Scandinavian-Britain

MATERIALS 9and Annales Cambria, and by stray facts and namesfrom other Welsh sources. To these must be addedthe Latin Chronicle of Man.First at the head of Scandinavian authorities standsAre the historian, whose works the Book of theSettlements in Iceland^ the Libellus Islandorum (asketch of early Icelandic history), and Book of theKings of Norway (which we have as edited by SnorreSturlason in the thirteenth century), with manymemoranda from other of his writings no longerextant give the best and fullest information on thecondition of heathen Norway, and on the fortunesand deeds of such of the emigrants therefrom, asfinally, after years of foray and conquest in the BritishIslands, passed on to the new-found and uninhabitedshores of the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. Thehistory of King Half and some of the family Sagas ofIceland, give what is probably independent information.But on this side we should get an incompletenotion of those wickings, or sea-rovers, whose exploitshelped to make our history, without the help of theso-called Eddie poems, a series of epic and dramaticlays, chiefly of the ninth and tenth centuries, manyof which were, we may confidently hold, composedwithin the four seas, and no doubt reflect accuratelythe spirit of the very men that first made and heardthem, the conquering Scandinavian settlers in GreatBritain or Gaul. Among these there are found in theMS. that has luckily preserved much of them to us, apoem or two, the earliest, that we may1ascribe to theSee Origines Islandias, Vigfusson and Powell [1906].