Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/207

norant age, can be brought against a man—he was comparatively rich, and comparatively learned. Of his wealth we are told that he possessed six considerable farms, on which his stock of cattle was so great that in one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head of oxen, without being seriously affected by it in his circumstances. lie employed much of his wealth in improving and fortifying his main residence at Reikholt, to which he had removed from Berg. At Reikholt he constructed a bathing room of cut freestone, into which the water from a warm spring in the neighbourhood was conducted by a covered drain or pipe. Stone buildings in the North being rare, this structure was considered magnificent, and is spoken of as a proof at once of Snorro's wealth and extravagance. In this age it will rather be considered a proof that Snorro was a man of habits far more refined than those of the people around him; that, trifling as the structure may have been, it shows a mind of great energy and activity to have executed it, and of some refinement and improved habits to have felt the want of accommodations, for personal cleanliness in his house. Snorro's first journey to Norway appears to have been about the year 1221, when he was forty-three years of age, and was still married to his first wife Herdisa. He appears to have come to Norway on a visit to Earl Hakon Galin, who was married to Lady Christina, the daughter of King Sigurd the Crusader. We are told in the Sturlunga Saga, that Snorro had composed a poem in honour of the earl, who in return had sent him a sword and a suit of armour. On his arrival he found that the earl was dead, and his widow was married again to Askel, the Lagman of Gotland. He remained the first winter at the court of King Hakon and Earl Skule, who then ruled over Norway, and proceeded in summer to visit Lady Christina, by whom he was