342 



wore the Irish dress of short, light clothes. The Norse lan- 

 guage was difficult for Harald, and he used expressions which 

 many laughed at, but King Sigurd did not permit this when 

 he was present." At the race Harald wore " an Irish hat," 

 and he ran so swiftly, that Magnus was not able to follow him 

 on his Gotland horse — " a beautiful animal, and very swift." — 

 ( Vid. Laing's Translation of Snorre Sturleson's History of 

 the Kings of Norway, vol. iii. p. 193, sq.) 



Mr. Worsaae pointed attention to the beautiful, simple, 

 and lively descriptions in the sagas, which are full of the 

 most entertaining accounts, representing the time, with all its 

 favourable and unfavourable features. In the sagas one sees the 

 family round the fire, the viking on board his vessel, the Par- 

 liaments at their meetings, the King and his retainers in his hall. 

 When it is remembered that those sagas were written down 

 immediately after the introduction of Christianity into Iceland 

 in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so that the Christian 

 ^element of civilization could have exercised but little influence 

 upon them ; and when those sagas are compared with the Irish 

 historical works, what has been already said about the in- 

 fluence of the Northmen in Ireland being also borne in mind, 

 Mr. Worsaae will, perhaps, be acquitted of the charge of par- 

 tiality, when he contends, that the Pagan Northmen in the 

 ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, were not less civilized 

 than the Christian Irishmen, perhaps even a little more. 



In conclusion, Mr. Worsaae made the following observa- 

 tions : 



" I should be very sorry if any one should think that it 

 was my intention, by these remarks on the Icelandic and 

 Irish literature, to deny the worth of the latter ; on the con- 

 trary, I have had the opportunity of seeing how many inter- 

 esting and most important old manuscripts still exist in the 

 collections of the Academy and Trinity College, and I have 

 felt the greatest pleasure in observing with what energy the 

 Irish Archaeological Society has continued to print hitherto 



