Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/381

 KINGS OF NORWAY. 369 pose another Odin or two to have flourished 500 or 1000 notes. years earlier; and by assuming that King On or Ane, of ' whom the Ynglinga Saga makes mention in the twenty-ninth chapter, reached the age of 210 years, he stretches his gene- alogical chronology far enough. But twenty-six reigns, son succeeding father, — and the reigns are all we know of these mythological personages, or rather the names only, — never did follow each other in this unquiet world ; and an average of thirty-five years for human life, during twenty-six generations, would not accord with any experience or calculation of human life. The Odin of Snorro lived, as he tells us distinctly in the Edda, about the time when the Romans under Pompey ravaged Asia. In Florus, lib. iii. cap. 4., we find that Lucul- lus in this war with Mithridates, came " ad terminum gentium Tanaim lacumque Maeotim." This was about 70 years before Christ. None of the genealogical deductions admit even of so ancient a date. If we take the Saxon genealogies, we find Cerdic called the ninth in descent from Woden, and he lived about the year 495 ; Ida was called the tenth in descent, and he lived about 547 ; and Ella was called the eleventh, and he lived about 560. If we even adopt the extravagant sup- position that these descents were not of reign succeeding reign in turbulent unsettled times, but of son succeeding father uninterruptedly, and each living thirty-five years on an average, we bring Odin down to between 175 and 197 years after our asra. If we value these mythological genealogies in years according to any rational principle, w^e must take some fixed point in chronology, and from it upwards to the end of the doubtful mythological, and to the beginning of the certain historical reigns, take the average duration of reigns, and from the same point downwards take the average of a similar num- ber of reigns. We would thus get a measure to apply to the mythological period, formed upon the duration of reigns in times similar in unsettled government to the more ancient mythological. The battle of Stiklestad, at which King Olaf the Saint fell, appears to be such a fixed chronological point. It is stated by Snorro, that the battle took place on Wed- nesday the IV. of the Calends of August, viz. the 29th July. Now the IV. Calends of August did fall on a Wed- nesday in the year 1030. In the Saga of Harald Haardrade, King Olaf's half-brother, who was killed at the battle of VOL. III. B B