BOOK Or the authentic, the only one extant who attempts a history much earlier than the times of Haralld 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 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 extra 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 Pp. 24. 34. 37. 39. 41. 43. 54. 69, 70. 77. 19 To give only one instance; Saxo : Rolf Krake eleven reigns before Christ. places Helghi and his son 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. 20 As in pp. 9, 10. 24. and 34. 21 vagant antiquity.' It is in his work, if in any of CHAP. the northern ancient documents, we shall find some true information of the earliest attacks of the Northmen on Britain. 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."" But no English chronicler notices such a person or such an event. Our ancient annalists expressly mark the year 787 as the date of the first aggressions of the Northmen on England 23, which is subsequent to the reign of 21 He gives thirty-two reigns between Odin and Haralld 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 Haralld 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 the Herverar Saga marks to be Northumbria; and gives the same dominion to his grandson Haralld Hyldetand, c. xix. p. 223. 23 Sax. Chron. 64; Fl. Wig. 280.; Ethelw. 839.; Malmsb. 16.; Hunt. 343.; Matt. West. 282., and several others. The annals of Ulster do not mention their attacks on Ireland earlier; but from this period incessantly. III. 460 BOOK IV. Ivar. If, therefore, he conquered or plundered any where in Britain, it must have been in Scotland, of whose early history we have no correct information2, and whose coasts were most likely to be the first attacked. BUT from the state and habits of the natives of Scandinavia and the Baltic, which have been described, we might have expected the result to have been, that this mutual destruction and desolation would in time have consumed themselves and unpeopled the north. Europe had then no reason to apprehend any mischief from such men, because Charlemagne had just raised a formidable Frankish empire; Egbert had consolidated the Anglo-Saxon power, and it was the interest of the new monarchies that were absorbing their own little sovereignties to extinguish such a restless race. But such are the unexpected directions which the course of human agency frequently takes, that at this very period those dreadful hurricanes of war and desolation began to arise in the north, which afflicted all the maritime regions of Europe with a succession of calamities for above a century. As it exhibits a curious picture of human nature in its more savage energies, and is immediately connected with the romantic, and yet authentic, history of one man, whose transactions 24 The northern literati place Ivar at the end of the sixth century. If this were just chronology, he might have been one of the adventurers that came among the Angles into Northumbria or Mercia. As the Angles and Jutes came from the Danish provinces of Sleswick and Jutland, their ancient memorials might have, not unfairly, pretended to conquests in Britain. But from a critical comparison of some of the most authentic of the ancient Icelandic authorities, I am satisfied that Ivar Vidfadme has been placed above a century too early. have not before been introduced into our annals, Ragnar Lodbrog, it is important to take an enlarged but calm review of the causes that produced this direction, and gave such an effect to his peculiar position and singular propensities. In every country whose inhabitants have passed from their nomadic or wandering condition into a settled state, the culivated lands become gradually the property of a portion only of the community. Their first occupiers or partitioners transmit them to their descendants; while the rest of society, as it multiplies, must, until commerce and the arts open new sources of employment and acquisitions, either serve the proprietary body as vassals and retainers, more or less dignified by office, title, or birth; or as labourers more or less servile; or they must float loosely in life without an adequate provision for their desires or necessities. This unprovided class soon arises as population increases, and augments with its increase. When the sub-divisions of trade and manufactures occur, large portions of the unprovided are absorbed by them; but still many remain, in every age and country, from the rudest to the most civilised, who form a body of men disposed to be restless, migratory, enterprising, and ready for every new adventure, or impression, which the flowing accidents of time, or the rise of bold and active original characters can present to them. This class pursues the progress of society in all its stages, feeds or occasions all its wars, seditions, colonies, and migrations, and has repeatedly shaken the happiness of the more civilised nations. It seems not to be the want of actual food on the earth which creates this unprovided body; for CHAP. III. IV. BOOK there is not sufficient evidence that nature has, in any period, produced less food than the existing population needed. The more population tends to press upon the quantity of subsistence in any country, the more it also tends to increase it. As the pressure begins, the activity and ingenuity of mankind are roused to provide for it. The powers of nature have hitherto answered to their call, and rewarded their exertions with the requisite supply. Hence increased production has always accompanied increased population, and still attends it: nor have we yet approached, nor probably shall we ever reach the period when the fertility of the earth and the ingenuity of man shall fail to be equal to the subsistence that is needed. New means have always hitherto unfolded to meet new exigencies. In the case of the Northmen, it is remarkable, that although every act of plunder was also an act of ravage, and more of the necessaries and conveniences of life were destroyed by their depredations than were either carried off or consumed; yet the numbers of both the plunderers and plundered increased till they formed wellpeopled and prosperous communities. THIS unprovided class arises from the impossibility of having any system of property without it. These systems have increased population, civilisation, general prosperity, and individual comfort: but they are always multiplying the number of those, who either form no part of the proprietary body, or whose individual portions are inferior to the demands of their habits, their passions, or their necessities. To equalise all property, would not destroy the evil, unless wisdom and virtue could be made equally common. Society at this moment |