A descendant of the poet and hero of Egils Saga,
Egill Skallagrimsson, Snorri Sturluson was born
in Iceland and brought up at Oddi in the home of
Jon Loptsson, the most powerful chieftain of his
time, from whom he gained a deep appreciation
of Icelandic tradition. In 1199 Snorri married an
heiress and began to acquire land and power, settling
in Reykjaholt, where he wrote most of his
works, between 1223 and 1235. He also served as
“lawspeaker,” or president, of the Icelandic commonwealth
for many years. In 1218, he traveled to
Norway as a guest of King Haakon IV.As a result of
this visit, he became entangled in various political
intrigues that ultimately led to his assassination.
Snorri wrote prolifically on a wide range of topics.
He is best known for two works, both vast in
their scope. The first is the Prose Edda (also known
as Younger Edda), a handbook of poetics that recounts
the various legends of Norse mythology (see
MYTHOLOGY, NORSE) and catalogs the variety of poetic
meters used in Icelandic verse.He also wrote the
Heimskringla (ca. 1220–35), a history of Norwegian
kings beginning with their legendary descent from
Odin, the Norse warrior-god up to 1177.
Much of the information detailed in Snorri’s
histories was gathered from ORAL LITERATURE/TRADITION
transmitted from the times of the actual
events. His genius lay in his ability to utilize his
firsthand knowledge of 13th-century politics to illuminate
the past. As Magnus Magnusson and
Hermann Palsson state in their introduction to
Snorri Sturluson’s King Harald’s Saga, “It is primarily
the vastness of the conception of Heimskringla,
the sweep and range of its scope, that
marks it out from all the many other Icelandic
saga-histories. . . . No one, before or after, attempted
anything on such a grand scale.”
English Versions of Works by
Snorri Sturluson
Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway. Translated
by Lee M. Hollander. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1991.
King Harald’s Saga: Harald Hardradi of Norway.
Translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann
Palsson. New York: Penguin, 1966.
Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology. Translated by
Jean I. Young. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002.
Works about Snorri Sturluson
Bagge, Sverre. Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s
Heimskringla. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991.
Byock, Jesse L. Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and
Power. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988, 32, 53, 54, 71, 73, 74, 78, 89, 99, 133.
Ciklamini, Marlene. Snorri Sturluson. Farmington
Hills,Mich.: The Gale Group, 1978.