Heimskringla (Icelandic pronunciation:[ˈheimsˌkʰriŋla]) is the best known of the Old Norwegiankings' sagas. It was written inOld Norse inIceland. While authorship ofHeimskringla is nowhere attributed, some scholars assume it is written by the Icelandic knight, poet and historian,Snorri Sturluson (1178/79–1241)c. 1230. The titleHeimskringla was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts (kringla heimsins, "the circle of the world").
Heimskringla is a collection ofsagas aboutSwedish and Norwegiankings, beginning with the saga of the legendary Swedish-Norwegian dynasty of theYnglings, followed by accounts of historical Norwegian rulers fromHarald Fairhair of the 9th century up to the death of the pretenderEystein Meyla in 1177.
Some of the exact sources ofHeimskringla are disputed, but they include earlier kings' sagas, such asMorkinskinna,Fagrskinna and the 12th-century Norwegian synoptic histories and oral traditions, notably manyskaldic poems. The author or authors explicitly name the now lost workHryggjarstykki as their source for the events of the mid-12th century.
No known manuscript attributes authorship toHeimskringla. The matter is summarized as follows byAnthony Faulkes:
The titleHeimskringla comes from the first words of the first saga in the compilation (Ynglinga saga),Kringla heimsins, "the orb of the Earth".[2]
The earliest parchment copy of the work isKringla, now in theNational and University Library of Iceland, catalogued as Lbs fragm 82. It is a single vellum leaf from c. 1260, a part of theSaga of St. Olaf; the rest of the manuscript was lost to fire in 1728.[3]
Heimskringla consists of several sagas, often thought of as falling into three groups, giving the overall work the character of atriptych.[4] The saga narrates the contests of the kings, the establishment of the kingdom of Norway,Norse expeditions to various European countries, ranging as far afield asPalestine in the saga ofSigurd the Crusader, where the Norwegian fleet is attacked by Arab Muslim pirates, referred to as Vikings.[5] The stories are told with energy, giving a picture of human life in all its dimensions. The saga is a prose epic, relevant to the history of not only Scandinavia but the regions included in the wider medievalScandinavian diaspora. The first part of theHeimskringla is rooted inNorse mythology; as the collection proceeds, fable and fact intermingle, but the accounts become increasingly historically reliable.
The first saga tells of the mythological prehistory of the Swedish and Norwegian royal dynasty, theYnglings, tracing their lineage toFreyr (Yngve) of theVanaland people, who arrived in Scandinavia withOdin from the legendaryAsgard. The subsequent sagas are (with few exceptions) devoted to individual rulers, starting withHalfdan the Black.
A version ofÓláfs saga helga, about the saintOlaf II of Norway, is the main and central part of the collection: Olaf's 15-year-long reign takes up about one third of the entire work.
Thereafter, the saga ofHarald Hardrada narrates Harald's expedition to the East, his brilliant exploits inConstantinople,Syria, andSicily, his skaldic accomplishments, and his battles in England againstHarold Godwinson, the son ofGodwin, Earl of Wessex, where he fell at theBattle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, only a few days before Harold fell at theBattle of Hastings. After presenting a series of other kings, the saga ends withMagnus V of Norway.
Heimskringla contains the following sagas (see alsoList of Norwegian monarchs):
Heimskringla explicitly mentions a few prose sources, now mostly lost in then-contemporary forms:Hryggjarstykki ('spine pieces') by Eiríkr Oddsson (covering events 1130–61),Skjǫldunga saga, an unidentified saga about Knútr inn gamli, and a text calledJarlasǫgurnar ('sagas of the jarls', which seems to correspond to the saga now known asOrkneyinga saga).[6]
The author may have had access to a wide range of the early Scandinavian historical texts known today as the 'synoptic histories', but made most use of:[7]
The author also made extensive use ofskaldic verse which he believed to have been composed at the time of the events portrayed and transmitted orally from that time onwards, and clearly made use of other oral accounts, though it is uncertain to what extent.[8][9][10]
Up until the mid-19th century, historians put great trust in the factual truth of Snorri's narrative, as well as other old Norse sagas. In the early 20th century, this trust was largely abandoned with the advent ofsaga criticism, pioneered by the Swedish historiansLauritz andCurt Weibull. These historians pointed out that Snorri's work had been written several centuries after most of the events it describes. In Norway, the historianEdvard Bull famously proclaimed that "we have to give up all illusions that Snorri's mighty epic bears any deeper resemblance to what actually happened" in the time it describes.[11] A school of historians has come to believe that the motives Snorri and the other saga writers give to their characters owe more to conditions in the 13th century than in earlier times.
Heimskringla has, however, continued to be used as a historical source, though with more caution. It is not common to believe in the detailed accuracy of the historical narrative and historians tend to see little to no historical truth behind the first few sagas, however, they are still seen by many as a valuable source of knowledge about the society and politics of medieval Norway.[12] The factual content of the work tends to be deemed more credible where it discusses more recent times, as the distance in time between the events described and the composition of the saga was shorter, allowing traditions to be retained in a largely accurate form, and because in the twelfth century the first contemporary written sources begin to emerge in Norway.
Whereas prior toHeimskringla there seems to have been a diversity of efforts to write histories of kings,Heimskringla seems thereafter to have been the basis for Icelandic writing about Scandinavian kings, and was expanded by scribes rather than entirely revised.Flateyjarbók, from the end of the fourteenth century, is the most extreme example of expansion, interweavingHeimskringla text with manyþættir and other whole sagas, prominentlyOrkneyinga saga,Færeyinga saga, andFóstbrœðra saga.[13]
The text is also referenced inJourney to the Center of the Earth byJules Verne; the work is the one Professor Liedenbrock finds Arne Saknussem's note in.
By the mid-16th century, the Old Norse language was unintelligible to Norwegian, Swedish or Danish readers. At that time several translations of extracts were made in Norway into the Danish language, which was the literary language of Norway at the time.[citation needed] The first complete translation was made around 1600 byPeder Claussøn Friis, and printed in 1633. This was based on a manuscript known asJofraskinna.[citation needed]
Subsequently, the Stockholm manuscript was translated into Swedish and Latin byJohan Peringskiöld (by order ofCharles XI) and published in 1697 at Stockholm under the titleHeimskringla, which is the first known use of the name. This edition also included the first printing of the text in Old Norse. A new Danish translation with the text in Old Norse and a Latin translation came out in 1777–83 (by order ofFrederick VI as crown prince). An English translation bySamuel Laing was finally published in 1844, with a second edition in 1889. Starting in the 1960s English-language revisions of Laing appeared, as well as fresh English translations.[14]
In the 19th century, as Norway was achieving independence after centuries of union with Denmark and Sweden, the stories of the independent Norwegian medieval kingdom won great popularity in Norway.Heimskringla, although written by an Icelander, became an important national symbol for Norway during the period ofromantic nationalism.[15] In 1900, the Norwegian parliament, theStorting, subsidized the publication of new translations ofHeimskringla into both Norwegian written forms,landsmål andriksmål, "in order that the work may achieve wide distribution at a low price".[16]
The most recent English translation ofHeimskringla is byAlison Finlay andAnthony Faulkes and is availableopen-access.
Media related toHeimskringla at Wikimedia Commons
Works related toHeimskringla at Wikisource
Heimskringla public domain audiobook atLibriVox