In this book I have had old stories written down, as I have heard
them told by intelligent people, concerning chiefs who have have held
dominion in the northern countries, and who spoke the Danish tongue;
and also concerning some of their family branches, according to what
has been told me. Some of this is found in ancient family registers,
in which the pedigrees of kings and other personages of high birth are
reckoned up, and part is written down after old songs and ballads which
our forefathers had for their amusement. Now, although we cannot just
say what truth there may be in these, yet we have the certainty that old
and wise men held them to be true.
Thjodolf of Hvin was the skald of Harald Harfager, and he composed a
poem for King Rognvald the Mountain-high, which is called "Ynglingatal."
This Rognvald was a son of Olaf Geirstadalf, the brother of King Halfdan
the Black. In this poem thirty of his forefathers are reckoned up, and
the death and burial-place of each are given. He begins with Fjolner, a
son of Yngvefrey, whom the Swedes, long after his time, worshipped and
sacrificed to, and from whom the race or family of the Ynglings take
their name.
Eyvind Skaldaspiller also reckoned up the ancestors of Earl Hakon the
Great in a poem called "Haleygjatal", composed about Hakon; and therein
he mentions Saeming, a son of Yngvefrey, and he likewise tells of the
death and funeral rites of each. The lives and times of the Yngling
race were written from Thjodolf's relation enlarged afterwards by the
accounts of intelligent people.
As to funeral rites, the earliest age is called the Age of Burning;
because all the dead were consumed by fire, and over their ashes were
raised standing stones. But after Frey was buried under a cairn at
Upsala, many chiefs raised cairns, as commonly as stones, to the memory
of their relatives.
The Age of Cairns began properly in Denmark after Dan Milkillate had
raised for himself a burial cairn, and ordered that he should be buried
in it on his death, with his royal ornaments and armour, his horse and
saddle-furniture, and other valuable goods; and many of his descendants
followed his example. But the burning of the dead continued, long after
that time, to be the custom of the Swedes and Northmen. Iceland was
occupied in the time that Harald Harfager was the King of Norway. There
were skalds in Harald's court whose poems the people know by heart even
at the present day, together with all the songs about the kings who have
ruled in Norway since his time; and we rest the foundations of our story
principally upon the songs which were sung in the presence of the chiefs
themselves or of their sons, and take all to be true that is found in
such poems about their feats and battles: for although it be the fashion
with skalds to praise most those in whose presence they are standing,
yet no one would dare to relete to a chief what he, and all those who
heard it, knew to be a false and imaginary, not a true account of his
deeds; because that would be mockery, not praise.