lives of Norwegian and Danish kings and earls, as heroic but deeper and broader subjects than before. In the 13th century it is put to a third use, to tell the plain story of men's lives for their contemporaries, after satisfying which demand it dies away for ever.
Lives of chiefs. These biographies are more literary and mediæval and less poetic than the Icelandic sagas and king's lives; their simplicity, truth, realism, and purity of style are the same. They run in two parallel streams, some being concerned with chiefs and champions, some with bishops. The former, as more important, will be taken first. They are mostly found embedded in the complex mass of stories known as Sturlunga, from which Dr Vigfusson has extricated them, and for the first time set them in order. Among them are the sagas of Thorgils and Haflidi (1118-21), the feud and peacemaking of two great chiefs contemporaries of Ari; of Sturla (1150-83), the founder of the great Sturlung family, down to the settlement of his great lawsuit by Jon Loptsson, who thereupon took his son Snorri the historian to fosterage,—a humorous story but with traces of the decadence about it, and glimpses of the evil days that were to come; of the Burning of Onund (1185-1200), a tale of feud and fire-raising in the north of the island, the hero of which, Gudmund Dyri, goes at last into a cloister; of Hrafn Sweinbiornsson (1190-1213), the noblest Icelander of his day, warrior, leech, seaman, craftsman, poet, and chief, whose life at home, travels and pilgrimages abroad (Hrafn was one of the first to visit Becket's shrine), and death at the hands of a foe whom he had twice spared, are recounted by a loving friend in pious memory of his virtues, c. 1220; of Aaron Hiorleifsson (1200-55), a man whose strength, courage, and adventures befit rather a henchman of Olaf Tryggvason than one of King Hakon's thanes (the beginning of the feuds that rise round Bishop Gudmund are told here), of the Swinefell-men (1248-52), a pitiful story of a family feud in the far east of Iceland.
Sturla Thordsson the historian. But the most important works of this class are the Islendinga Saga and Thorgils Saga of Lawman Sturla. Sturla and his brother Olaf were the sons of Thord Sturlason and his mistress Thora. He was born and brought up in prosperous times, when all was fair for the Sturlungs, but his manhood was passed in the midst of strife and war, in which his family fell one by one, and he himself, though a peaceful man who cared little for politics, was more than once forced to fly for his life. While in refuge with King Magnus, in Norway, he wrote his two sagas of that king and his father. After his first stay in Norway he came back in 1271, with the new Norse lawbook, and served a second time as lawman. The Islendinga must have been the work of his later years, composed at Fairey in Broadfirth, where he died, 30th July 1284, aged about seventy years. The saga of Thorgils Skardi (1252-61) seems to have been the first of his works on Icelandic contemporary history; it deals with the life of his own nephew, especially his career in Iceland from 1252 to 1258. The second part of Islendinga (1242-1262), which relates to the second part of the civil war, telling of the careers of Thord Kakali, Kolbein the Young, Earl Gizur, and Hrafn Oddsson. The end is imperfect, there being a blank of some years before the fragmentary ending to which an editor has affixed a notice of the author's death. The first part of Islendinga (1202-42) tells of the beginning and first part of the civil wars, the lives of Snorri and Sighvat, Sturla's uncles, of his cousin and namesake Sturla Sighvatsson, of Bishop Gudmund, and Thorwald Gizursson,—the fall of the Sturlungs, and with them the last hopes of the great houses to maintain the commonwealth, being the climax of the story.
Sturla's power lies in his faithfulness to nature, minute observance of detail, and purity of style. The great extent of his subject, and the difficulty of dealing with it in the saga form, are most skilfully overcome; nor does he allow prejudice or favour to stand in the way of the truth, a thing hard to avoid for one writing of contemporary events in which his own kinsmen have been concerned. He ranks below Ari in value and below Snorri in power; but no one else can dispute his place in the first rank of Icelandic writers.
Of the ecclesiastical biographers, an anonymous Skalholt clerk is
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