SOURCE: Ciklamini, Marlene. “The Prose Edda” and “Snorri's History of the Norwegian Kings to the Reign of Óláfr the Saint: Heimskringla, ca. 1230.” In Snorri Sturluson, pp. 43-91. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978.

[In the following excerpt, Ciklamini provides overviews of the three sections of the Prose Edda and of the sagas found in Heimskringla.]

I INTRODUCTION

Snorri's best-known and most popular work is probably the Prose Edda.¹ With the exception of some skaldic poems it is also the earliest work Snorri composed. Its history of origin is interesting. Snorri first conceived and executed a part of the work that today is read only by specialists, a long poem and metrical commentary named Háttatal, “Enumeration of Poetical Meters.” In modern editions and in the manuscripts this part is the third and last section of the work, a position which indicates that the composition lacks intrinsic interest. In composing the poem Snorri had two objectives in mind. First the poem eulogized the Norwegian regent Jarl Skúli and the child-king Hákon Hákonarson, whom Snorri had sought out at the Norwegian court. Secondly, the poem illustrated the many forms of versification that were and could be used in skaldic art. The conception of the poem as a poetic encomium and compedium of versification suggests that Snorri from the very beginning conceived himself as a skald and educator.

This role as educator led Snorri to the expansion of the work. Snorri realized that in his era, when knowledge of the heathen period and its poetic tradition was no longer commonplace, the complexity of skaldic metaphoric language had to be explained. This he did in Skáldskaparmál, “Poetic Diction,” the second part of the Prose Edda. In Skáldskaparmál Snorri explained the myths and heroic legends on which kennings² were based. Kennings are the distinctive feature of skaldic poetic language. Only a firm knowledge of that tradition would ensure the existence of an art of poetry that after the conversion had undergone a checkered development and which in Snorri's time was losing vitality.

In Skáldskaparmál Snorri had modified a frame used in the Eddic poem “Vafþrúðnismál,” a wisdom poem, in which Óðinn and the giant Vafþrúðnir competed with each other in exhibiting their knowledge of the mythic world. The prize to be won was, sardonically, the loser's head. In Skáldskaparmál, the situation has lost its sting. The frame's setting is a social occasion in which the giant Ægir, host of the gods, asks Bragi, the god of poetry, to explain kennings and to tell the stories which led to the poetic genesis of the kennings. The innocuous narrative situation, the inability to form a cohesive narrative with this type of frame, and perhaps a sense of boredom with a structure that stipulated the mere enumeration of parcels of knowledge, inspired the conception of Gulfaginning, “The Delusion of Gylfi.”

Gylfaginning is also a compendium structured in question-and-answer form. Yet the frame and the main body of the work are interwoven. Gylfi, the pagan king of Sweden, sets out to interrogate the Æsir on the source of their power. The Æsir, represented by three mysterious figures in high seats placed one above the other, recount the mythic course of the world, the names and functions of the deities, and some of the major myths. Gylfi accepts their accounts and because he had asked the right questions and had internalized the answers, he does not lose his head, but finds himself at the close of the session in a field, ready to convert his people to believe in and worship the Æsir. The frame accordingly explains why the Scandinavian world came to venerate the Æsir. The Æsir deluded Gylfi and ensnared him into a false belief because he, like all pagans, lacked the spiritual illumination which can only be conferred by God.

II GYLFAGINNING, “THE DELUSION OF GYLFI”

The reputation of the Prose Edda rests principally upon Gylfaginning,³ the only section of the tripartite work to present Northern mythology as an autonomous cycle, from the birth and creation of the universe to the destruction of the cosmos and its rebirth. The myths Snorri tells about the gods of the Viking Age are masterpieces in the art of storytelling and are likewise an invaluable source of Scandinavian mythology. In contrast to the Eddic poems, which are often cryptic and difficult to understand for those untrained in Northern mythology, the tales convey a sense of intimacy with the world of the gods. After reading Gylfaginning, we, like Gylfi, understand how the world was created. We recognize the precariousness of existence, know the character of the deities, and appreciate the timelessness of their functions. In narrating the course of the world in its glory, precariousness, and collapse, Snorri elicits in us the empathic certainty that this is how the world was created, this is what the gods did, and this is how the world will come to an end.

The name Gylfaginning, “The Delusion of Gylfi,” is puzzling until we recognize that the term has an important religious function and that the structure of the narrative situation would be familiar to any medieval reader or listener. The name is derived from the narrative situation. Gylfi, king of Sweden, is tricked into accepting the Æsir as gods. His factual and spiritual delusion and his role as missionary king explain why many generations of illustrious and intelligent men blindly believed in the power of pagan divinities and were oblivious to the existence of God. The structure of the narrative situation is typically medieval. Gylfi asks questions of knowledge. He receives answers from three manifestations of Óðinn, all of whom are by implication omniscient. This is the characteristically medieval way to impart book knowledge. The student who is ignorant but eager to learn is regarded as a vessel for the reception of facts. In Old Norse pagan poetry the situation is somewhat different. Two equally knowledgeable mythical personages confront each other in a competition to establish their intellectual superiority in the command over mythical knowledge. In not a single poem, even not in poems in which the questioner seeks knowledge through necromancy, is the questioner ignorant of the main facts and events of the mythological past and present. This change in the native narrative tradition, Gylfi's appearance as an ignorant rather than a knowledgeable questioner, has an important function. His ignorance lends plausibility to the supposition that a state of spiritual ignorance caused the worship of the Æsir.

Gylfaginning seems to have an abrupt and digressive beginning. The introduction is an etiological tale set in the land of Gylfi, King of Sweden. King Gylfi promised a vagabond woman a piece of plowland to reward her for some entertainment. The woman who bears the telling name Gefjon, “the Giver,” and who belongs to the divine family of the Æsir, plowed off a huge piece of land with the help of four oxen, her giant sons, and had the land mass dragged into the sea. This was the birth of the island of Zealand.

At first reading, this tale has little to do with the body of Snorri's mythological narrative about the birth of the universe, its governance, and its destruction. Even Gefjon is only one of the minor deities in the mythological account. Yet in a mythical sense the tale has an illuminative function. The tale explains Gylfi's desire to fathom the source of the Æsir's power and also initiates and demonstrates from the very beginning the successful delusion of Gylfi. Gylfi had thought that he was bestowing on a vagabond woman a land gift of little account. In fact he gave a substantial land mass to one of the Æsir. The narrative itself, the formation of Zealand, is for Snorri only of peripheral importance. The mythical implications of the tale are significant. The tale explains why Gylfi sought to establish the source of the Æsir's power and simultaneously testifies to Gylfi's psychological readiness to accept the Æsir as gods. The delusion of Gylfi begins in the etiological tale.

The theme of delusion and self-deception reoccurs in the account of Gylfi's visit to Ásgarðr, the home of the gods, and becomes the main theme of Gylfi's confrontation with and dismissal by the Æsir. Gylfi intends to be unknown. He changes himself into an old man. In contrast to Gylfi's inability to recognize Gefjon, the Æsir are fully aware of Gylfi's disguise and implicitly know the reason for his visit.

