IV. BOOK ing, by its elegance and vigour; and which, considering his age and country, is surprising for its power of composition. He conducts the Danes into Britain long before the Christian æra. According to his narration, Frotho the first, his ninth king of Denmark, Amleth, whose memory our Shakespeare has preserved, Fridlevus, the twentythird king of Saxo, and Frotho, the next sovereign, fought, and with one exception obtained splendid victories in Britain, previous to the appearance of the Christian legislator. Twelve reigns afterwards, he states that Harald Hyldetand invaded England, and conquered the king of Northumbria. " SOME documents for his history Saxo may have derived from poems of the ancient scallds, from inscriptions on stones and rocks, from an inspection 4 Erasmus has honoured Saxo with a panegyric which every historian must covet; "qui suæ gentis historiam splendide magnificeque contexuit. Probo vividum et ardens ingenium, orationem nusquam remissam aut dormitantem; tam miram verborum copiam, sententias crebras, et figurarum admirabilem varietatem, ut satis admirari nequeam, unde illa ætate, homini dano, tanta vis eloquendi suppetiverit." Dial. Ciceron. ap. Stephan. p. 33. And yet a more correct taste would suggest that his work is rather an oration than a history. Though some parts are happy, it is in general either tumid and exaggerated, or losing, or clouding, the specific fact in declamatory generalities. It wants that exact taste for truth, as well as for patient comparison of antiquarian documents, which the history of such a period peculiarly required. 5 Hist. Dan. lib. ii. p. 25. 6 Hist. Dan. lib. iii. p. 56, 57. The speech of Amleth to the people, after destroying Fengo, is an exertion of eloquence very creditable to the genius of Saxo, p. 54, 55. 7 Hist. Dan. 67. 8 Hist. Dan. 95. Saxo places the birth of Christ immediately after. Ibid. 9 Hist. Dan. 137. III. (yet how imperfect!) of the Icelandic authors, and CHAP. from the narrations of his friend. 10 We may even grant to him, that such men as he enumerates, such actions as he so eloquently describes, and such poems as he so diffusely translates", once appeared; but the chronology and succession into which he arranges them are unquestionably false. The boasted fountains of the history of the ancient Scandinavians 12, their memorial stones, and funereal runæ 13, the inscribed rings of their shields, the woven figures of their tapestry, their storied walls, their lettered seats and beds, their narrative wood, their recollected poetry, and their inherited traditions, may have given to history the names of many warriors, and have transmitted to posterity the fame of many battles, but no dates accompanied the memorials; even the geography of the incidents was very rarely noted. Hence, however numerous may have been the preserved memoranda, 10 Saxo mentions these authorities in his preface, p. 2. ; and the curious will be pleased to read Stephanius's notes upon it. 11 We have a striking proof how much Saxo has amplified the barren songs of the scallds, and therefore how little to be relied on for precision in his poetical and elegant dialogue between Hialto and his friend Biarco, whom he roused to the defence of his endangered king. Forgetful of the emergency, Saxo prolongs it to six folio pages. Stephanius has cited part of the concise and energetic original, p. 82., which discovers the historian's exuberance. 12 Torfæus mentions these in the prolegomena to his History of Norway, and in his Series Regum Dan. 50-53. They are also remarked by Bartholin, lib. i. c. 9. 13 Wormius has given us the inscriptions found in Denmark in his Monumenta Danica; and Peringskiold copies many out of Sweden in his Monumenta Ullerakarensia, 321-349., and in his Monumentum Sveo Goth, 177-306. See also Verelius's manuductio, and others. BOOK their arrangement and appropriation were left to the mercy of literary fancy or of national conceit. IV. SAXO unfortunately emulated the fame of Livy, instead of becoming the Pausanias of Scandinavia; and instead of patiently compiling and recording his materials in the humble style or form in which he found them, which would have been an invaluable present to us, has shaped them into a most confused, unwarranted, and fabulous chronology. The whole of his first eight books, all his history anteceding Ragnar Lodbrog, can as little claim the attention of the historian, as the British history of Jeffry, or the Swedish history of Johannes Magnus. It is indeed superfluous, if we recollect the Roman history, to argue against a work which pretends to give to Denmark a throned existence, a regular government, and a tissue of orderly and splendid history for twenty-four royal accessions before the birth of Christ. Saxo, on whose history many others were formerly built, refers to the Icelandic writers 14; but this only increases our depreciation of his narratives, for they are at irreconcileable variance with all his history before the ninth century. 