A page of the Eggertson copy of Heimskringla

Heimskringla is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (1178/79–1241) ca. 1230. The name Heimskringla 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 of sagas about the Norwegian kings, beginning with the saga of the legendary Swedish dynasty of the Ynglings, followed by accounts of historical Norwegian rulers from Harald Fairhair of the 9th century up to the death of the pretender Eystein Meyla in 1177. The exact sources of his work are disputed, but included earlier kings' sagas, such as Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna and the twelfth century Norwegian synoptic histories and oral traditions, notably many skaldic poems. Snorri had himself visited Norway and Sweden. For events of mid-12th century, Snorri explicitly names the now lost work Hryggjarstykki as his source. The composition of the sagas is Snorri's. The Heimskringla is referenced in the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Manuscript history[link]

The earliest parchment copy of the work is referred to as Kringla. It voyaged from Iceland to Bergen, Norway and was moved to Copenhagen, the University Library. At that time it had lost the first page, but the second (the current beginning of the Ynglinga Saga) starts Kringla heimsins, "the Earth's circle" of the Laing translation.^[1]

In the 17th century copies were made by Icelanders Jon Eggertson and Asgeir Jonsson. Eggertson's copy went to the Royal Library at Stockholm. The Copenhagen manuscript was among the many valuables destroyed in the Copenhagen Fire of 1728. Only one leaf of the manuscript survived and it is now kept in the National and University Library of Iceland.

Translations[link]

By the mid-16th century, the Old Norse language was unintelligible to Norwegian 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. The first complete translation was made around 1600 by Peder Claussøn Friis, and printed in 1633. This was based on a manuscript known as Jofraskinna.

Subsequently the Stockholm manuscript was translated into Swedish and Latin by Johan Peringskiöld (by order of Charles XI) and published in 1697 at Stockholm under the title Heimskringla, 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 1777-1783 (by order of Frederick VI as crown prince). An English translation by Samuel Laing was finally published in 1844, with a second edition in 1889. Other English translations followed.

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 of romantic nationalism. In 1900, the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, subsidized the publication of new translations of Heimskringla into both Norwegian written forms, landsmål and riksmål, "in order that the work may achieve wide distribution at a low price".^[2]

Scope[link]

Gerhard Munthe, Kringla Heimsins, illustration for Ynglinga Saga.

Heimskringla consists of several chapters, each one individually called a saga, which can be literally translated as 'tale'. The first of these tells the mythological prehistory of the Norwegian royal dynasty, tracing Odin, described here as a mortal man, and his followers from the East, from Asaland and Asgard, its chief city, to their settlement in Scandinavia. The subsequent sagas are (with few exceptions) devoted to individual rulers, starting with Halfdan the Black, and ending with Magnus Erlingsson. The saga narrates the contests of the kings, the establishment of the kingdom of Norway, Viking expeditions to various European countries, straying as far afield as Palestine in the saga of King Sigurd the Crusader. The stories are told with a life and freshness, giving a picture of human life in all its reality. The Saga of Olaf Haraldsson is the main part. His 15 year long reign takes up about one third of the entire work.

The saga of Harold Hardrada narrates his expedition to the East, his brilliant exploits in Constantinople, Syria, and Sicily, his skaldic accomplishments, and his battles in England against Harold Godwinson, the son of Earl Godwin, where he fell at Stamford Bridge in 1066 only a few days before Harold himself fell at the battle of Hastings. This saga is a splendid epic in prose, and is also of particular relevance to the history of England. The first part of the Heimskringla is rooted in Norse mythology; as it advances, fable and fact all curiously intermingle, and it terminates in factual history.

The value of Heimskringla as a historical source has been estimated in different ways during recent times. The historians of mid-19th century 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 of saga criticism, pioneered by Curt and Lauritz Weibull. These historians pointed out that Snorri's work had been written several centuries after most of the events it describes. In Norway, the historian Edvard 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.^[3] 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.^[4] The factual content of the work tends to be deemed more credible as 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.

Contents[link]

Heimskringla contains the following sagas (see also List of Norwegian monarchs):

1. Ynglinga saga
2. Saga of Halfdan Svarte (Svarte: "the Black")
3. Saga of Harald Hårfagre (Hårfagre: "finehair") (died ca. 931)
4. Saga of Håkon Góði (Góði: "the Good") (died 961)
5. Saga of King Harald Grafeld (Grafeld: "Greycloak") (died 969)
6. Saga of King Olaf Tryggvason (died 1000)
7. Saga of Olaf Haraldson (died 1030), excerpt from conversion of Dale-Gudbrand
8. Saga of Magnus Góði (died 1047)
9. Saga of Harald Hardråde (Hardråde: "Hardruler") (died 1066)
10. Saga of Olaf Kyrre (Kyrre: "the Gentle") (died 1093)
11. Saga of Magnus Berfættur (Berfættur: "Barefoot") (died 1103)
12. Saga of Sigurð the Crusader (died 1130) and his brothers
13. Saga of Magnus Blindi (Blindi: "the Blind") (dethroned 1135) and of Harald Gilli (died 1136)
14. Saga of Sigurð (died 1155), Eystein (died 1157) and Inge (died 1161), the sons of Harald
15. Saga of Håkon Herðibreiðs (Herðibreiðs: "the Broadshouldered") (died 1162)
16. Saga of Magnus Erlingson (died 1184)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Monsen, Erling (1990). "Introduction to the Translation of Snorre's History of the Norse Kings". Heimskringla or the Lives of the Norse Kings: Edited with notes by Erling Monsen and translated into English with the assistance of A.H. Smith. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-486-26366-3. http://books.google.com/?id=N8hgblngVqAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Heimskringla:+History+of+the+Kings+of+Norway&q=Heimskringla%3A%20History%20of%20the%20Kings%20of%20Norway . A reprint of the 1932 Cambridge edition by W. Heffer.
• Bagge, Sverre (1991). Society and Politics in Snorri Sturlusons Heimskringla. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-06887-4. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Heimskringla

