He was invited to the court of the Norwegian king, and there he either promised or was bribed to bring Iceland under the Norwegian power.

For this he has been greatly blamed, and stigmatised as a traitor; though it would appear from some historians that he only undertook to do by peaceable means what otherwise the Norwegian kings would have effected by force, and thus saved his country from a foreign invasion.

But be this as it may, it is quite clear that he sunk in the estimation of his countrymen, and the feeling against him became so strong, that he was obliged to fly to Norway.

He returned, however, in 1239, and in two years afterwards he was assassinated by his own son-in-law.

The work by which he is chiefly known is the _Heimskringla_, or Chronicle of the Sea-Kings of Norway, one of the most valuable pieces of northern history, which has been admirably translated into English by Mr.Samuel Laing.