[Illustration: _Árhver, River Hot Springs near Reykholt._
_Reykholt, Ancient Stead of Snorri, Typical Icelandic Farm._]
But he recovered his power and again won the confidence and esteem of nearly all of the people and in 1222 they again made him Speaker for the second time. It is quite probable that Snorri repented of his plan to betray Iceland to Norway and we know that his excuse was to save Iceland from immediate invasion. It is to be regretted that Icelanders did not fully understand his reason. Most of Snorri’s troubles came from feudal strife with his own relatives, especially his nephew, _Sturla_. At one time this ungrateful nephew appropriated all of his uncle’s estates in _Borg_ and endeavored to make himself the mighty man of Iceland. We can not enter into the long conflict, how the people took sides with both parties, how a thousand armed men marched down on peaceful _Borg_, how Snorri in sorrow returned to Norway, tarried awhile and then came back to his home in _Borg_ only to meet death in the cellar of his own house. It may all be read in the story written by his nephew, _Sturla Thordson_.
Snorri was a man of peaceful disposition, avoiding arms when arbitration could be employed, a man of business but not a man of action as men were active in his day. He did not choose the turmoil of political strife into which he was drawn. It was love of wealth and vanity that led to his weakness at the court of _Hakon_ and which was misunderstood in Iceland and which gave his enemies an opportunity. This was the one great mistake of his life and he endeavored to atone for the weakness, but his enemies, though they never knew the full story of this affair, never forgave him. He paid for his error by being hewn to pieces in the cellar of his home at _Reykholt_ on September 22, 1241. The mound of the great house that was pulled down upon his remains has never been disturbed and the beautiful marguerites have bloomed above it for centuries.
As a historian Snorri will always hold high rank. The _Heimskringla_, the Story of the Kings of Norway, is a faithful picture of the times, impartial, straightforward,—it is the story and not the historian that the reader has before him when he opens these pages. Only once in that long history is there any comment by the author. There is none of the so called “philosophy of history” which has fogged so many historical pages that have been written in modern days. Writers may well take a lesson from Snorri, who “_let facts deliver the verdict_, keeping his own judgment to himself.” Here in the dale of _Reykholt_, beside his steaming springs and with his flocks and herds about him, Snorri writes of the great kings of Norway, of their wars and their wanderings, their labors for Christianity and the uplifting of their subjects. He bears us away to Scotland and to England and often to Ireland, we learn of the correspondence with the Emperor Frederick and King Louis of France, we learn of James of Aragon, of William the Conqueror and Alphonse of Castile,—he takes us to far away Algeria, to Tunis and to Greece, to Venice and Constantinople and to holy Jerusalem. In 1300 he was described as “a man to our knowledge most wise and fair-minded.”