[Snorri Sturluson, The
Most Distinguished Name Of Which Iceland Can Boast, Was Born, In
1178, At Hoam.
In his early years he was remarkably fortunate in
his worldly affairs.
The fortune he derived from his father was
small, but by means of a rich marriage, and by inheritance, he soon
became proprietor of large estates in Iceland. Some writers say
that his guard of 600 men, during his visit to the Allthing, was
intended not as a defence, as indicated in Madame Pfeiffer's note,
but for the purposes of display, and to impress the inhabitants with
forcible ideas of his influence and power. He was invited to the
court of the Norwegian king, and there he either promised or was
bribed to bring Iceland under the Norwegian power. For this he has
been greatly blamed, and stigmatised as a traitor; though it would
appear from some historians that he only undertook to do by
peaceable means what otherwise the Norwegian kings would have
effected by force, and thus saved his country from a foreign
invasion. But be this as it may, it is quite clear that he sunk in
the estimation of his countrymen, and the feeling against him became
so strong, that he was obliged to fly to Norway. He returned,
however, in 1239, and in two years afterwards he was assassinated by
his own son-in-law. The work by which he is chiefly known is the
Heimskringla, or Chronicle of the Sea-Kings of Norway, one of the
most valuable pieces of northern history, which has been admirably
translated into English by Mr. Samuel Laing.
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