Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1979, Side 22

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primum expulit omnes regulos et solus obtinuit regnum totius
Norwagiæ annis septuaginta et defunctus est. Hune numerum
annorum Domini, investigatum prout diligentissime potuimus ab
illis, quos nos vulgato nomine Islendinga vocamus, in hoc loco
posuimus: quos constat sine ulla dubitatione præ omnibus
aquilonaribus popul'is in hujusmodi semper et peritiores et
curiosiores extitisse. Sed quia valde difficile est in hujusce [hisce] ad
liquidum veritatem comprehendere, maxime ubi nulla opitulatur
scriptorum auctoritas, istum numerum nullo modo volumus
præjudicare certiori, ...
I believe the passage is to be translated approximately as follows:
From the year of our Lord 858 Harald Fairhair, the son of Halfdan
the Black, reigned. He was the first to drive out all the petty kings
and he ruled all of Norway alone for seventy years and then died. 1
have here settled on this date, which I ascertained as diligently as I
could from those whom we call “Islendinga” in the vernacular; it is
held that without any doubt they, more than all northern peoples,
have always been more skilied and probing in these matters. But
because it is extremely difficult to arrive at any clear conception of
the truth in this regard, especially when no written authority lends
assistance, I do not wish to insist on this date with any sense of
certitude, ...
The statement that no written authority lends assistance has been
taken to mean that no such written authority was available to
Theodoricus and that he therefore depended on the oral Communica-
tions of Icelanders, based in turn on the Icelandic poems inherited from
the earlier period and referred to by Theodoricus in his "Prologue.” It
seems to me that this interpretation is not self-evident. In the first place, a
learned and fairly detailed work like Theodoricus’ does not look like an
oral compendium, but rather like a link in the written transmission. In
the second place, the very notion of chronological debate seems foreign
to the oral tradition and appropriate only to written history. It is
therefore more reasonable to assume that the chronological reflections
derive from written Icelandic sources. Nor is this view difficult to square
with the text. When Theodoricus protects himself against a possible