for so his name is most frequently written, was the last and the greatest of the northern scalds, and was born at Hoam, in the bailiwick of Dale, in the western province of Iceland, in 1178. He was descended, like all families of consequence among the Northmen, from the royal line of Odin, and held by hereditary right the dignity of a godar, or priest and judge over his immediate locality. Following the custom of the time, young Snorro was sent to be fostered by one John Lopston, a person of some consideration both for the literary renown which still lingered in his family, and from his near claims to the notice of royalty, being by his mother an illegitimate grandchild of King Magnus Barefoot. The reminiscences of such a household would be peculiarly favourable for the growing genius of the future chronicler. Before Snorro had reached his nineteenth year, his father, Sturla Thordarson, had died. He likewise lost, at that age, his generous foster-father, John Lopston. As he advanced in years he was observed to be passionate, sanguine, and daring. He married at the age of twenty-one, and got a considerable dowry by his wife. He had several children by this woman, besides a number of illegitimate ones. He made a journey to Norway about 1221, where it is supposed he collected the information given in his saga regarding Sweden, Denmark, and Norway; and where he was made cup-bearer or chamberlain to King Hakon. Tired of the affections of his first wife, in 1224, he took to himself a rich widow with a large fortune. His sons, and his sons-in-law, now allied themselves against him, and resolved, by fair or foul play, to seize upon the fortunes to which they were justly entitled. It is reported of Snorro that, when the young kinsmen strove to obtain their own by legal means, he went with 600 or 800 men, and obtained by force the decision which he desired. This passionate, self-willed, obstinate man, over whom the moral sense had no control, and in whom the intellect rose to the confines of genius, used all his Titanic strength, and rude, wild energy, to break up this family feud, and strew its dissident members abroad over the world. The young scions of his house had probably not a little of his own fierceness and lawlessness, combined with a vindictiveness that would have done honour to a Corsican, and they resolved to wait and watch their opportunity, and accomplish by stealth what they could not compass by publicity. This ambitious old scald was both rich and learned. He fortified and adorned his residence at Reikjolt, 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 desire. The three sons-in-law of Snorro, Gissur, Kolbein, and Arne, came by night to his strong residence at Reikjolt, and murdered him in September 1241, in his sixty-third year. Thus died the Hero-dotus 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 Sturlason 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 Sturlason'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 1667. In 1594 a Danish translation of portions of the *Heimskringla* was published by Mortensen. In 1599 Peter Clausen 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 Werlau; 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 *Skálld* 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.