Gylfi's assumed name, Gangleri, “the Wayworn,” serves to underscore Gylfi's blindness, since Gangleri is ironically also a name for Óðinn. The assumption of an Óðinn-name points to Gylfi's presumptuousness in attempting to outwit the gods at their own game. Óðinn is wise and cunning. He has foreknowledge, or can gain it by magic. Gylfi, though he pretends to be Gangleri, cannot recognize the delusion wrought by magic. Also, on a secular level, the name Gangleri evokes an ironic smile. The name refers to a man who by his constant travels had acquired breadth and depth of knowledge. Gangleri-Gylfi, however, is shown up as a man who lacks insight into the hidden. The use of the name Gangleri therefore supports the function of the introduction: to demonstrate that Gangleri, who like all pagans lacks divine illumination, cannot resist the persuasiveness of the mythic accounts which ascribe divinity to the Æsir.

The opening scenes introduce Gylfi as a promising acolyte. His mind being that of a heathen can be manipulated. The symbols of power with which the gods usher him into their presence are frightening. Gylfi perceives virtuoso sword juggling, an immense hall thatched with golden shields, grim entertainment, and uncanny fighting in the numerous sections of the giant hall. This is a display of power unknown to Gylfi, a power he feels is threatening. Indeed, the power Gylfi recognizes is intended to be menacing. A door through which Gylfi steps closes behind his heels and for his presumptuous inquiry into the Æsir's might, the three hosts all bearing bynames of Óðinn (“the High-one,” “Just-as-High,” and “the Third”) threaten him with the loss of his head, if he proves to be less wise than they are.

The display of power and the enactments of martial games initiate Gylfi into the mythical domain of Óðinn, the god of war and presumptive creator and governor of the world. The miseen-scène of Óðinn's power foreshadows that Gylfi will ultimately accept Óðinn as the paternal head of the pantheon and that we, with Gylfi's mediation, will accept this too. We come to believe that the supreme power has always been vested in Óðinn and that he with the aid of his co-divinities governs the earth and the sky. Accordingly, we tend to forget that in Gylfaginning the agrarian gods, Þórr and Freyr, occupy undeservedly subaltern positions. The delusion of Gylfi has thus also affected our minds. Also we are unable to question the persuasive truth of the mythological account.

Despite the intimidation and occasional mocking reproof, Gylfi deports himself with dignity. His questioning is direct and to the point. Gylfi wants to know the name of the most powerful god and his credentials. Who is the highest of the gods, where is he, what can he do, and which works testify to his greatness? The answers are as clearcut as the questions. Gylfi hears the twelve names of Óðinn, which confirm the god's extensive might. This god is the creator and governor of the world and the maker of man. Óðinn's credentials are established by his comprehensive account of a world unborn, of the forces existing in chaos and the birth of life in the form of both monstrous giants and the ancestor of the Æsir. Quotations from Eddic poems vouch for the truthfulness of the account. In these poems, purported to be from the mythological past, giants, enemies of Óðinn, recite the facts of creation and the course of the mythological world or accept facts and events as Óðinn recapitulates them. The authoritative and seemingly honest recital of these divine credentials turns Gylfi from an unbeliever into a willing disciple and furtherer of the Æsir's cult.

Snorri was concerned, as any medieval man would be, with the problem of evil. What caused evil and what were the manifestations of evil? The answers Snorri found in Old Norse mythology were different from the answers given in the Bible. Man's disobedience toward God the Creator, man's disregard of God's commands are themes which have no counterpart in Old Norse mythology and in the Prose Edda. Evil is originally an impersonal force which comes into existence with the creation of life itself, or to be more exact, evil or the forces of destruction are present prior to the creation of life. “At first there was this world in the South which is called Múspell: It is bright and hot; this world is burning and in flames. It is perilous to those who are strangers and do not have their homes there” (ch. 4, p. 11).⁴ In the North there are poisonous rivers the waters of which hardened to ice. Paradoxically, these forces which by their very nature are hostile to life, create life. Where the hot air and ice met, life was formed in the shape of Ymir, an enormous bisexual giant, who in his sleep created two sons and a daughter. A primordial cow emerged from the ice. The cow fed Ymir with four rivers of milk. Thus life was created and sustained.

Despite the existence of the forces of destruction, life engendered life in multiple forms to counterbalance the ravages of death and to ensure the development of the universe. The cow which fed Ymir uncovered a being in the shape of a man from beneath the ice. His descendants, Óðinn, Vili, and Vé, were the primordial gods of the North. They would create the world by killing Ymir and would then impose social order.

Evil has no moral implications in the greater part of Gylfaginning. The killing of Ymir provided the material essential for the formation of the universe. Ymir's body formed the earth, his blood the sea, rivers, and lakes, the skull the sky, his bones the mountains, and his brains the clouds. His destruction and the subsequent creation of the world from his body seem hence ordained by a law of nature. Death, even violent death, is the basis for a rebirth of life and the creation of a higher order.

Óðinn and his two alter egos express their pride in their creation. There is only a tinge of apprehension in their early admission that, although most giants drowned in the blood of Ymir, one escaped with his wife by climbing on his lúðr, or “coffin.” This giant was the father of all subsequent giants, giants intent on destroying the universe and the order created by Óðinn, Vili, and Vé. The forces of destruction were hence still part of the universe. They were no longer embodied in simple, elementary forces of nature, but in giants, beings whose powers rivaled those of the gods except in one aspect. Giants in Gylfaginning were inimical to social order.

Coexisting with the universe were hence its enemies, giants deprived of their right to preeminence and anxious to regain it. This the gods took into account as they ordered the created world. In defining and localizing the realms of the world they settled the giants on the edge of the earth, on the outermost reaches of land girded by the sea. This containment of the giants not only symbolizes their hostility toward the divine universe but also expresses the gods' policy toward their rivals to power. Giants cannot be defeated. They can only be confined up to the preordained time of Ragnarök, “the doom of the gods,” when the universe will be destroyed and a higher order will be born.

Contrary to the sequence in “Völuspá,” the poem which was one of Snorri's most important sources, Snorri ascribes the creation of man to an early phase in the making of the universe. The gods create man before they establish the sequence of day and night. In this brief myth consisting of only six printed lines Snorri summarizes the creative faculties of the gods. They give life to inert matter, to two unshapen, lifeless, wooden blocks. They bestow breath, senses, form, intellect, and emotions and they present a social order symbolized by the clothes and names given to primeval man and woman. It is as if Snorri wished to emphasize in this myth what was not readily apparent in the myth on the creation of the world, namely that the gods do not only form and order matter, but also endow matter with life.

The process of creation is protracted and creation is finite. While the gods are establishing the basic functions of the earth, the alternation of day and night, Snorri points to the fragility of their work by providing two consecutive illustrations of the world's impermanence. He refers to the sun's fright of her pursuer, the wolf who will swallow her at Ragnarök. The sun's terror, the gods confirm, is well founded. They thus acknowledge that their creation is subject to the cycle of life and death. Yet they also confirm by continuing their account of creation that the temporality of their achievement does not flaw the glory of their accomplishments. Despite the ultimate destruction facing their universe, the gods still establish their halls, create the dwarves, fashion tools, work metal, stone, and wood, and arrange for the workings of fate. This will to persist, to continue their work and to defend creation despite the sure knowledge of defeat is palpable in the myth on Bifrost, the mythic bridge which leads from the earth to Ásgarðr, the realm of the gods. Gangleri is amazed that the gods would build a bridge that was too weak to withstand the assault of the giants at Ragnarök. The reply to Gangleri is an unequivocal rebuttal of the charge that the gods were lax in constructing the bridge: “The gods do not deserve censure because of this structure. Bifrost is a good bridge, but in this world there is nothing which will hold once Múspell's sons begin their attack (ch. 6, pp. 18-20).

