IN the Introduction to the present volume we have added the tabular list of kings by archbishop Joannes Magnus, as illustrative of the difficulty which must accompany all researches into the ancient history of Sweden.[117] The exploits of those kings, their chronological order, their very names, rest under a deep cloud. Where, indeed, no two authors agree,—where the names, not merely of two or three sovereigns, but of nearly one half, are as different as the actions ascribed to them,—what can be inferred but this, that little dependence is to be placed on any one of them? Compare, for example, the list given by the archbishop with that which modern Swedish critics approve[118]; and what must be the reader’s surprise to find—110 in the former case, and 37 in the other; the names, too, for the most part, dissimilar as the number! If we take that given by the authors of our Universal History[119], we shall, indeed, have some approximation in respect to the number, but little in regard to the names, of the kings. Other lists might be produced equally contrasting with the one contained in the Norwegian authorities. Whence this diversity, which modern historians have pronounced to be hopelessly irreconcileable? It arises from a very simple cause. When the Swiones, the attendants of Odin,—his companions from his Asiatic kingdom,—arrived in the north, they found a Gothic tribe, the Gothones, under Gylfo their king, seated along the maritime coast, and extending to the centre of Sweden. How long this tribe had been settled there when the Swiones arrived would be vain to inquire. By what means Odin and his followers obtained a portion of the country, and established the seat of his new empire at Upsal, has been already related. Here, then, were two distinct tribes, the Gothones or Goths, and the Swiones or Swedes, to say nothing of the original tribes, or, at least, fragments of those tribes, who had been located in these regions many centuries before the arrival of the Goths. Now the kings whom Joannes Magnus, Torfœus, Loccenius, the authors of our Universal History, and other writers enumerate, were the kings of the Goths and Swedes, while those contained in the Landfedgatal, the Heimskringla, and other Icelandic authorities, were sovereigns of the Swedes only. That the two people, and, consequently, the districts which they inhabited, were for many centuries under distinct rulers, is one of the best ascertained facts of history. The former called themselves kings of the Goths, or of Gothland, only; the latter, now kings of the Swedes, now of Upsal. This distinction was not only observed from the very dawn of their history, but is at this day preserved in the title of the monarch, who is styled “King of the Swedes and of the Goths.” Hence the two lists of kings—the two kingdoms—the distinction of history in both; all which have hitherto been confounded, and so completely as to baffle the keenest criticism. Not that the king