Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/206

dren; a son called Urækia, and a daughter called Ingeborg. After being twenty-five years married to Herdisa, he married, sometime about 1224, she being still alive, another wife, Halveig, a rich widow, with whom he got also a large fortune. He quarrelled with the children of his first wife about their fortunes to which they were entitled when he parted from their mother. He was in enmity also with the husbands of both his daughters, each of whom had been divorced, or had had two husbands; and these sons-inlaw, and his own brother Sighvat, were the parties 'who finally murdered him in their family feud. What is known of Snorro Sturleson is derived from an account of the Sturle family, called the "Sturlunga Saga," composed evidently by one of the descendants of the kinsmen with whom he had been in enmity. His bad actions are probably exaggerated, and his good concealed. With every allowance, however, for the false colouring which hatred and envy may have given to the picture, Snorro appears from it to have been a man of violent disposition,—greedy, selfish, ambitious, and under no restraint of principle in gratifying his avarice and evil passions. He is accused of amassing great wealth by unjust litigation with his nearest kindred, and by retaining unjustly the property which of right belonged to them on his parting with his first wife; and of appearing at the Things with an armed body of 600 or 800 men, and obtaining by force the legal decisions he desired. He is accused also of having, on his visits to Norway, betrayed the independence of his country, and contributed to reduce Iceland to the state of a province of Norway. It is probable that much of the vices of the age, and of the inevitable events in history prepared by causes of remote origin, is heaped up by the saga-writer on Snorro's head. He was clearly guilty of the two greatest charges which, in a poor country and ig-