The gods' admission that their creation is temporal and finite is based upon their recognition that in creating the world they have created instruments of destruction, giants who would not forget that the creation of the universe had threatened their existence. The gods refer openly to their giant adversaries' might in brief phrases on the coming of Ragnarök and in a description of a universe that from its inception is flawed. Yggdrasill, the cosmic tree, under which the gods hold judgment, suffers decay because of a mythic snake which gnaws at its roots and because of four deer which eat its branches. By commenting that Baldr's horse is burned on the pyre with the body of its master, the gods allude to the slaying of Baldr, the innocent god. The full account of the slaying of Baldr will precede the description of Ragnarök, for Baldr's death signals the imminent doom of the gods.

The first part of Gylfaginning is structured around two themes: 1) Óðinn, the primordial creator, is beyond the shadow of a doubt the chief deity; 2) The inevitability of Ragnarök is felt as an ever-present force in all of creation. These two themes are interwoven only sporadically in the second section which deals with the deities' attributes and power. The theme of Óðinn's predominance is reiterated once at the beginning of the second section (ch. 11, p. 27). He is the highest and oldest among the Æsir and governs all things. All other gods are his sons, or, as Snorri describes the relationship euphemistically, they all accord him the respect given a father by his sons. With this declaration Snorri falsifies religious history and misrepresents to a certain degree the mythic knowledge he had acquired. Only an allusion to the cult war between the Æsir and the Vanir, the Norse fertility gods, indicates that Óðinn's reign had ever been challenged or that Óðinn was not the most venerated god in the North. Njörðr, the chief god of the Vanir, is introduced not as one of the Vanir, but as the third áss (singular of Æsir). Freyr, Njörðr's son, is said to be the most famous deity among the Æsir and Freyja, his sister, the most honored among the Ásynjar, “the female deities of the Æsir.” In the case of Njörðr, Snorri rectifies the record by stating that Njörðr was brought up among the Vanir and came to the Æsir as a hostage. Yet even this amplification is inconsequential. Interestingly, the theme of Óðinn's preeminence is pursued only tangentially, if at all, in the well-told myths of the second section, although in previous accounts Óðinn had been accorded the honor of being both the creator of the universe and the founder of social order.

After reaffirming the primacy of Óðinn, the other Norse deities are introduced. Snorri enumerates the gods, describes their mythic functions, and intersperses the recital of myths with a presentation of mythic facts and objects. These myths constitute the high point of Snorri's storytelling. They are tersely told tales without exegesis. They embody human experiences or appeal to human emotions. Accordingly, the mythic content of these tales has been secularized and becomes apparent only upon reflection. Solely the actors are divine.

The first tale, which relates the separation of Njörðr and Skaði, his bride, illustrates the secularization of a myth. The story illuminates wistfully the incompatibility of the marriage partners. From beginning to end the story concentrates on this facet of the marriage. Their innate inability to live together surfaces in the marriage conditions. Njörðr, a sea god, is to spend nine days in the wilderness of the mountains, Skaði's home, and Skaði is to stay the next nine days at the shore in Njörðr's domain. The first ten days break the marriage. Njörðr, upon his return to the shore, laments in a verse his distaste for the mountains. Skaði, in turn, complains that the screeching of the gulls destroys her sleep.

NJöRðR:
Mountains I loathed

.....

the howling of wolves
seemed ugly to me
compared with the hooping of swans.
SKAðI:
I could not sleep
by the shore of the sea
for the sound of the mew
that awakened me,
the bird that flew
each dawn from the deep.(5)

The myth is short. Together with the verses it comprises only fourteen lines in the printed edition. Yet its brevity and the absence of censure lay bare a fundamental human problem, the hopelessness of a marriage with incompatible partners. Even the willingness to compromise on basic issues furthers solely the postponement of irreconcilable conflict, as rational arrangements are destroyed by emotion. Of course, the ease of divine divorce implicitly reflects the uncomplicated divorce procedures in pagan society. Incompatibility in marriage did not have to be endured. Even the gods practiced divorce.

The tale on Freyr's love for the giantess Gerðr is a falsified summary of the Eddic poem “Skírnismál.” Snorri emphasizes the symptoms of a young man's lovesickness, a sickness so intense and sincere, that he pledges to his emissary his magic sword, the only sword which would have assured him victory in the battle with the giant Surtr at Ragnarök. Again the elements of danger are deemphasized in order to stress the mythic beauty of the giantess, a beauty so brilliant that the earth and sea reflected her radiance. The poem expresses the giantess's hostility toward Freyr and highlights the dire magic to be used, should she continue to refuse Freyr. Snorri conversely lingers exclusively on the young man's utter disregard of social conventions and on the social obstacles to the match. Characteristically the only citation from the poem is Freyr's confession of unrestrainable fervor when he hears that the giantess will meet him.

Even myths which exemplify the imminent imperilment of the universe are largely stripped of a sense of threat and endangerment. Both the myth on the binding of the Fenriswolf and the myth of the giant builder are adventurous tales rather than myths illustrating a cosmic struggle. The grim and foreboding aspects of the Fenriswolf myth have been deemphasized. They are used only to heighten suspense. The focus is on the emotions and deliberations of the mythic actors. The wolf allows himself to be fettered three times after the gods propose to the wolf successive trials of strength. The first time the chain is obviously weak. The second time the wolf realizes that even if the chain is stronger he also has grown and gained in strength. The third time, when the gods show him a fetter that is as thin as a cord of silk, his suspicions are aroused. He demands as a pledge of sincerity that one of the gods place his hand between his jaws. From this point on the interest shifts to the innate selfishness of the gods. They are dumbfounded and except for Týr are unprepared to sacrifice their right hand for the good of all. In simple but stark language Snorri highlights their callousness once more at the end of the myth. As the wolf writhes helplessly “all [the gods] laughed, except for Týr; he lost his hand” (ch. 21, p. 37). The demon had been bested momentarily. That is the important thing, while the loss of Týr's hand is inconsequential. Throughout the narrative the liveliness of the account takes precedence over the danger posed by the cosmic wolf. Snorri could not reconcile the theme of cosmic struggle with the adventurous tone of the story.

This lack of gravity in recounting myths in which the existence of the universe is threatened, is also palpable in the myth of the giant builder. The myth is a guileful and beguiling tale. Loki inveigles his co-divinities into allowing a giant to attempt the building of Ásgarðr, the fortress of the gods, within one season. The giant's reward is to be the sun, the moon, and Freyja. As soon as the gods realize that the giant will fulfill his part of the bargain, they force Loki to prevent the builder from completing the structure. Loki changes himself into a mare and prevents the giant's stallion from executing his nightly task. In Snorri's description this is a humorous episode which completely represses the sense of danger and apprehension which primitive man must have felt at the thought of the disappearance of the earth's fertility, the destruction of the summer season, and the extinction of day and night. This sense of danger is palpable in the Eddic poem “Völuspá, and is even more evident in the drastic solution to this impending disaster. In “Völuspá,” stanza 26, Þórr breaks the gods' oaths to the giant builder and thus transgresses against the moral order set by the gods. In Snorri's account, the breaking of oaths is presented lightheartedly. Þórr, the god of brute strength, arrives. Ignoring the oaths he shatters the giant's skull into thousands of pieces. The episode has no major consequence for the course of the universe. Even the sequel makes light of the event. After nine months Loki bears an eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, the best of all horses, which becomes Óðinn's well-known steed. The episode which in “Völuspá”⁶ is calamitous and foreshadows the destruction of the material and moral universe, is transformed by Snorri into a delightful tale of divine adventure.

