The Saga of Edward the Confessor was featured on this blog in early December last year with a link to Dasent’s 1894 english translation on the sacred texts website. See
https://saga1066.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-saga-of-edward-confessor.html
The saga’s other title is Saga Játvarðar konungs hins helga or the Játvarðar Saga in short. According to wiki it was compiled in the 14th century in Iceland. There’s a copy on Internet Archive of an 1852 translation.
Saga Játvarðar konúngs hins helga
https://archive.org/details/SagaJatvardarkon000200849v0JatvReyk/page/n3/mode/2up
The saga appears at the end of the Flateyjarbok manuscript which was written around 1387 to 1394. “Flateyjarbók is the largest medieval Icelandic manuscript, comprising 225 written and illustrated vellum leaves. It contains mostly sagas of the Norse kings” [wiki] See the Vigfússon and Unger 1860 edition here
Flateyjarbok
https://archive.org/details/flateyjarbokens00unkngoog/page/462/mode/2up?view=theater
Edward’s Saga makes use of post-conquest sources, and has absorbed the Norman propaganda supporting William’s claim. The further from the original events, the greater distortion of the accounts by the post-conquest sources. Over three hundred years the story is transformed and crucial facts are missing or distorted.
In Chapter six the saga relates that Edward made William his heir following the death of Godwin.
6. King Edward made up his mind after that [the death of Godwin] that he thought duke William the bastard was next to the kingdom in England after him, both for this cause that he was come from the kings of the English, and because of the near kinship which was between them.
Not only does it include a summary of the story of Harold’s shipwreck and oath, it precedes it with an oath made by the entire witan to support his appointment of William. These oaths do not appear in the English records.
Once on a time when Edward had a conference with all the greatest chiefs, he made all take an oath to him; first the sons of Godwin, and all the rest after them, that they would take no king after him but William the bastard. But it was a little after that Harold Godwin's son fared on some business of his own south over the sea, and could not get back for the sake of foul winds. Then he came to visit duke William, and stayed with him awhile. Then he took an oath to William also that he would not hold the realm against him when they lost king Edward. It is also some men's story that then he betrothed a daughter of the duke, and broke himself those bonds.
The Saga claims that Edward repeated this nomination of William as heir during his final illness. It does not refer to William’s absence or explain why William was not summoned to Edward’s bedside.
When king Edward had ruled England three and twenty years he was seated in London. Then he took sickness at Yule, and calls to him many chiefs, and again gave it out that William was to be king after him in England.
Harold is accused of pretending that Edward gave him the throne when Edward was too ill to speak. This is another version of the deathbed throne grab as described by Wace.
But when the sickness began to press him so that he had little voice left, men say that Harold stooped over him and called men to witness afterwards that the king had given him the kingdom after him in England. King Edward died a little after and was buried in London in Paul's church. He shone by miracles straightway after his death as he did before, and lay in earth till saint Thomas the archbishop translated him and let them lay him in a worthy shrine.
In Chapter seven, Harold’s appointment by the Witan is explained. The nobility wanted an Englishman as king not someone ‘outlandish’ i.e someone from outside the land. So according to this saga, the English twice appointed the Norman Duke William on Edward’s orders, but at the last minute decided that Harold was more suited because he was English.
7. For that Harold, Godwin's son, was of great family in England, and a very proper man in himself, but the rulers of the land thought it hard to come under the rule of outlandish lords, then they took Harold to be king, and he was consecrated under the crown as the custom was of English chiefs.
The saga has limited information about the relationship between Harold and his brother Tostig. It repeats the error that Tostig was the elder and it has no knowledge of his expulsion from England at the end of 1065, prior to Edward’s illness. It states that Tostig was still in England at the time of the coronation and that he challenged Harold for posession of the throne. It does not mention his exile to Flanders.
In this design his brother Tosti had no share, but he was older, and so he thought himself nearer to the kingdom. Then he went to meet his brother Harold and claimed to be even with him, but when Harold said "nay" to that, then he fared out of the land and fled to Denmark to find king Sweyn, Wolf's son, his kinsman, and bade him fare to England and win the land under his rule "as the Dane kings of old had done." But Sweyn was not ready to do that.
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