covery of new land, or the adventures of the discoverers. The eight chapters in question, by whomsoever they were interpolated into Snorro Sturleson's work, proved to be taken, with few variations, and none of any importance, from the eighth chapter of the Saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson in the " Codex Flatoiensis." This saga gives more details of the reign of that king than Snorro Sturleson's saga of it, and is no doubt the source from which he drew his account, using it often verbatim.
The " Flateyar Annall, or Codex Flatoiensis," by far the most important of Icelandic manuscripts, takes its name from the island Flatö, in Bredefiord in Iceland, where it had been long preserved, and where Bishop Swendson of Skalholt purchased it, about 1650, from the owner, Jonas Torfeson, for King Frederic III., giving in exchange for it the perpetual exemption from land-tax of a small estate of the owner. The manuscript is in large folio, beautifully written on parchment. On the first page stands—" This book is owned by Ion Hakonson. Here are, first, songs; then how Norway was inhabited or settled; then of Eric Yidforla (the far-travelled); thereafter of Olaf Tryggvesson, and all his deeds[1]; then next the saga of King Olaf the Saint, with all his deeds, and therewith the sagas of the Orkney Earls; then the saga of Swerrer, and thereafter the saga of Hakon the Old, with the sagas of King Magnus his son; then are deeds of Einar Sokkeson of Greenland, thereafter of Helge and Ulf the Bad; then begin annals from the time the world was made, showing all to this present. time that is come. The priest Ion Thordarson has written from Eric Yidforla, and the two sagas of the
- ↑ Thattr does not exactly mean deeds, but excerpts or short accounts of deeds. We use in Scotland the expression, "a tait o' woo"—a little wool pulled out of a fleece; which corresponds to the Icelandic thattr,an excerpt.