15 14 Though he applauds them in his preface, and even says, quorum thesauros historicarum rerum pignoribus refertos curiosius consulens, haud parvam præsentis operis partem ex eorum relationis imitatione contexui; nec arbitros habere contempsi, quos tanta vetustatis peritia callere cognovi;" notwithstanding this, it may be fairly doubted if he knew much of them. 15 Torfæus says justly of Saxo, that he has placed some kings before Christ, who flourished long after him; that he has made other kings of Denmark, who belonged to other regions, and has raised some to the supreme throne of Denmark, who were but tributary reguli. Series Regum Dan. p. 219. III. THE Icelandic writers, Torfæus, their able CHAP. champion, divides into four kinds: the allegorical; the fabulous, the mixed, and the authentic. 16 Of the authentic, the only one extant who attempts a history much earlier 17 than the times of Harald Harfragre, is Snorre, the son of Sturla, who has given us as faithful a compilation of northern history as his means and age permitted. Beginning with Odin, the common ancestor of the Scandinavian, Danish, and Saxon nations, as Hercules was of the Grecian royal dynasties, he first gives the history of the Ynglingi kings at Upsal, and the life of Halfdan Svarte, the father of Harald. He then continues the history of Norway to his own time. SNORRE incidentally mentions the Danish kings of Lethra 18, and he clashes irreconcileably with Saxo, always in the chronology and successions, and sometimes in the incidents. 19 As far as the internal characters of authenticity can decide the competition between him and Saxo, he has every superiority, and no rational antiquary will now dispute it. His narratives, though sprinkled with a few 16 See his discriminated catalogue of the Icelandic writings in his Series Regum Dan. p. 3—12. 17 There are Icelandic writers extant more ancient than Snorre, as Ara Frode, born 1068; his contemporary, Semund, the author of the ancient Edda; Eiric, who about 1161 wrote on the sons of Harald Gillius; Charles, an abbot, in 1169, whose history of king Swerrer remains; and Oddus, author of the Saga of Olave Tryggvason; but these are on later subjects. Torfæus, prolegomena Hist. Norv. 18 P. 24. 34. 37. 39. 41. 43. 54. 69, 70. 77. 19 To give only one instance; Saxo places Helghi and his son Rolf Krake eleven reigns before Christ. Snorre says, Rolf fell in the reign of Eystein, p. 43., the third king before Ingialld, who lived in the seventh century of the Christian era. VOL. I. G G IV. BOOK fables 20, are very short, consistent, and unadorned; they display the genuine costume of the time: the quotations from the scallds are given literally, no chronology is marked, and his arrangement does not carry up his actors to any extravagant antiquity. It is in his work, if in any of the northern ancient documents, we shall find some true information of the earliest attacks of the Northmen on Britain. 21 THE first king whom Snorre mentions to have had dominion in England, is Ivar Vidfadme, a king of Scania, who conquered Upsal. His words are "Ivar Vidfadme subjected to him all Sweden, all Denmark, great part of Saxony, all Austurrikia, and the fifth part of England." 22 But no English 20 As in p. 9, 10. 24. and 34. 21 He gives thirty-two reigns between Odin and Harald Harfragre. Almost all the kings perished violently; therefore the average of their reigns cannot exceed twenty years. This computation would place Odin about 220 years after Christ. Nothing can show more strongly what little support the songs of the scallds can give to the remote periods of northern antiquity, than the fact that the scalld Thiodolfr, on whom Snorre bases his history before Harald Harfragre, and whom he therefore quotes twenty-six times, lived in the days of Harald, or about the year 900. We find him, p. 115., singing in the last days of Harald, who died 936. Excepting Brage Gamle, who is once quoted on Odin, p. 9., and Eywindr, who lived after Thiodolfr, and who is adduced twice, p. 13. 31., no other scalld is referred to. The poems of the scallds may be good authority for incidents near their own times, but can be only deemed mere popular traditions as to the earlier history of a barbarous people. Snorre's other authorities are genealogies and individual narratives. See his preface. But the Icelandic genealogies are often contradictory. Their most veracious writers are rather the faithful recorders of traditions, usually true in substance, but as usually inaccurate, than the selecting or critical compilers of authentic history. 22 Snorre Yngl. Saga, c. xlv. p. 54. This part of England |