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. CHAPTER XXXI _Snorre Sturlason_ 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.