Two myths on Þórr, his visit to Útgarðaloki and his hapless attempt to kill the Miðgarðssnake, belong to the most entertaining myths of Gylfaginning. They are somber reminders that the strongest of the gods is no match for the most powerful giants and that not even Þórr can avert by force the working of fate. Þórr will be impotent not once but twice during his adventures in giantland. The first myth opens with a story which intimates the powerlessness of Þórr in his ultimate endeavor to secure the universe from the onslaught of giants. Þórr, while staying at a farmer's house, slaughters his goats. He invites the farmer and his household to partake of the meat, but enjoins them to cast the bones on the skins of the goats. The next morning as Þórr resuscitates the goats by consecrating their skins with his hammer, he notices that one of the goats is lame. The farmer's son had split a thigh bone to extract the marrow. In atonement Þórr takes the boy as his servant. Despite the good ending the message of the episode is clear. One of Þórr's goats, animals intimately associated with Þórr's functions as a fertility god and as the god of thunder, is maimed. This is a portentous sign of Þórr's ultimate failure to ward off Ragnarök and, more immediately, is also an omen that his journey to giantland will be ill-starred. Because of the giants' superior control over magic and their physical strength, Þórr will succumb as he will at Ragnarök, although he will continue to slay giants of lesser stature.

From beginning to end the tale is an unrelieved putdown of Þórr. He is drawn into the giant's power by a magic darkness which envelops him and his companions. He seeks lodgings in a hall that turns out to be the giant Útgarðaloki's (alias Skrýmir) glove. He mistakes the giant's snoring for a continuous earthquake and agrees smallheartedly to accompany the giant on a journey. Although his hammer seems to sink into the giant's skull, he fails three times to kill the giant. Þórr's violence merely disrupts the deep sleep of the giant, who is irked at the leaf, acorn, and droppings of a bird which he believes had glanced off his head. The suppressed anger of Þórr can be gauged by his utter silence and his inability to attack the giant when he reviles Þórr and his companions as kogursveinar, “small fry,” and dares them to seek out the court of Útgarðaloki.

Þórr's misadventures at the court of Útgarðaloki are equally hapless. His companion Loki cannot best Logi, a giant incarnation of wildfire, in rapidity of eating. Hugi, an incorporation of Útgarðaloki's thought, outruns Þórr's servant. Þórr himself cannot drain the sea in a drinking feat and in two successive wrestling matches he is unable to defeat a cat, in reality the Miðgarðssnake, and an old woman, the embodiment of old age. Þórr is left with impotent rage. Útgarðaloki and his fortress vanish as Þórr raises his hammer. The futile raising of Þórr's hammer in a void is a vivid image of his ineffectual readiness to do battle. The giant adversary can be fought only on his own terms. Not only strength but an astute and quickwitted ability to create magical illusions are the insuperable weapons of Þórr's most formidable foes.

Þórr's shaken confidence motivates the following scene, his attempt to slay the Miðgarðssnake. Again Þórr is foiled, this time by a hostile and terrified giant who cuts Þórr's fishing line, just as Þórr was raising the monster to dispatch it to Hel. Again Snorri uses the image of Þórr's hammer raised in a void to express Þórr's impotence to ward off his final encounter with the Miðgarðssnake at Ragnarök. Yet, as in Þórr's adventure with Útgarðaloki, the scene is comical. This time the element of humor is hostility. From the start Hymir is angry at having to put up with a guest, apparently a young boy, who insists on rowing with him to the deep sea to do some fishing. He mocks Þórr: “You will feel cold if I sit out there as far and as long as I am used to” (ch. 32, p. 61), and is upset when Þórr, infuriated at the ridicule, swiftly rows past Hymir's fishing spot and approaches the abode of the Miðgarðssnake. The anger explodes into rage when the Miðgarðssnake and Þórr face each other in an encounter both expect to be the last. The Miðgarðssnake glowers at Þórr, after having swallowed the bait, the head of Hymir's prized ox, and blasts a stream of poison at him. Þórr, enraged, raises his hammer. The scene culminates in the fright of Hymir, a giant turned white, as the ocean swamps his vessel. The episode ends with Þórr's angry wading to shore. Because of the comic structure of the scene there is not a hint of hopelessness when Þórr is frustrated in his attempt to kill a relentless foe of the universe. The keen sense of shame and perhaps despair which initially had inhibited the gods from telling about Þórr's luckless encounter has vanished. The entertainment provided by Þórr's misadventures has displaced the awareness that the existence of the universe is still in jeopardy.

Indirectly, however, by referring to more momentous matters, Hárr, “the High One,” a hypostasis of Óðinn, alludes to the seriousness of Þórr's limited effectiveness in guarding the universe. Hárr is about to tell the myth of Baldr's death. He recounts how Baldr's mother sought to ensure her son's life by having all things on earth swear an oath that they would not harm the innocent god, but she neglected to ask the mistletoe, which she considered too insignificant to render the oath. Then Hárr tells of Loki's stratagem to have Baldr's blind brother kill Baldr by tossing the mistletoe during one of the gods' ill-advised games in which they flung at Baldr the objects which had sworn the oath. Gangleri hears of the funeral, of the ineffectual ride to Hel to plead for Baldr's return, and of Hel's deceptive promise that Baldr might come back if everything on earth would weep for his life. After apparently every living thing had wept for Baldr, the messengers find in some cave a giantess who refuses to weep. The giantess was Loki, Hel's father, who is finally unmasked as the gods' implacable foe.

Again the portentous nature of Baldr's death is made palpable by elements of the funeral. Baldr's ship cannot be launched to Hel until a summoned giantess dislodges the ship with such brute force that the earth quakes. Þórr enraged by his own insufficiency kicks a dwarf into the funeral pyre. Þórr's might and Óðinn's power have been effectively checked. Again the gods can only postpone Ragnarök by capturing and binding Loki to a rock. Loki's might is thus temporarily confined, to be unleashed at the cataclysmic outbreak of Ragnarök.

Snorri's description of Ragnarök in the final section of Gylfaginning is anticlimactic (chs. 37-40, pp. 70-75). He follows the description of “Völuspá” closely, with one significant exception. The sequence of events as presented in “Völuspá” is reversed. The quotation of “Völuspá” in Gylfaginning begins with the preparation of the gods against the imminent onslaught of the giants. In Snorri's account of Ragnarök, an account which precedes the quotation, the giants mount a singleminded assault on Ásgarðr before the gods prepare their brave though futile defense. While the world is collapsing and the giant forces attack in several formations, Óðinn puts on his golden helmet in a symbolic gesture, since the helmet is ornamental rather than a protective piece of armor. He then sets out to meet the giant forces with Þórr at his side. This reversal in the sequence of events has an untoward effect. The grandeur and dignity of the battle so prominent in “Völuspá” are nonexistent. Instead, there is a pervasive sense of futility. The gods perform their duty, as the giants unleash their pent-up fury in a cosmic battle ordained by fate.

In the final chapters of Gylfaginning Snorri introduces a variation of a theme central to his account on the origin of the universe, that forces hostile to life engender life. Despite Ragnarök, with destruction wrought on a cosmic scale, a renewed form of existence develops. The earth is reborn; the sun before being swallowed by the wolf bears a daughter; vigorous gods, sons of Óðinn and Þórr survive; Baldr and his slayer return from Hel, and a man and a woman, survivors of the cosmic holocaust, find sustenance. This rebirth and renewal constitute the vindication of the Æsir's rule and achievements. Their descendants reign in the new world with the old symbols of power, Þórr's hammer and the miraculously recovered golden tablets of the golden age. There are only somber intimations that evil has also survived, in the description of the hall at the Strand of the Corpses, a hall filled with poisonous snakes, in the report that the mythic snake of evil is torturing corpses and that murderers and oathbreakers wade though the poisonous rivers streaming from the snake-filled hall.

