"ORKNEYINGA SAGA."
In the introduction to Lord Ellesmere's _Guide to Northern Archæology_,
p. xi., is mentioned the intended publication by the Royal Society of
Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen, of a volume of historical antiquities
to be called _Antiquitates Britannicæ et Hibernicæ_. In the contents of
this volume is noticed the _Orkneyinga Saga_, a history of the Orkney
and Zetland Isles from A.D. 865 to 1234, of which there is only the
edition Copenhagen, 1780, "chiefly printed," it is said, "from a modern
paper manuscript, and by no means from the celebrated Codex Flateyensis
written on parchment in the fourteenth century." This would show that
the Codex Flateyensis was the most valuable manuscript of the work
published under the name of the _Orkneyinga Saga_, of which its editor,
Jonas Jonæus, in his introductory address to the reader, says its author
and age are equally unknown: "auctor incertus incerto æque tempore
scripsit." The _Orkneyinga Saga_ concludes with the burning of Adam
Bishop, of Caithness, by the mob at Thurso while John was Earl of
Orkney, and according to Dalrymple's _Annals_ in A.D. 1222; but in the
narrative given by the historian Torfæus, in his _Orcades_, of Haco,
King of Norway's expedition against the western coast of Scotland in
1263, which terminated in the defeat of the invaders by the Scots at
Largs, in Ayrshire, and the death of King Haco on his return back in the
palace of the bishop of Orkney at Kirkwall, reference is made to the
Codex Flateyensis as to the burial of King Haco in the city of Bergen,
in Norway, where his remains were finally deposited, after lying some
months before the shrine of the patron saint in the cathedral of Saint
Magnus, at Kirkwall. There is not a syllable of King Haco or his
expedition in the _Orkneyinga Saga_; and as I cannot reconcile this
reference of Torfæus (2nd edition, 1715, book ii. p. 170.) with the
_Saga_, the favour of information is desired from some of your
antiquarian correspondents. The Codex Flateyensis has been ascribed to a
pensioner of the king of Norway resident in Flottay, one of the southern
isles of Orkney, but with more probability can be attributed to some of
the monks of the monastery built on the small island of Flatey, lying in
Breida Fiord, a gulf on the west coast of Iceland.