Note Back to Main Text — Chapter II · PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.

With the celebrated Ari Thorgilsson, usually known as Fródhi, "the learned," we come to testimony nearly contemporaneous in time and extremely valuable in character. This erudite priest, born in 1067, was the founder of historical writing in Iceland. He was the principal author of the Ari Fródhi. "Landnáma-bók," already mentioned as a work of thorough and painstaking research unequalled in mediæval literature. His other principal works were the "Konunga-bók," or chronicle of the kings of Norway, and the "Islendinga-bók," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular, were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very much indebted. He may be said to have given the tone to history-writing in Iceland, and it was a high tone.