Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/388

 376 CHRONICLE OF THE NOTES. Lock, of a good and evil principle ; and a more ancient mythology, upon which the incarnation of Odin, the rude idea of a trinity, the twelve godars, and other ideas and fonns of belief and observance borrowed from the Christian church in the early ages of Christianity, have been stitched in the 4th or 5 th century. 11. IvAR ViDFADME is said, in the forty- fifth chapter of the Ynglinga Saga, to have conquered a fifth part of England. This is is the first mention made in the saga of expeditions to England ; and in the saga the fifth part of England is gene- rally applied as synonymous with the kingdom of Northum- berland. When did this Ivar live ? and how does his date correspond with that given by the Saxon Chronicle, and all our English historians on its authority, as that of the first appearance of the Danes in England, viz. the year 787 ? Harald Haarfager was bom, according to Torfaeus, in his Denmark, Harald's contemporary, was born 830. By the genealogies of both these kings, taken by Torfajus from the Codex Flatoyensis, the Langfiedgatal a genealogical table preserved in it, and from Snorro's Ynglinga Saga, both kings were the sixth in descent from Ivar Vidfadme. Allowing seventeen years to each reign or descent, we have the year 728 or 751 as the time of Ivar Vidfadme. This is a genera- tion too early for the year 787. The king who was reigning at either of these dates, 728 or 751, could scarcely be landing for the first time in England in 787 ; and 793 appears to be the next date of the appearance of these heathen men, and it was not before the next quarter of a century that they had any footing in England. If we turn to the Saxon Chronicle, we find no ground at all for the inference drawn by all our historians from the passage under the date 787, viz. that the first invasion or piratical incursion of the Danes was in the year 787. The passage is this : — " An. DCCLXXXVii. Her nom Beorhtric cyning Offan dohtor Eadburhge. And on his dagum cwomon aerest III scipu Nord-manna of Heredalande. And tha se gerefa thaer
 * ' Series Regum Daniae," anno 853. Gorm the Old, king of