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Heimskringla I SNORRI STURLUSON HEIMSKRINGLA VOLUME I The printing of this book is made possible by a gift to the University of Cambridge in memory of Dorothea Coke, Skjæret, 1951 Snorri SturluSon HEiMSKRINGlA VOLUME i tHE BEGINNINGS TO ÓlÁFr TRYGGVASON translated by AliSon FinlAY and AntHonY FAulKES ViKinG SoCiEtY For NORTHErn rESEArCH uniVErSitY CollEGE lonDon 2011 © VIKING SOCIETY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-903521-86-4 The cover illustration is of the ‘Isidorean’ mappamundi (11th century), of unknown origin, diameter 26 cm, in Bayerische Staatsbibliotek, Munich, Clm 10058, f. 154v. It is printed here by permission of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. East is at the top, Asia fills the top half, Europe is in the bottom left hand quadrant, Africa in the bottom right hand quadrant. The earliest realisations of Isidore’s description of the world have the following schematic form: E ASIA MEDITERRANEUM N TANAIS NILUS S EVROPA AFRICA W Printed by Short Run Press Limited, Exeter CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ vii Authorship ...................................................................................... vii Sources ............................................................................................. ix Manuscripts ....................................................................................xiii Further Reading ............................................................................. xiv This Translation ............................................................................. xiv CHRONOLOGY ...........................................................................xvi GENEALOGY ............................................................................xviii MAPS ................................................................................................. xix BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES ..........................................xxiii HEIMSKRINGLA I ............................................................................... 1 Prologue ............................................................................................ 3 Ynglinga saga ................................................................................... 6 Hálfdanar saga svarta ...................................................................... 48 Haralds saga ins hárfagra ................................................................ 54 Hákonar saga góða .......................................................................... 88 Haralds saga gráfeldar .................................................................. 120 Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar ............................................................... 137 INDEX OF NAMES ........................................................................... 235 Introduction Authorship The title Heimskringla derives from the phrase kringla heimsins ‘the disc of the world’ which opens this collection of sagas on the lives of the kings of Norway attributed to the Icelandic author Snorri Sturluson. The words belong to a geographical preamble, ‘The disc of the world which mankind inhabits is very indented with bays’, and have little to do with the main substance of the work; but they are fortuitously appropriate to its scope and ambition, which make it one of the greatest literary achievements of medieval Iceland. Heimskringla covers the history of Norway from its legendary beginnings up to the year 1177, and is structured as a sequence of sixteen sagas, mostly biographical in their focus on a single ruler (or two or three contemporary rulers). These sagas vary considerably in their length and degree of detail, presumably partly because of the varied nature of Snorri’s sources, but also because of differences of emphasis and technique in the way he interpreted them. The work is often described as a triptych, falling naturally into three sections, with the saga of Óláfr Haraldsson, translated and beatified as St Óláfr in 1031, only a year after his death at Stiklastaðir, as the centrepiece. This part of the text is closely based on Snorri’s own earlier Separate Saga of St Óláfr, and the incorporation of a work of this length and detail into Heimskringla marks it out from earlier historical surveys such as Fagrskinna, in which Óláfr’s reign is treated in no more detail than that of the rulers who preceded and succeeded him. The authorship of Heimskringla is not referred to within the text or in any surviving manuscript—as is usually the case for a medieval work—and its attribution to Snorri has been questioned.1 The first surviving works in which he is credited as author are the sixteenth-century translations of Heimskringla into Danish by the Norwegians Peder Claussøn Friis and Laurents Hanssøn (see Hkr I