Gylfaginning's persuasive charm rests, then, on myths told tersely and suffused with human understanding. Yet it is a curious work both in tone and structure. The tone for much of the narrative is serious, befitting the topic of cosmic birth, collapse, and rebirth, and the respect due an ancestral religion. Nevertheless several myths are, despite the gravity of the mythic situation, humorous. They are no longer dramatic events but delusive mythic scenes viewed from the secure perspective of a sophisticated and tolerant Christian.

Structurally the work has only an intermittent unity. The conversation between Gangleri and the three gods generally contributes to the sustaining of interest. Throughout much of the narrative Snorri presents Gylfi and his hosts in a situation of flux, in which the flow of questions and answers suggests the emotions and postures of the speakers. The gods intimidate Gylfi, indulge in mockery, and eloquently display their power of persuasion. Gylfi challenges the gods' assertions of divinity, a challenge obliquely expressed in the directness of his questions and openly in occasional flaunts. This loose structure of questions and answers is, however, not consistently maintained. There are long narrative sections which are preceded only by an introductory question which lacks the emotional and intellectual quality of much of the intercourse. Nevertheless the narrative situation is apposite both as a setting in which questions and answers are easily traded and as a literary reminder that the narrative moves within an authentic, pagan, mythical world.

Also the major themes occasionally are submerged in the narration of myths and mythical facts. This is particularly evident in Snorri's presentation of Óðinn as the major divinity and in attempts to illustrate the precariousness of existence as well as the finiteness of creation. In doing so, Snorri sought to mold mythic narratives and themes into an entity that had no place in tradition. In myths featuring divinities other than Óðinn, the Óðinn-theme, if mentioned at all, is restricted to marginal remarks. The major concern was the narrative integrity of the individual myth, but this necessarily led to the fragmentation of what was to be a unifying theme.

Gylfaginning also lacks completeness. The work contains only select myths. Singularly, not all myths glorifying Óðinn as a culture hero are found in Gylfaginning. This can be partly explained by the fact that important myths were recorded in Skáldskaparmál, a section probably completed before Gylfaginning. Partly, however, these omissions suggest that much of the work was written in haste.

Yet pointing to structural flaws seems akin to caviling. The almost magical appeal of Gylfaginning is in its masterful narrative, a narrative of such persuasion that like Gylfi the audience is beguiled. Even the unfamiliarity of the many names and situations fails to irritate. The world of Gylfaginning provides intellectual enchantment, for it is a world both remote and well known. We recognize archetypal situations and interrelationships. Also apprehended through Snorri's empathy and imaginative power is a world in which the characters, their achievements and limitations, are singularly and uncannily similar to our own.

III SKáLDSKAPARMáL, “POETIC DICTION”

It is univerally acknowledged that Skáldskaparmál contains mythological and heroic story matter of intrinsic value and passages of great narrative power. Skáldskaparmál, however, lacks structure, coherence, and occasionally, general interest. In Gylfaginning the dialogue is a felicitous device used with imagination and verve. The dialogue in Skáldskaparmál, however, serves a single literary function, the transmission of information. The speakers, the poet Bragi and the giant sea god Ægir, have no traditional relationship to each other. They are awkwardly manipulated puppets. The scenario, the feast at which Bragi entertains and instructs Ægir, remains lifeless, possibly because the lack of a traditional relationship between the speakers inhibited the use of subtle shadings of emotions and reactions. Snorri was a master in reshaping traditional matter, but he needed, so it seems, a well-developed tradition to nurture his art. Consequently, the setting which had a precise function in Gylfaginning is discarded in the midst of the work. Bragi and Ægir are dismissed, and perfunctory, rhetorical questions initiate the instructional matter to be memorized by the apprentice-skald.

The beginning of Skáldskaparmál contains no clear exposition of the purpose of the work, the teaching of kennings and heiti⁷ to would-be poets. The myth with which the recital starts out has no observable relationship to the purpose of the work. No kennings are linked to the myth of Iðunn's abduction to giantland and her perilous return. The subject is briefly introduced in chapter four, after two other myths tangentially related to Iðunn's abduction have been recounted, one of which includes several kennings for gold. Even at this point kennings are only listed during the telling of the myths on the mead of poetry, but no attempt is made to explain the system of constructing kennings. Solely the myths serve as a basis for understanding the traditional kennings on poetry and poetic composition.

Chapter seven contains a cursory introduction to the art of skaldic poetry, the three forms in which men and objects can be described in poetry and a perfunctory reference to the necessity of knowing poetic meters and forms. The purpose of the work is stated only in chapter eight: Skáldskaparmál is to teach fledgling skalds the traditional kennings and their formation. Snorri seriously admonishes his readers to esteem kennings used by the great pagan skalds and based on pagan myths and legends. They should be conscious of the fictional nature of these myths and legends. The gods, Snorri points out, were simply Trojans who after the Trojan War arrogated to themselves divine attributes.⁸

Structurally Skáldskaparmál bears some resemblance to Gylfaginning, in the setting and more importantly in the hierarchical arrangement of the gods and goddesses and the kennings associated with them. Óðinn-kennings head the list, beginning with a heiti, Allvaldi, “The Ruler of All.” Those for Þórr follow and then those of the other divinities, first male, then female. Extant skaldic poetry is, however, mainly encomiastic and rulers, warriors, their deeds and aspirations, are objects of poetic praise. For these reasons Snorri lists and explains the heiti and kennings for a ruler's territories and those useful for the glorification of exploits and adventures. There are kennings and heiti for land, sea, sky, and the seasons, for battles, weapons, and for the ship, the traditional vessel for enterprise and exploration. The horse and scavengers of battle, the raven and wolf, are also accorded lists of kennings and heiti. Of signal interest is the lengthy section on metaphors for gold. This reflects the importance of gold as a concrete symbol of political and spiritual power. The kings and chieftains to whom the skalds addressed their poetry were expected to be outstanding warriors and patrons of skaldic art as well as generous dispensers of treasure. Their success on the battlefield was determined by expertise in strategy and combat as well as by munificence, for fame and generosity attracted warriors to a court and inspired their service. On a mythical level, gold was the attribute and gift of the fertility gods and had to be dispensed to further the peace and wealth that these deities bestowed on their worshippers.

Snorri cites many kennings for men and women. These usually reflect man's occupation or social position. One large group, however, incorporates the mythical tradition that man and woman were created from wooden logs. Man can be poetically described by referring to him in the first part of a kenning by the name of a male-gendered tree, and a woman by the name of a tree having a female gender. The hierarchical order of society was recognized in skaldic poetry and for that matter by Snorri. He includes a section on the kennings and heiti for members of social strata, particularly the upper strata of Old Norse society. Kennings for Christ head the section validating Snorri's insistence that pagan poetic tradition could in good conscience be cultivated by Christians, since the kennings for Christ showed that skaldic poetic conventions had been successfully grafted to Christian religious themes and imagery.

