introduced into Iceland, and afterwards reckoned from that to his
own times. To this he added many other subjects, such as the
lives and times of kings of Norway and Denmark, and also of
England; beside accounts of great events which have taken place
in this country itself. His narratives are considered by many
men of knowledge to be the most remarkable of all; because he was
a man of good understanding, and so old that his birth was as far
back as the year after Harald Sigurdson's fall. He wrote, as he
himself says, the lives and times of the kings of Norway from the
report of Od Kolson, a grandson of Hal of Sida. Od again took
his information from Thorgeir Afradskol, who was an intelligent
man, and so old that when Earl Hakon the Great was killed he was
dwelling at Nidarnes -- the same place at which King Olaf
Trygvason afterwards laid the foundation of the merchant town of
Nidaros (i.e., Throndhjem) which is now there. The priest Are
came, when seven years old, to Haukadal to Hal Thorarinson, and
was there fourteen years. Hal was a man of great knowledge and
of excellent memory; and he could even remember being baptized,
when he was three years old, by the priest Thanghrand, the year
before Christianity was established by law in Iceland. Are was
twelve years of age when Bishop Isleif died, and at his death
eighty years had elapsed since the fall of Olaf Trygvason. Hal
died nine years later than Bishop Isleif, and had attained nearly
the age of ninety-four years. Hal had traded between the two
countries, and had enjoyed intercourse with King Olaf the Saint,
by which he had gained greatly in reputation, and he had become
well acquainted with the kingdom of Norway. He had fixed his
residence in Haukadal when he was thirty years of age, and he had
dwelt there sixty-four years, as Are tells us. Teit, a son of
Bishop Isleif, was fostered in the house of Hal at Haukadal, and