Snorri Sturluson: Difference between revisions

'''Snorri Sturluson''' (1179--September 23, 1241) was a [[The High Middle Ages|medieval]] [[Useful Notes/Iceland|Icelandic]] chieftain, landholder and political official, and a poet, historian and mythographer. [[Spell My Name Withwith an "S"|His name may also be encountered]] spelt Snorre Sturlason ([[Useful Notes/Norway|Norwegian]]) or Snorre Sturlasson ([[Useful Notes/Sweden|Swedish]]), but Snorri Sturluson is the recommended form in English, as it’s correct in Icelandic and Old Norse. Note that Sturluson is a [[Patronymic]], not a family name; he is correctly referred to as Snorri for short, not “Mr. Sturluson”.

Snorri is the single most famous author of medieval Iceland and Old Norse literature in general. His life marks the beginning of a [[Golden Age]] of Icelandic literature, during which the island produced [[The Icelandic Sagas (Literature)|The Icelandic Sagas]]. It was also a time when the Icelanders, with their literary skills honed by the reception of foreign literature, and some 200 years after their Christianization, re-discovered their own history and the beliefs and traditions of their pagan forebears.

His ''other'' [[Magnum Opus]] is traditionally ''[[Heimskringla (Literature)|Heimskringla]]'', a massive chronicle of Norwegian history; or, more accurately, a work moving from pseudohistory through [[Historical Fiction]] to history in its description of the lives of the kings of Norway from Odin and Yngvi-Freyr up to 1177 AD. There is, however, no absolute certainty on how much of ''Heimskringla'' is Snorri's creation, as it is an anonymous work and may be a collaboration of various writers.

There is a hypothesis, grounded on an analysis of the vocabulary, that Snorri is also the author of ''Egil's Saga'', one of the big [[The Icelandic Sagas (Literature)|Sagas of Icelanders]]. Tentatively, Snorri might have taken an interest in Egil, as Egil was Snorri's own ancestor, and was considered Iceland's best poet from pagan times. Definite proof for that conjecture, however, is lacking.

* [[Retcon]]: In the ''Snorra Edda'', Snorri claimed that Asgard, the city of the gods, was [[The Trojan War|Troy]], but by the time he wrote ''[[Heimskringla (Literature)|Heimskringla]]'', he had scrapped that idea and described Asgard as a wholly different place, somewhere around southern Russia or the Caucasus.