KING HAKON. 213 This Hakon, who was the leading character of the last scene in the history of Independent Iceland—quite one of the moderns— we had formerly associated with a dim antiquity in Scottish history. It was he who was defeated by the Scots at Largs, and who died afterwards at Kirkwall before he could retrieve the disaster, which the Norse authorities consider was much more owing to the storms which wrecked the vessels than to the armies of the Scots. Sturla, the Icelander who was present, gives a graphic account of the last illness of this “ savage Norse- man ” of our historians. “ As he lay ill, he required his attend- ants to read to him Latin books; then, as he grew worse and it troubled him to follow, he asked for Norse books night and day, —first, the ‘ Lives of the Saints ; ’ then, when they were finished, the lives of the kings his ancestors, from Halfdan the Black. On they read through the long chronicles whenever he was awake, and not engaged in business or Church services. One day his sickness so increased that his voice was gone, and yet he listened while they read the last, ‘ Sverri’s Life; ’ and near midnight, just as they finished the saga, God called the king out of this world’s life, to the great grief of all present, and multitudes who heard the tidings afterwards.” “ His death was thought the greatest loss in all the Northern lands,” says the Sturlunga Saga; but probably this does not include Scotland, which then succeeded in shaking off the yoke of the Northmen. Though shorn of its importance and honour, the altliing still met here year after year, even down to the evil days when every liberty had been taken from the unhappy land, whose Danish tyrants seem to have been almost as great a misfortune as the volcanic eruptions and terrible epidemics which reduced Iceland to the lowest extremity about the beginning of the present century. Then only, as if there was no use in any further struggle, the last flicker of the old spirit went out, and the al- thing at Thingvellir was discontinued. Nor has Thingvellir shared in the modem resuscitation of Iceland. It may certainly be more convenient to the people of our day, whom Sir W. Scott would perhaps call, as he did his countrymen, the “dwindled

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