Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/78

60 A collection of sagas which also deserves special mention is the (the book of Flat Isle), so called because it was found on the small island Flatey in Broadforth. The book is written toward the end of the fourteenth century by two Icelandic priests, and contains in strange confusion and wholly without criticism a large number of sagas (Olaf Trygvason's Saga, St. Olaf 's Saga, Swerre's Saga, Hakon Hakonson's Saga, etc.), of poems (Einar Skulason's "Geisli," Einar Gilsson's "Olafsrima," etc.) and of shorter stories; but it is important, because much is found there which otherwise would have been lost. The Flatey-book is not, however, the only old Icelandic manuscript in which a variety of matters are collected, but none other confuses things on so vast a scale.

The Flatey-book naturally leads us to discuss the sagas which speak of other countries than Iceland and Norway, as it contains sagas of the Fareys and the Orkneys. The Saga gives an account of the introduction of Christianity on the Fareys and of various events connected therewith which group themselves around the poetically sketched popular hero, Sigmund Brestesson. It is an interesting and graphically told saga, which, however, has more poetic than historical value. The resembles in its style the sagas of the kings, and gives the history of the jarls of the Orkneys from the close of the ninth century to 1222. It contains many songs, and seems on the whole to be founded on short stories of an older date. and (a part of the eastern coast of North America, the present Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which was discovered by the Icelanders at the close of the tenth century) accounts are found in the sagas of Erik the Red, in, and in the , all of which contain, important contributions to the knowledge of the discoveries and of the life of the settlers in Greenland. For the history of the  and especially the  are of importance. The former tells in a most lucid manner of the Jomsvikings