Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/221

 bracelets; and tbe hater of this fire is the man who hates to keep it, who gives it away,—the generous man. Every piece ahnost of the scaldic poetry quoted in the Heimskringla has allusions of this obscure kind, which would be unintelligible without voluminous explanation; and yet the character of these short poetical pieces does not consist in these, which seem to be but expletives for filling out their artificial structure of verses, but in their rude simplicity and wild grandeur. The translator intended at first to have have left out these pieces of scaldic poetry altogether. They are not essential to Snorro's prose narrative of the events to which they refer. They are not even authorities for the facts he details, although he quotes them in that view; for they only give the summary or heads of events of which he gives the particular minute accounts. They appear to be catch-words, or preliminary verses, for aiding the memory in recurring to some long account or saga in prose of which they are the compendium or text. The oldest translator also of Snorro's work, Peter Claussen, who is supposed to have had, in 1599, a manuscript to translate from which is now lost, omits altogether the verses. The translator consulted a literary friend,— his son, Mr. S. Laing, late Fellow of St. John's College Cambridge, now of the Railroad Department of the Board of Trade,—and went over with him the translation of the prose narrative of Snorro, and translations into prose of the poetical pieces connected with it. They came to the conclusion that although these pieces of scaldic poetry are not essential to Snorro's prose narrative of the historical events to which they refer, they are essential to the spirit and character of Snorro's work. However obscure, unpoetical, monotonous in the ideas, or uninteresting and flat they may be, they show the mind, spirit, and intellectual state of the age and people,—show what it was they considered