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Heimskringla

• Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson Readable HTML format
• Images of the Kringla Leaf on the manuscripts website of the National and University Library of Iceland
• Heimskringla in Old Norse from Kulturformidlingen norrøne tekster og kvad, Norway.
• Heimskringla: The full text in Icelandic, Norwegian and English as parallel texts
• English translation of Snorri Sturluson's text
• Proverbs and proverbial materials in Heimskringla

Map showing area of Norse settlements during the 8th to 11th centuries. Also the trade and raid routes, often inseparable, are marked.

Norse clothes in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm.

Statues of Norse explorers at L'Anse aux Meadows

Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.

The meaning of Norseman was "people from the North" and was applied primarily to Nordic people originating from southern and central^{[citation needed]} Scandinavia. They established states and settlements in areas which today are part of the Faroe Islands, England, Scotland, Wales, Iceland, Finland, Ireland, Russia, Canada, Greenland, France, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany.

Norse and Norsemen are applied to the Scandinavian population of the period from the late 8th century to the 11th century. The Old Frankish Nortmann "Northman" was Latinized as Normanni, famously in the prayer A furore normannorum libera nos domine ("From the fury of the Northmen release us, O Lord!"), attributed to monks of the English monasteries plundered by Viking raids in the 8th and 9th centuries,^{[citation needed]} and entered Old French as Normands, whence the name of the Normans and of Normandy, which was settled by Norsemen in the 10th century.

Other names[link]

Vikings has been a common term for Norsemen in the early medieval period, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering by Norsemen in Great Britain and Ireland. The term "Finn-Galls" (i.e. Norse Vikings or Norwegians) ^[1] (Gall Goidel, lit.: foreign Gaelic) was used concerning the people of Norse descent in Ireland and Scotland, who assimilated into the Gaelic culture.

"In the eighth century the inrush of the Vikings in force began to be felt all over Pictland. These Vikings were pagans and savages of the most unrestrained and pitiless type. They were composed of Finn-Gall or Norwegians, and of Dubh-Gall or Danes. The latter were a mixed breed, with a Hunnish strain in them".^[2]

The Northmen were also known as Ascomanni, ashmen, by the Germans,^[3] Lochlanach (Norse) by the Irish and Dene (Danes) by the Anglo-Saxons.

The Slavs, the Arabs and the Byzantines knew them as the Rus' or Rhōs, probably derived from various uses of rōþs-, i.e. "related to rowing", or derived from the area of Roslagen in east-central Sweden, where most of the Norsemen who visited the Slavic lands came from. Archaeologists and historians of today believe that these Scandinavian settlements in the Slavic lands formed the names of the countries Russia and Belarus.

The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them Varangians (ON: Væringjar, meaning sworn men or from Slavic варяги supposedly deriving from the root "вар"—"profit" as coming from North they would profit by trading goods and not producing them, which had a negative connotation in Slavic culture of that time), and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard.

Modern Scandinavian usage[link]

In the Old Norse language, the term norrœnir menn (northern men), was used to refer to the North Germanic population of Scandinavia (Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Faroe Islanders and Icelanders), thus corresponding to the modern English name Norsemen.

In the modern Scandinavian languages, no common word for Norsemen exists. In Swedish, the term nordmän is used, which corresponds to "Northmen". The Norwegians and Danish lack a word for the ancient North Germanic peoples. Usually they are simply (but incorrectly) called Vikiings in both Denmark, Norway, as well as Sweden. In Norway, nordmann, and Denmark, nordmand, is the common demonym for a Norwegian. In Icelandic, Norðmaður means a man from Norway, but Norrænn maður is the term for a "North Germanic man" (or "woman"/"people"). In Faroese, Norðmaður means a man from Norway, just like in Icelandic, but the term Norrønur maður or Norrøn kvinna/fólk are the terms for the "North Germanic man" or "North Germanic woman/people" respectively.

The word nordbo however, (Sw.: nordborna, Da.: nordboerne, No.: nordboerne or nordbuane in the definite plural) is used for both ancient and modern people living in the Nordic countries and speaking one of the North Germanic languages. The modern people of Scandinavia also simply identify themselves as scandinavians.

Notes and references[link]

This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (January 2009)

See also[link]

Ancient Germanic culture portal

External links[link]

• HowStuffWorks.com – Norsemen