vii), who are generally believed to have used at least one now lost manuscript of Heimskringla that gave authority for their naming of Snorri. Ólafur Halldórsson argues from allusions to him in Orkneyinga saga and Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar in mesta that Snorri was widely known in medieval Iceland as a historian, and that the history in question is likely to have been Heimskringla (1979, 123–27 [1990, 385–89]).2 Íslendinga saga ch. 79 records that in 1230 Snorri’s nephew Sturla Sighvatsson stayed with him for some 1 Most recently by Cormack (1999) and Boulhosa (2005, ch. 1) 2 Jørgensen (1995) has recently reviewed the evidence and found unconvincing the theory that Snorri was named as author in a lost manuscript, and suggested that the translators’ claims may have been based on the medieval references cited by Ólafur Halldórsson, and possibly on learned theories circulating in Bergen in Hanssøn’s time. viii heimskringla time and lagði mikinn hug á að láta rita sögubækr eftir bókum þeim, er Snorri setti saman ‘was very keen on having saga books copied from the books that Snorri had put together’; sögubækr can plausibly be interpreted as meaning ‘books of history’ (Sturlunga saga 1946, I 342). The identification of Snorri as author of Heimskringla is all the more tempting, as he seems better equipped for it than any of his contemporaries by education, background and political experience. An argument based on his literary experience is a circular one, since there is little sure evidence either for Snorri’s authorship of Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar or even the work that carries his name, Snorra Edda (Wanner 2008, 26–29). There is a considerable convergence among the three, since Snorra Edda takes the form of a treatise explicating and preserving the complex skaldic poetry that is skilfully used as a source material in Heimskringla and Egils saga, and one of the three sections of Snorra Edda, Háttatal, itself takes the form of a long skaldic eulogy of two rulers of Norway. More significant perhaps is their shared literary skill, sharing ‘epic scope, an organising and rationalising intelligence, narrative verve, and resourceful use of skaldic verse’ (Whaley 1991, 15). Egils saga devotes far more detail than any other of the sagas of Icelanders to the history and politics of Norway and its rulers, and its account of events in the history of Norway overlaps with that of Heimskringla. Jónas Kristjánsson (1977 and 1990) accounts for its more hostile treatment of the Norwegian crown by suggesting it was written after Heimskringla, by a disillusioned Snorri on his return from Norway to Iceland in 1239; the more conventional view has been that Egils saga was the earlier work. An alternative explanation for this difference in perspective may be that Heimskringla addressed itself to a Norwegian and Egils saga to an Icelandic audience (Jónas Kristjánsson 1977, 471–72).3 Snorri was one of the foremost political figures of his day. He was an important member of the Sturlungar family, whose history is recorded in Íslendinga saga, written by his nephew Sturla Þórðarson, and in other parts of the Sturlunga saga compilation. The family was dominant at a particularly turbulent time in Iceland’s history, from the death of Snorri’s father Sturla in 1183 till the submission of Iceland to the Norwegian crown in 1262–64. Snorri, born in 1179, had connections with another powerful family, the Oddaverjar, as he was fostered at Oddi in south-west Iceland, an important centre of learning, by the powerful chieftain Jón Loptsson, himself descended 3 Ólafur Halldórsson (1965 [1990]) and Stefán Karlsson (1979 [2000]) have argued that many Icelandic manuscripts with content of interest to Norwegians were exported from Iceland to Norway soon after being written; it is also believed that texts such as Fagrskinna may have been written in Norway by Icelanders. introduction ix from a king of Norway. Snorri participated fully in the drive to acquire wealth and power that preoccupied Iceland’s grand families at this time through marriage alliances, the collection of goðorð (chieftaincies) and legal manoeuvres. He twice held the chief administrative position of lƒgsƒgumaðr ‘law speaker’ (in 1215–18 and 1222–31) and became the wealthiest man in the country. After inheriting the estate of Borg in the west of Iceland, once the home of Egill Skalla-Grímsson, from his first father-in-law, he moved to Reykjaholt, where he lived for the rest of his life. Snorri made two visits to Scandinavia, showing himself clearly ambitious to engage the favour of the Norwegian royal court; his choices of potential patrons, however, seem with hindsight either unlucky or ill-judged (Wanner 2008, 20–25). He sent early skaldic tributes to King Ingi Bárðarson and his half-brother Jarl Hákon galinn, both
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