Gifted with the rarest talents, and chief of the most powerful family of the island, Snorri was elected in 1215 to the high office of Logmathurman; but disgusting his sturdy countrymen by his excessive haughtiness, he was obliged to retire to the court of Hakon, king of Norway. During this exile he collected the materials for his justly celebrated “Heimskringla,” or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway. Returning home in 1221, he was again named Logmathurman; but as he endeavored to pave the way for the annexation of his native country to the Norwegian realm, his foreign intrigues caused a rising against his authority, and he was once more compelled to take refuge in Norway. Here he remained several years, until the triumph of his own faction allowed him to return to his family estate at Reikholt, where he was murdered on a dark September night in the year 1241. Thus perished the most remarkable man Iceland ever has produced. The republic itself did not long survive his fall; for, weary of the interminable feuds of their chiefs, the people voluntarily submitted to Hakon in 1254, and the middle of the thirteenth century was signalized by the transfer of the island to the Norwegian crown, after three hundred and forty years of a turbulent but glorious independence. From that time the political history of the Icelanders offers but little interest. With their annexation to a European monarchy perished the vigor, restlessness, and activity which had characterized their forefathers; and though the Althing still met at Thingvalla, the national spirit had fled. It was still further subdued by a long chain of calamities--plagues, famines, volcanic eruptions, and piratical invasions--which, following each other in rapid succession, devastated the land and decimated its unfortunate inhabitants. In 1402 that terrible plague, the memory of which is still preserved under the name of the “Black Death,” carried off nearly two-thirds of the whole population, and was followed by such an inclement winter that nine-tenths of the cattle in the island died. The miseries of a people suffering from pestilence and famine were aggravated by the English fishermen, who, in spite of the remonstrances of the Danish government, frequented the defenseless coast in considerable numbers, and were in fact little better than the old sea-robbers who first colonized the island, plundering and burning on the main, and holding the wealthy inhabitants to ransom. Their predatory incursions were frequently repeated during the seventeenth century, and even the distant Mediterranean sent its Algerine pirates to add to the calamities of Iceland. The eighteenth century was ushered in by the small-pox, which carried off sixteen thousand of the inhabitants. In the middle of the century--severe winters following in rapid succession--vast numbers of cattle died, inducing a famine that again swept away ten thousand inhabitants.