1 20 Norway and the Norwegians 



The best and earliest of the court poems are written 

 in the old Eddie metre and spirit, the same as those 

 in which the best of the mythological poems are written. 

 But the regular race of court bards, who begin in the 

 time of King Hakon (see Chapter vii.), write in a new 

 metre, and in a style which, as the ages go on, grows 

 more and more affected and iprkieux. We shall see 

 quite late in the history of the kings of Norway this 

 fashion of encomia or court-ballad dying down with 

 the last embers of Norse adventure. The poets at the 

 court of Hakon the Good, of Gunhild's sons, of 

 Olaf Tryggvason, and of Olaf the Saint, were retained 

 in order that they might be a sort of rhyming chroniclers 

 of the deeds of these kings. And it is quite evident 

 that many of the Kings' Lives, or Sagas of the Kings, 

 on which our knowledge of Norse history is founded, 

 have been chiefly made up from these long poems, of 

 which, in most cases, fragments only remain to the 

 present day. Thus, in the prose Sagas, we very fre- 

 quently find a certain courtier taking a very con- 

 spicuous part in giving advice to the king, or help to 

 him in battle. It puzzles us at first to understand why 

 this individual, who does not appear to have been one 

 of the first men in rank, should hold such a prominent 

 place in the prose tale. The mystery is explained 

 when we realise that he is the author of the poem on 

 which the prose Saga is founded. It is natural that he 

 should record at great length the events in which he 

 himself bore a conspicuous part. 



Among the more distinouished of these court bards 

 — distinguished either by the excellence of their verse, 

 by their achievements, or by their favour with the king 



