Excerpt from The Early Kings of Norway: Also an Essay on the Portraits of John Knox The Icelanders, in their long winter, had a great habit of writing; and were, and still are, excellent in penmanship, says Dahlmann. It is to this fact that any little history there is of the Norse Kings and their old tragedies, crimes, and heroisms, is almost all due. The Icelanders, it seems, not only made beautiful letters on their paper or parchment, but were laudably observant and desirous of accuracy; and have left us such a collection of narratives (sagas, literally Says') as, for quantity and quality, is unexampled among rude nations. Snorro Sturle son's History of the Norse Kings is built out of these old Sagas and has in it a great deal of poetic fire, not a little faithful sagacity applied in sifting and adjusting these old Sagas and, in a word, deserves, were it once well edited, furnished with accurate maps, chronological summaries, &c., to be reckoned among the great history-books of the world. It is from these sources, greatly aided by accurate, learned, and unwearied Dahlmann,1 the German Professor, that the following rough notes of the early Norway Kings are hastily thrown together. In Histories of England (rapin's excepted) next to nothing has been shown of the many and strong threads of connection be tween English affairs and Norse. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.