Norroena Society Library Collection

Welcome to the Norroena Library. We are in the process of compiling a complete online repertoire of all the original Norroena Society books. More will be added as we recover them, so periodically check back in with us. All are free to download and print for your usage in studying these materials.

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THE SAGA OF THE VOLSUNGS

"Originally written in icelandic (old norse) in the thirteenth century a.d., by an unknown hand. However, most of the material is based substantially on previous works, some centuries older. A few of these works have been preserved in the collection of norse poetry known as the "Poetic Edda".

In politics the homestead, with its franklin-owner, was the unit; the "thing", or hundred-moot, the primal organisation, and the "godord", or chieftainship, its tie. The chief who had led a band of kinsmen and followers to the new country, taken possession of land, and shared it among them, became their head- ruler and priest at home, speaker and president of their Thing, and their representative in any dealings with neighbouring chiefs and their clients. He was not a feudal lord, for any franklin could change his "godord" as he liked, and the right of "judgment by peers" was in full use. At first there was no higher organisation than the local thing.

THE NORSE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA (VINLAND SAGA)

"I first composed an Islendingabok for our bishops Thorlak [Thorlakr] and Ketil [Ketill], and showed it to them, as well as to Simund (Simundr) the priest. And forasmuch as they were pleased [either] to have it thus, or augmented, I accordingly wrote this, similar in character, with the exception of the genealogy and lives of the kings, and have added that of which I have since acquired closer knowledge, and which is now more accurately set forth in this [the 'Libellus'] than in that."

Wineland the Good is first mentioned in Icelandic literature by the priest Ari Thorgilsson, in a passage contained in his so-called Islendingabok [Icelanders' book]. Ari, commonly called the Learned, an Agnomen which he received after his death, was born in Iceland in the year 1067, and lived to the ripe age of eighty-one, acquiring a positive claim to the appellation "Hinn Gamli" [the old, the elder], which is once given him; in this instance, however, to distinguish him from another of the same name. Of Ari, the father of Icelandic Historiography, the author of Heimskringla, the most comprehensive of Icelandic histories, says in the prologue to his work:

HEIMSKRINGLA

"Gefion from Gylve drove away, to add new land to Denmark's sway -- Blythe gefion ploughing in the smoke That steamed up from her oxen-yoke: four heads, eight forehead stars had they, bright gleaming, as she ploughed away; dragging new lands from the deep main to join them to the sweet isle's plain. Now when odin heard that things were in a prosperous condition in the land to the east beside gylve; he went thither, and gylve made a peace with him, for gylve thought he had no strength to oppose the people of Asaland..."

It is said that the earth's circle which the human race inhabits is torn across into many bights, so that great seas run into the land from the out-ocean. Thus it is known that a great sea goes in at Narvesund , and up to the land of Jerusalem. From the same sea a long sea-bight stretches towards the north-east, and is called the Black Sea, and divides the three parts of the earth; of which the eastern part is called Asia, and the western is called by some Europa, by some Enea. Northward of the black sea lies Swithiod the great, or the cold. The Great Swithiod is reckoned by some as not less than the great Serkland; others compare it to the Great Blueland.