The depth of Snorri's love for skaldic poetry can be assayed by his masterful command over the poems extant in his era. All told, Snorri cited 336 stanzas or stanza fragments from sixty to seventy skalds. Included are what seem to have been Snorri's favorite poems, Eilífr Goðrúnarson's “Þórsdrápa” and the Eddic poem “Grottissöngr.” Both are poems of singular beauty though each is composed according to the distinct poetic conventions of its genre. “Þórsdrápa” is a highly complex and formal poem, difficult to understand for anyone not exactingly trained in skaldic poetic discipline.⁹ “Grottissöngr” has a bouncy rhythm, vivid imagery, and a poetic narrative that seems to sweep the characters to their catastrophic end. Interestingly both poems, although so different in style, are highly dramatic. “Þórsdrápa” relates one of Þórr's battles with a formidable giant; “Grottissöngr” is a poem ascribed to two enslaved giantesses working with a magic millstone. They provide a fortune of gold and then of salt, and being forbidden to rest they grind a violent death for both of their insatiable masters.

Skáldskaparmál stands as a monument to Snorri's love for a complex poetic genre whose existence was threatened by a surging popularity of the entertaining and jaunty dancing ballads. The work itself bears testimony to Snorri's mastery of the intricate essentials of skaldic composition and to his appreciation of the best poems preserved in medieval Iceland, including poems on pagan myths. Also important was Snorri's recognition that even for poets learning begins with pleasure and that pleasure provides the motivation for the arduous mastering of what may seem a lifeless aggregate of factual matter. By writing this successful textbook, Snorri had sought to preserve and continue skaldic poetry, and the loose structure of the work reflects this goal. There is a leisurely guidance to the esthetic beauty of the tales which underlies skaldic metaphors, quotations from the best poems produced in the art, and progressively more and more demanding lists of kennings and heiti. Skáldskaparmál contributed to the survival of skaldic techniques in modified form. The essentials of skaldic poetry, the kenning and heiti system and metric conventions, were adapted to a new poetic form, the ríma, “rhymed ballad.” Skaldic poetry was no longer viable even in as traditional a society as Iceland, but skaldic poetic conventions were continued by poets who composed poems with a broader appeal than that commanded by the rigorous, intellectual compositions of the skalds.

IV HáTTATAL, “ENUMERATION OF POETICAL METERS”

Háttatal is an ambitious work. The poem comprises 102 verses each of which represents a distinct model of skaldic versification patterns and practices. As in Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál the instruction of versification patterns proceeds through judicious questions, correct answers and illustrative verses Snorri had dedicated to Jarl Skúli and King Hákon Hákonarson. Háttatal is not only a compendium of existing verses but also includes a number of new skaldic verse patterns. These new verse patterns had, it seems, an important role in Snorri's mission to encourage the creation of skaldic poetry: to demonstrate that skaldic poetry still offered ingenious poets the opportunity to display metric virtuosity and inventiveness.

Snorri was not the first to compose a lengthy poem illustrating skaldic verse forms. An Orkney jarl, Rögnvaldr the Saint, and an Icelandic skald, Hallr Þórarinsson, composed together the poem “Háttalykill,” “The Key to Skaldic Metrics,” in which they illustrated skaldic versification with verses incorporating heroic legends.¹⁰ “Háttalykill” was the model for Snorri's poem which, however, he may have conceived on a much more grandiose scale. “Háttalykill” comprises now 41 stanzas, Snorri's Háttatal, 102.

Despite its traditional format Háttatal has no poetic appeal today. Interest in the poem is confined to specialists of skaldic art and discipline.

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I INTRODUCTION

Heimskringla is the most important medieval work on the history of the Norwegian kings. The name is not given by Snorri but is an editorial name thoughtlessly derived from the opening words of a paper manuscript, kringla heims, “the circular world.” Serendipitously, the title suggests the intellectual width and breadth of the work in which the Norwegian kingdom with its human, political, and social complexities mirrors the world at large.

Snorri is universally acknowledged as a peerless master in the composition of the Kings' Sagas. His design was grand and its execution was structurally and stylistically far superior to any history of the kings composed before his time. The scope of his history was to be large. It was to incorporate the lives of the Norwegian kings from their mythical origin to about 1177. In its chronological span the design was not unique. There were a brief Latin compendium, Historia Norwegiæ,¹¹ and an ambitious Latin work on the history of the Danish kings, Saxonis Gesta Danorum. The authors of both works traced the ancestry of the Norwegian and Danish kings respectively to pagan divinities. It is commonly assumed that Snorri did not know Historia Norwegiæ, and it is doubtful whether he was aware of Saxo's well-written work. For Snorri's own intellectual circle, the design of Heimskringla was of unparalleled magnitude and its composition, a bold experiment in incorporating historical matter of epic tradition into a work with exacting standards of historical truthfulness.

The writing of Heimskringla was a demanding task, requiring intense intellectual concentration over a period of nearly ten years as well as a huge quantity of parchment. It was therefore a task on a princely scale, princely not only because of the costliness of the undertaking, but also in an artistic sense. The work reflected the strict intellectual standards of a chieftain proud and critical of his heritage and culture.

Composing the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings was also an intensely personal matter. From his own experience, Snorri knew that the political independence of his country was imperiled and that it was a matter of time before the Norwegian king would extend his rule to the economically insignificant island on the outskirts of the Scandinavian realm. This insatiable quest for extending political dominion Snorri regarded as a recurrent force or passion in the history of Norway. It was a passion both creative and destructive, creative in that it unified politically the whole of Norway and nurtured an awareness of national identity. The blind destructiveness of this force was palpable in royal opposition to and subjection of any individual and group proud and jealous of personal and political independence.

In Óláfs saga helga, “Saga of Óláfr the Saint,” this destructive force is described by two historic figures, unlike in character but united in their love for personal liberty and in their fear of political repression. The first is Hrœrekr, a petty king and kinsman of Óláfr the Saint. The second is an Icelandic chieftain, the spokesman for the republic. In one of the famous speeches in Heimskringla Hrœrekr warns his fellow kings against recognizing Óláfr as ruler of Norway. Outlining the history of the realm, Hrœrekr points out that each king of Norway with one exception, that of Hákon the Good, concentrated so much power in his hands that the realm suffered. Hence the realm periodically chose to be ruled by the Danish king who, because of geographic distance, assured the chieftains independence and a life of ease. As is usual in Heimskringla later events confirmed Hrœrekr's insight. Óláfr had Hrœrekr blinded and some petty kings slain because they were opposed to Óláfr's rule (Heimskringla II, chs. 36, 75, pp. 47-48, 105).

Despite a difference in content and detail, the speech of Hrœrekr is similar in ideological substance to that of Einarr Eyjólfsson, the Icelandic chieftain. Both emphasize that concentrated royal power leads to loss of liberty and contempt of human and social values. Yet the tone of Einarr's speech is more poignant than that of Hrœrekr. Hrœrekr seemed concerned mainly with his own freedom and that of his peers. His was an egotistical view borne and sustained by his position as king. Einarr stresses the liberty Icelanders had treasured since the founding of their republic, a way of life they were obliged to transmit intact to future generations. He defines the traditional bonds between Icelanders and the Norwegian king which, if maintained, would preserve political freedom. Icelanders should continue to bring lordly gifts to the king, hawks or horses, tents or sails, but should be loath to grant to the king requests which imply acquiescence to claims of sovereignty, territorial rights to an island offshore or taxation. Understood by everyone was the implication that free men bestow gifts on friends or superiors and that gifts oblige the recipient to extend goodwill and respect to the donor (chs. 125, 126, pp. 215-18).

