Heimskringla

Compiled in the 1230s, Heimskringla may have been written by Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic writer and politician, who is also said to have been the author of such works as the Poetic Edda and Egil’s Saga. The work contains a number of kings sagas which purport to tell the history of Norwegian kings (and other major characters) who were said to have been the descendants of the god Odin. The author wrote that:

“In this book I have had written old stories about those rulers who have held power in the Northern lands and have spoken the Scandinavian language, as I have heard them told by learned men, and some of their genealogies according to what I have been taught, some of which is found in the records of paternal descent in which kings and other men of high rank have traced their ancestry, and some is written according to old poems or narrative songs which people used to use for their entertainment. And although we do not know how true they are, we know of cases where learned men of old have taken such things to be true.[1]”

Some of these earlier sources are now lost, but others still survive, such as the Íslendingabók, Historia Norwegiae and Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum (a history of the kings of Norway).

It takes its name from the opening sentence in the first saga:

Kringla heimsins, sú er mannfólkit byggvir, er mjǫk vágskorin; ganga hǫf stór ór útsjánum inn í jǫrðina[2]

(The disc of the world that mankind inhabits is very indented with bays. Large bodies of water run from the ocean into the land).

This first saga – Saga of the Ynglings – tells us about the mythical origins of the Scandinavian monarchs who reside first in the area that is now Sweden, but move west to Norway. Beginning with Odin, their descent is traced through legends before picking up kings we know did exist, setting out the conversation to Christianity and the unification of Norway. A full list of the contents is shown below:

Saga of the Ynglings
Saga of Halfdan the Black
Saga of Harald Fairhair
Saga of Hákon the Good
Saga of King Haraldr Greycloak
Saga of King Óláf Tryggvason
Saga of King (Saint) Óláf Haraldsson
Saga of Magnús the Good
Saga of Haraldr Hardrada
Saga of Óláf Haraldsson the Gentle
Saga of Magnús Barelegs
Saga of the sons of Magnus
Saga of Magnús the Blind and Haraldr Gilli
Saga of the sons of Harald
Saga of Hákon the Broad-shouldered
Saga of Magnús Erlingsson

The timespan from the end of Ynglinga Saga until the death of Magnús Erlingsson roughly covers the years 820 – 1184.

Clearly much of the contents are historical or even mythical fiction. Birgit Sawyer has summarised this in her book “Heimskringla: An Interpretation”:

“For many generations of scholars, Heimskringla was the most important source of knowledge about early Norwegian history. For centuries the information Snorri gave was regarded as historical truth, but since the early twentieth century source criticism as abandoned this view.”[3] However we should not forget that even Snorri recorded his doubts about some of what he was writing – as per the first quotation above.”

This is a major caveat, even for the later kings, but in putting together this Northern Tapestry, it is too good a source of colourful characters and events to ignore and as with the Icelandic Sagas which date from a similar time, will be used unashamedly in compiling what I hope will be seen as an entertaining, albeit unverified, storyline.

The earliest surviving copy of Heimskringla (or rather a piece of one) is now in the National and University Library of Iceland. Known as Kringlublaðið (the Kringla leaf) it dates from around 1260, and is the only fragment to have survived from a manuscript that was otherwise destroyed in the great fire of Copenhagen in 1728.[4]

[1] Translated by Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (Viking Society for Northern Research) and available here

[2] Available in Old Norse here:

[3] Birgit Sawyer: Heimskringla: An Interpretation (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2015)

[4] https://handrit.is/manuscript/view/is/LbsFragm-0082/0#mode/2up