(Vol. ii., p. 298.)
The author of the _Kongs-skugg-sio_ is unknown, but the date of it has been
pretty clearly made out by Bishop Finsen and others. (_V._ Finsen,
_Dissertatio Historica de Speculo Regali_, 1766.) There is only one
complete edition of this remarkable work, viz. that published at Soröe in
1768, in 4to. Bishop Finsen maintains the _Kongs-skugg-sio_ to have been
written from 1154 to 1164. Ericksen believes it not to be older than 1184;
while Suhm and Eggert Olafsen do not allow it to be older than the
thirteenth century. Rafn, and the modern editors of the _Grönlands
Historiske Mindesmærker_, p. 266., vol. iii., accept the date given by
Finsen as the true one. From the text of the work we learn that it was
written in Norway, by a young man, a son of one of the leading and richest
men there, who had been on terms of friendship with several kings, and had
lived much, or at least had travelled much, in Helgeland. Rafn and others
believe the work to have been written by Nicolas, the son of Sigurd
Hranesön, who was slain by the Birkebeiners on the 8th of September, 1176.
Their reasons for coming to this conclusion are given at full length in the
work above quoted. {336}
The whole of the _Kongs-skugg-sio_ is well worthy of being translated into
English. It may, indeed, in many respects, be considered as the most
remarkable work of the old northerns.