Speeches in Heimskringla commonly serve to characterize the speakers and sometimes the audience. Hrœrekr is shown as a petty king with no vision to guide him in the defense of his liberty except for a correct assessment of a nonchanging historical force. Einarr, by contrast, is the wise spokesman of the values a society lives by and lives for. By formulating the island's commitment to a commonly held political ideal and the consequences of violating the island's political integrity, he staves off the destruction of a treasured way of life. The entire assembly accepts Einarr's recommendation as the only course of action. The subsequent message of the king's emissary confirms the correctness of their decision just as Hrœrekr's mutilation by Óláfr corroborated the accuracy of his political judgment. Upon hearing that the Icelanders denied the king territorial rights to the island of Grímsey, the king's emissary summoned all of Iceland's chieftains to the king's court. The king intended to deprive the island of its leadership to further his plans.

Einarr's speech was the last and reluctant commentary on the king's veiled request for the island's submission. Until he was asked for his advice Einarr had been silent. His silence during the favorable discussions on the king's inquiry and his forceful rejection of the king's proposal subtly suggest that he recognized that an ineluctable historic force was undermining the island's republican liberty. This inference is strengthened by Snorri's use of a strikingly modern narrative technique, the use of Einarr's brother as the willing though unthinking advocate of closer ties to the king. The king had directed his request to Guðmundr, Einarr's brother, to the man the king claimed to be the most powerful on the island. Guðmundr seemed willing to accede to the king for the glory and stature that royal favor conferred. This situation was a constant and nagging problem in Iceland's history. Icelanders had traditionally succumbed to the lure of the Norwegian court, an attraction which was nurtured by their instinctual, close contact with Norway. Though politically independent, Iceland depended economically and culturally upon Norway, situated as it was at the periphery of the medieval world. Icelanders hence needed to confirm their stature by recognition at the royal court.

Both the essence of Einarr's speech and Guðmundr's readiness to accede to the king reflect Snorri's irresolvable conflict of the political problem of his time: how to maintain Iceland's political independence in the face of insistent royal expansion and Icelanders' dependence upon royal favor? Icelanders were willing to do the king's bidding to further their own political ends and their detention in Norway by the king came to be a formidable auxiliary weapon in supporting the king's claim. Indeed, Iceland's liberty seemed out of place in the medieval world. That Iceland's autonomy was considered a political anomaly was expressed by the papal legate, six years after Snorri's death. In a missive to Iceland, the legate William of Sabina commanded: “All Icelanders should serve King Hákon, because he [the legate] considered it unheard of that the country did not serve a king like all other countries in the world.”¹² Snorri himself did not find a solution to the problem. He acquiesced to the king's claims while in Norway, but refrained from pursuing them in Iceland. Ironically, one of Snorri's farms was the first land to be acquired by the Norwegian king on the charge that Snorri had forfeited it to the crown on account of treason.

Óláfs saga helga, which featured the two speeches on liberty, was the first saga of Heimskringla Snorri wrote. This saga is also the nucleus of the chronologically arranged sagas which precede and succeed it.¹³ The speeches assume therefore an importance beyond that of their position within the saga. They express a fully formed historical viewpoint. The course of history is determined by an impersonal force, with men acting as its unwitting agents seemingly pursuing personal, religious, or communal ends.

As a major saga of the series, first written as an independent work, Óláfs saga helga also exemplifies the criteria which guided Snorri in its composition. He wanted to create a serious history which, given the nature of some of his sources, also had to be an imaginative work utilizing traditional narrative devices to express historic or mythic verities. Snorri realized that discernment was the sine qua non for a historian who had rigorous standards for establishing truth and who was also respectful of the mythic truths in stories and tales rooted in the prehistoric past.

Discernment was necessary in the evaluation and interpretation of sources, particularly those from a preliterary stage of society. The sources Snorri valued above all were eyewitness accounts by men of integrity and with historic interest, men who transmitted their knowledge to disciples equally trustworthy and intelligent. He likewise treasured skaldic poems which commemorated contemporaneous events and which often formed a record of a ruler's deeds, as skalds were frequently resident at court and present in battles. Even skaldic poems had to be used with discernment as Snorri emphasized in the prologue to Heimskringla, in which he articulated his historical criteria. He pointed out both the limitations of the genre and its basic reliability. Skaldic poetry had to be interpreted correctly, but excessive praise in court poetry was not condign to the genre, since falsification of a ruler's deeds was considered a public expression of scorn. Snorri liberally used skaldic poems in his creation of the past. They were primary sources to be quoted as confirmation of his account or as poetic highpoints. Even descriptive details are based on skaldic stanzas known from and preserved in other historic sagas.

In the prologue Snorri also mentioned songs or poems recited as entertainment. The substance of these songs had been accepted as true by wise and knowledgeable men. Snorri professed that he was unable to vouch for the truth of these songs,¹⁴ yet even before he planned to write Norway's history of the preliterary period, he had to address himself to a problem which would have troubled any serious historian: the pervasive strength of legendary material which expressed mythic rather than historic truth. Before he started to compose Óláfs saga helga, he had to decide to what extent he was to employ the mass of legendary material that had attached itself to Óláfr even to the time when Óláfr was a Viking chieftain. These legends were an integral part of the versions of the saga existing at Snorri's time,¹⁵ but this sanctification of all stages of Óláfr's life was contrary to the historic traditions which had been transmitted in Iceland from generation to generation. According to this tradition Óláfr had been a complex man, cruel and vindictive, though without a doubt a great king who was able to inspire loyalty and friendship. Snorri solved this dilemma by portraying Óláfr as a secular king for whom his religious mission, the conversion of Norway to Christianity, coalesced with a hunger for power which would tolerate no opposition. Only after his defeat had begun does Óláfr develop the spiritual and ethical qualities traditionally associated with saints.

The problem of the legendary material that Snorri had to wrestle with also confronted him in the folktales and mythic accounts attached to the early history of Norway. Clearly skalds of note responsible for recording historic events in poetic form had used folktale and mythical material in famous poems. Historians could not ignore cultural traditions accepted as historic truth. Snorri therefore included folktales and myths in his sagas on Norway's prehistoric kings¹⁶ and to a lesser degree in the sagas on the tenth and eleventh centuries. He had recognized that the legends of Óláfr had expressed an essential truth about his complex character, just as folktales and myths articulate in poetic form essential truths about the quality of life and the actions of men. Again Snorri's critical standards affected his mythic and folkloristic narratives. The gods would appear as rulers, human sacrifices would be secularized with the victim's death described as an uncanny and unfortunate accident. Yet, he carefully retains essential qualities of his tradition. The awe that myth inspires is present and so are the charm and sophistication of seemingly ingenuous folktales.

II HáLFDANAR SAGA SVARTA “SAGA OF HáLFDAN THE BLACK”

Hálfdanar saga svarta is simultaneously the sequel to Ynglinga saga and the introduction to the sagas on historic kings. As a historic king Hálfdan fights localized battles against a host of neighboring kings and chieftains. He establishes an identifiable territorial base which lends his son the substance and incentive to unify Norway by force and fear. As a king of the mythic era Hálfdan has a mythic power of such intensity that the survival and welfare of his descendants and his realm are ensured.

