Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/170

. Torfæus kindled a light which the moths have gathered about, and almost put out.

In 1697 Peringskiold published the "Heimskringla" of Snorro Sturleson, with a Latin and Swedish translation of the Icelandic. It was discovered and pointed out by Torfæus, that Peringskiold must have had some inferior manuscript of the work before him, because eight chapters of the Saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, viz. from Chapter 105. to Chapter 113., are interpolated, and are not to be found in any genuine manuscript of Snorro's work. These eight chapters contain the accounts of the voyages of Leif and of Karlsefne to Vinland. There is internal evidence in Snorro's work itself that these eight chapters are a clumsy interpolation by Peringskiold, or his authority; for they interrupt Snorro's narrative in the most interesting period of King Olaf Tryggvesson's life, and have no connection with the transactions or personages preceding or following; whereas all Snorro's episodes are, with surprising art and judgment, connected with what goes before or is to follow, and are brought in exactly at the right place. It may be thought, at first sight, that the very circumstance of a man of Snorro's knowledge and judgment in the sagas not knowing, or knowing not adopting, the account of the discovery of Yinland given in these eight chapters subsequently interpolated in his work, is conclusive against their value and authenticity. But it is to be remembered that although he probably knew of them, the subject was altogether foreign to his work. Vinland was an object of no interest in his days, and had not, like Greenland, Iceland, the Feroe Isles, or Orkney, been occupied as a colony, or part of the dominions of Norway, and had not employed any of the historical personages of whom he treats; and therefore it would have been inconsistent with his work to introduce the obscure, and in his time unimportant fact, of the