54 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
without a feeling of almost passionate interest—an effect 
which no tale frozen up in the monkish Latin of the 
Saxon annalists has ever produced upon me. 
As for Snorro’s own life, it was eventful and tragic 
enough. Unscrupulous, turbulent, greedy of money— 
he married two heiresses—the one, however, becoming 
the colleague , not the successor of the other. This 
arrangement naturally led to embarrassment. His 
wealth created envy, his excessive haughtiness dis¬ 
gusted his sturdy fellow-countrymen. He was suspected 
of desiring to make the republic an appanage of the 
Norwegian crown, in the hope of himself becoming 
viceroy; and at last, on a dark September night, of 
the year 1241, he was murdered in his house at 
Reikholt by his three sons-in-law. 
The same century which produced the Herodotean 
work of Sturleson also gave birth to a whole body of 
miscellaneous Icelandic literature,—though in Britain 
and elsewhere bookmaking was entirely confined to the 
monks, and merely consisted in the compilation of a 
series of bald annals locked up in bad Latin. It is true, 
Thomas of Ercildoune was a contemporary of Snorro’s; 
but he is known to us more as a magician than as a 
