Portal:Middle Ages/Selected article/3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heimskringla is a name assigned by Johan Peringskiöld to the History of the Norse Kings on his translation of it into Swedish and publication in 1697. The History was originally written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (1179 – 1242) in the years subsequent to the completion of his first major work, the Edda, in 1220.

The History is a collection of tales about the Norwegian kings, beginning with the legendary Swedish dynasty of the House of Ynglings, followed by accounts of more historical Norwegian rulers of the 10th to 12th centuries, up to the death of Eystein Meyla in 1177. It has the form of kings' sagas, of which Snorri, an educated and highly literate lawyer in Iceland, had an extensive collection. He relied heavily on that collection and on historical data collected on trips to Norway and Sweden, but the composition of the sagas is his.

The earliest parchment copy of the work was named Kringla. It voyaged from Iceland to Bergen, Norway (perhaps with Sturla Tordson in 1263) 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. read more . . . )