SNORRO STURLESON. This ambitious old scald was both rich and learned. He fortified and adorned his residence at Reikholt, with a barbaric magnificence quite unheard of. In 1237 he revisited Norway, but from ambition, or from some other motive, transferred his allegiance from King Hakon to Duke Skule, who had distant claims to the crown. The king now pronounced him a traitor. Snorro returned to Iceland, but the royal scouts were charged to bring him alive or dead to Norway. Iceland should see now what would become of the man who was accused of secretly negotiating for her subjection to the Norwegian crown! The domestic faction which Snorro had so relentlessly kindled still kept smouldering, and was kept warm by the ceaseless fanning of private animosity. We must not try the social morals of the thirteenth century by any standard of our own manufacture. The scale of manners was, doubtless, very low at that period in Iceland. Nothing but the most passionate lawlessness, and the bloodiest vindictiveness, were the current usage of that wild age. Christianity had not yet gained footing amid the peoples of the North; and their manners were, of course, as heathenish as the rudest Pagan could have desired. The three sons-in-law of Snorro, Gissur, Kolbein, and Arne, came by night to his strong residence at Reikholt, and murdered him in September 1241, in his sixty-third year. Thus died the Herodotus of the North, a wild, selfish, ambitious spirit, who discarded all moral and religious considerations; but who had a power of insight capable of seeing into the complicated mechanism of the human heart; and a power of portraying the character and individuality of each of his heroes, that has very seldom been surpassed by any writer in any age. As a slight palliation of the rude lines in which his character is drawn, we must mention that all that is known regarding the person of Snorro Sturleson is derived from the accounts handed down to us in his own family.
The Heimskringla (or circle of the earth) is the name by which Snorro Sturleson's greatest work is known. The name was derived from the first prominent word in the old scaldic manuscript of Snorro. He calls his book the Saga, or Story of the Kings of Norway; and it is in reality a connected series of memoirs of the kings and heroes who figured prominently on the Scandinavian peninsula, in Denmark, and in England, from the earliest period, when mythology and history are indistinguishably blended, down to the year 1178. It is a beautiful collection of sagas, or historical notices of incidents, anecdotes, and speeches, told in a fascinating manner by a man who could vividly recall and present the scenes which passed before his own imagination, hung out in all the rude drapery in which the actors delighted to appear. The work is thickly interspersed with rude snatches of scaldic song, which were introduced by the author to heighten the general effect of his narrative, or to add a kind of rough ornament to a story that had sufficient strength in it already. The copy of the Heimskringla made in 1230 by Snorro's nephew, Sturla, is considered the most authentic text of the work. Copies of this MS. were made as late as 1567. In 1594 a Danish translation of portions of the Heimskringla was published by Mortensen. In 1599 Peter Claussen executed a Norwegian translation of it, which was published by Wormius in 1633. The first complete edition of the work was published in 1697, by Peringskiold, with Swedish and Latin versions of it. It was translated into Danish and Latin by Schöning, Thorlacius, and Werlauf; which, with the original Icelandic text very carefully collected, formed six volumes, and was published between 1777 and 1826. Grundtvig executed a Danish version of the Heimskringla in three volumes, 1818-1822. In 1838 Jacob Aal published an excellent Norse translation of the work; and in 1844 Samuel Laing
translated the Heimskringla into English in three volumes, with a preliminary dissertation on the learning, religion, and social condition of the inhabitants of the North.
A number of poems, forming part of the Skalds of Rask, Stockholm, 1818, and Havn, two volumes, 1848-52, are ascribed to Snorro; besides some poems on contemporary heroes, and certain small scientific manuals.