During the reign of King Haakon, in 1261, Greenland was made a dependency of Norway, and the next year Iceland acknowledged the supremacy of Norway. The Icelanders agreed to pay the king of Norway a tribute; but they were to retain their own laws and their own officers.
In the summer of 1263 King Haakon sailed with a strong fleet and a large army westward to make war on Alexander III. of Scotland, who had tried to annex the Norwegian possessions west and north of Scotland. King Haakon proceeded to the Sudr Islands (the Hebrides), where he met with terrible storms, during which his fleet suffered considerable loss. In a battle at Largs, near the entrance to the Firth of Clyde, some of Haakon's best men fell. Scotch and Norwegian accounts differ as to which side was really defeated; but even from Scotch sources it appears that there was for some time afterward a great dread of the reappearance of "the black fleet of Norway." A contemporary Scotch poet and soothsayer, Thomas of Erceldoune, wrote:
It will be seen upon a day Between the Bass and Bay, Craigin and Fidderay, The black fleet of Norroway. Quhen the black fleet is come and gane, Then may they bigg thair burgh of lime and stane Quhilk they biggit of straw and hay-- That will stand till doomes day.
Shortly after the battle at Largs, King Haakon retired to the Orkneys, intending to winter there and to renew the attack in the spring. In the town of Kirkevaag (Orkneys) he was taken seriously ill; dying December 15, 1263. During his illness he had his men read aloud to him portions of the Bible and several books in Latin. Afterward he had Norwegian books read to him, first the stories of holy men (legends) and afterward the sagas of his ancestors, from Halfdan the Black down to his grandfather, King Sverre. During the reading of Sverre's saga he sank rapidly, and toward midnight, when King Sverre's saga was finished, he expired.
King Haakon was fifty-nine years old when he died. He had been king of Norway forty-six years. His body was temporarily entombed in Kirkevaag, and, in the following spring, was brought back to Norway and buried in the Christ Church in Bergen.
During the reign of Haakon Haakonson lived the renowned author of sagas, Snorre Sturlason. He was born in the year 1178 at Hvam (or Kvam), in the western province of Iceland. His family traced their lineage from the old Norse kings. In his third year Snorre was sent to the rich and learned Jon Loftson to be fostered. Jon Loftson's grandfather was Saemund Frode, the contemporary of Are, who first committed the historical sagas to writing; Jon's mother, Thora, was an illegitimate daughter of King Magnus Barefoot. In such a family, says Mr. Laing, we may presume the literature of the country would be cultivated, and the sagas of the historical events in Norway, and of the transactions of her race of kings, would be studied with great interest. Jon Loftson died when Snorre was nineteen years of age, but he continued to live with his foster-brothers a couple of years after that. He was quite poor, his mother having wasted his patrimony; but marrying Herdis, the daughter of a wealthy priest, he obtained with her a considerable fortune, which he afterward greatly increased. We are told that he owned six large farms and had so many men under him that he could appear at the Things with an armed body of six hundred or eight hundred men. He fortified his main residence at Reykholt, and also constructed there a bathing-house of cut stone, into which the water was led from a neighboring geyser. This bath-house was called Snorrelaug (Snorre's bath), and ruins of it are still to be seen.