In our interest in tales and romances we must not overlook the fact that the thirteenth century also produced an important literature of the didactic type. For centuries the Christian world had studied the encyclopedic works of Capella, Cassiodorus, and Isidore, or had read the writings of Bede and his many followers who had composed treatises “on the nature of things,” in which they had striven to set in order the known or supposed facts of the physical world. The thirteenth century had an encyclopedist of its own in Vincent of Beauvais, who produced a vast compendium made up of several _Specula_, which were supposed to contain all the knowledge that the world possessed in science, history, theology, and other fields of learning. The age also produced various other Latin works of the didactic sort, of which the _Historia Scholastica_ of Petrus Comestor was perhaps the most significant for the intellectual history of the North. Norway had no encyclopedist, but the thirteenth century produced a Norwegian writer who undertook a task which was somewhat of the encyclopedic type. Some time during the reign of Hakon IV, perhaps while Vincent was composing his great _Speculum Majus_, a learned Norseman wrote the _Speculum Regale_, or _King’s Mirror_, a work which a competent critic has characterized as “one of the chief ornaments of Old Norse literature.”[1] Unlike the sagas and the romances, which have in view chiefly the entertainment of the reader, the _King’s Mirror_ is didactic throughout; in a few chapters only does the author depart from his serious purpose, and all but two of these are of distinct value. The purpose of the work is to provide a certain kind of knowledge which will be of use to young men who are looking forward to a career in the higher professions. Footnote 1: R. Keyser in the introduction to the Christiania edition (p. xi).