Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/216

 with the country, the people, and their social state. He read with delight the account of old manners and ways of living given in the saga,—old, yet not without much resemblance to what still exists in ordinary family life among the bonders. He found, from knowing the localities, the charm of truth from internal evidence in the narratives of that saga. It is not unlikely that these favourable circumstances may have given the translator a higher impression of the literary merit of the Heimskringla, than others may receive from it. He was not aware at the time that the volume which delighted him was but a translation of a single saga from Snorro Sturleson's work into a Norse which itself was becoming obsolete, and like the Scotch of Lindsay of Fitscottie's Chronicle, was in some degree a forgotten language even among the peasantry. It has since been the occasional and agreeable occupation of his leisure hours to study the work of Snorro in the original. To much knowledge of, or familiarity with the Icelandic, he cannot lay any claim. To get at the meaning and spirit of the text, helping himself over the difficulties, which generally only lay in his own ignorance of the language, by collating every passage he was in doubt about with the meaning given to it in the translations of Peringskiold, Schöning, and Aal, and to give a plain faithful translation into English of the Heimskringla, unencumbered with antiquarian research, and suited to the plain English reader, has been his object.

The short pieces of scaldic poetry which Snorro intermixes with his narrative, and quotes as his authorities for the facts he is telling, are very difficult to deal with in a translation. They are not without a rude grandeur of imagery, and a truthfulness in description of battles and sea-fights; and they have a simplicity which, although often flat, is often natural and impressive. They have probably been originally