Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/46

 being deprived of every luxury of food, exercise a perpetual sobriety, and turn every moment of their lives to the cultivation of a knowledge of the affairs of other countries, and, compensating their poverty by their ingenuity, consider it their pleasure to become acquainted with the transactions of other nations, and hold it to be not less honourable to record the virtues of others than to exhibit their own; and whose treasures in the records of historical transactions I have carefully consulted, and have composed no small portion of the present work according to their relations, not despising as authorities those whom I know to be so deeply embued with a knowledge of antiquity." Saxo appears to have had access to many sagas, either in manuscript, or in vivâ voce relation, which are not now extant. Theodoric the Monk, a contemporary also of Saxo, who flourished about the year 1161, and wrote a history of the kings of Norway in Latin, and almost the only historical work of the middle ages composed in that language in Norway, gives a similar testimony to the great amount of historical knowledge among the Icelanders transmitted through their songs and sagas. The causes of this peculiar turn among the Icelanders will be inquired into afterwards.

Eiric, the son of Odd, wrote a history of King Harald Gille's sons, Sigurd and Inge, who succeeded him, as joint kings of Norway, about 1136, to the death of each of them; and gives also the history of King Magnus the Blind, and of Sigurd Slembidegn. As King Inge fell in battle in the year 1161, the work of Eiric is to be placed after that date. Karl, abbot of the monastery of Thing Isle in the north or Iceland, who was ordained in 1169, and died in 1213, wrote a life of his contemporary King Swerrer, who reigned from 1177 to 1202. His work is highly esteemed.

Odd the Monk, also hinn Frode, was next to, or