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although the annals of the Icelanders are without contradiction a much purer source than those which Saxo had recourse to; and although the reasons alledged by Torfæus in their favour are of some weight; many persons, after all, will hardly be persuaded that we can thence draw such exact and full information, as to form a compleat and firm thread of history. For, in the first place, the Icelandic writers have left us a great number of pieces which evidently shew that their taste inclined them to deal in the marvelous, in allegory, and even in that kind of narrations, in which truth is designedly blended with fable. Torfæus himself confesses[1] that there are many of their books, in which it is difficult to distinguish truth from falshood, and that there are scarce any of them, but what contain some degree of fiction. In following such guides there is great danger of being sometimes mifled. In the second place, these annals are of no great antiquity: we have none that were written before christianity was established in the North: now between the time of Odin, whose arrival in the North, according to Torfæus, is the first epoque of history, and that of the earliest Icelandic
- ↑ See his Series Dynast. et Reg. lib. i. cap. 6.