Kings of the historic era were foremost warrior kings. For this reason Hálfdanar saga svarta begins with an account of the battles Hálfdan fights to regain the territories that had been lost after his father's premature death. The saga of his son Haraldr the Fairhaired, opens in a similar manner. Haraldr, aged ten and fatherless, has to defend his inherited territory from Hálfdan's old enemies. The similarities in the opening chapters of the two sagas serve to purvey both a sense of historicity and a reaffirmation of the verity that the achievements of the father will be surpassed by the son. Indeed, this belief in inherited character and in an inherited capacity for attainment is confirmed in a prophecy toward the end of the saga. A Lapp, a prestigious sorcerer and patron of Haraldr, announces Hálfdan's death with advice and a prophecy: “You shall go home [now]. You will receive the entire kingdom that he [Hálfdan] has had and in addition you shall gain all of Norway” (Heimskringla I, ch. 8, p. 92).

Hálfdan appears as a king of the mythic era in the second and last part of the saga. The mythic account of his reign emphasizes the mana that resides in him and his progeny, as well as the self-destructive and internecine strain in his kin. Hálfdan is a model pagan king, powerful, wise, just, and dedicated to the governing of the realm by law. His luck is patent in the contraction of his second marriage. Hálfdan, a widower and childless, commands a henchman, Hárekr the Magician, to rescue a princess from her forced marriage to a berserk. The dreams of Hálfdan and his queen, a descendant of the famous Viking Ragnarr loðbrók, reveal the regenerative mana of their family line. The thorn that the queen pulled from her shirt, and which grew into an immense tree, presages the birth of Haraldr the Fairhaired. The parallel dream of Hálfdan in which he envisages himself with many locks reveals the prolificness of his progeny. The birth of Haraldr and his swift physical and mental development corroborate the truthfulness of the dreams

Even after death Hálfdan's mythic power is manifest. Each of Hlfdan's territories insists on burying Hálfdan, for they believe that the burial of his corpse would ensure the fertility of the land. In the compromise effected each territory buries part of the body. With this the territorial integrity of the kingship is assured despite the numerous battles Haraldr has to fight against his enemies.

In all mythic accounts in Heimskringla, irrational and self-destructive elements are part and parcel of lives endowed with mythic power. In Hálfdan's life this irrational urge is patent in his relationship with Haraldr. Hálfdan does not care for Haraldr. The saga does not explain the antipathy, though somehow it is apparent that this dislike is rooted in the father's jealousy of the son who will someday eclipse him. That this antipathy is oedipal is not only palpable in his mother's deep love for the boy, but also in a folktale scene which will end in the announcement of Hálfdan's death. The folktale is typically Norse. A Lapp sorcerer surreptitiously steals Hálfdan's banquet victuals at Yule, is tortured by the king, and released by Haraldr. The Lapp becomes Haraldr's tutelary spirit who in an understatement typical of Old Norse prose announces sometime after his escape that he is the cause of Hálfdan's death: “Your father complained about a terrible loss when I took from him some food this winter, and I shall reward you [for your help] with some good news. Now your father is dead …” (ch. 8, p. 92). Hálfdan's dislike for his son and his uncanny death after a father-son conflict presage on a mythic level acts of internecine warfare that will plague and decimate many of his descendants.

Hálfdanar saga svarta has hence an important mediating function between the sagas on mythical and historic kings. According to the standards of the historic age Hálfdan is a great king who by his success on the battlefield and wise acts as a lawgiver achieves preeminence and dispenses peace. Apposite to a king of the mythic era Hálfdan's mana is evident throughout much of the saga and manifests itself with particular force after his death. At that time the belief in his mana approximates the trust shown by believers in Hálfdan's divine ancestor Freyr. Freyr upon his death was thought to secure fertility and peace so long as his corpse was in Sweden. For a like reason Hálfdan's body is divided so that his mana would permanently reside in the four parts of the kingdom.

III HARALDS SAGA INS HáRFAGRA “SAGA OF HARALDR THE FAIRHAIRED”: THE UNIFICATION OF NORWAY

In Hálfdanar saga svarta Snorri introduced Haraldr the Fairhaired (842-931) as the future military king whose luck on the battlefield would not fail. The introduction of the new era toward the end of the old is characteristic of Heimskringla. Nearly every saga, as part of its conclusion, either introduces the succeeding period or points to its problems. The purpose is to convey the paradox of the historical process. On the one hand, there is a historic continuum; on the other hand, historic events occur in a cyclical pattern.

The continuum in Haralds saga ins hárfagra¹⁷ is Haraldr's military prowess and ambition. Hálfdan reconquered the large kingdom of his murdered father. Haraldr is the first regional king to attempt and accomplish the unification of Norway. The unification is Haraldr's most important achievement, an achievement regarded by medieval historians as the basis for the Norwegian state of their period. After Haraldr's death, kings with political vision would try to establish themselves as sole rulers of the country, and each king or royal pretender would claim descent from Haraldr, the founder of the united kingdom.

Beginning with Haralds saga ins hárfagra strategic, political, and administrative questions have a more dominant role and are answered as well as a medieval historian could. For these answers Snorri relied as much as possible on his interpretation of pivotal skaldic stanzas dating from Haraldr's reign. In spite of their value as primary sources they had serious defects. They were too fragmentary or the poetic phrasing was too vague to provide sufficient evidence for Haraldr's strategic and political plans. Consequently Snorri supplements the knowledge from skaldic verses with tales in political guise and superimposes on Haraldr's reign the political and administrative conditions of his own time. Modern historians have censured Snorri's procedure and rightly so. Yet this was the only way Snorri and his contemporaries could recreate the grandeur of Haraldr's achievements and could convey the powerful forces which brought about the temporary disintegration of his work.

To appreciate Snorri's accomplishment as a historical writer and recreator of the past, a comparison of Snorri's saga with the text of Fagrskinna, a contemporary redaction of Kings' Sagas, is instructive.¹⁸ Snorri and the author of Fagrskinna describe Haraldr's efforts in human terms rather than depicting Haraldr as a protégé of the giant Dofri, the tutelary spirit of a wild Northern mountain range, as traditional folktales did. In Snorri's brief saga Haraldr's battles become all important. In the first chapter, after introducing Haraldr as King of Vestfold at the age of ten, the series of battles and victories begins with the assaults of his enemies who wish to deprive him of life and land. The perils, however, invite Haraldr to increase his power. By vanquishing his aggressors Haraldr through Guthormr, his guardian, acquires a large enough land base to launch the conquest of the country. Significantly, it is at this point that Snorri interweaves the folktale of the beautiful, proud princess who refuses his offer of concubinage until he has conquered Norway. The story is skillfully introduced to articulate the latent ambitions of Haraldr who, in a skaldic verse commemorating his achievements, is praised as the “sole ruler” of Norway (p. 116). The episode leads to the new phase in Haraldr's rule. He no longer has to defend his realm. He begins to extend it.

In Fagrskinna's account there is no notion of a development in Haraldr's rule from a position of defense to aggression. The account opens in medias res. After a brief introduction on Haraldr's appearance and character, we see him surrounded by his loyal retinue. The verses on life at his court characterize him as a king cognizant of his power and of his ability to maintain and enhance it by his generosity to his band of fierce and fearless warriors. Some narrative on the conquest follows. The most serious structural defect, however, is the position and elaboration of the princess tale. The princess tale is not incorporated sequentially. It is rather a retrospective tale which is appended to the account on the battle at Hafrsfjorðr, a battle which in Norse historiography finalized the unification of Norway. The tale has none of the simplicity of the folktale as told by Snorri. The princess episode is rather a curious amalgam of folktale elements, Christian sentiments, and miscellaneous laws on sexual relations. The conclusion summarizes the importance of the tale for the writer of Fagrskinna. The purpose of the tale is elevating and moral. The girl refuses to give herself to Haraldr because of her pride. By her wisdom she induces him to issue laws to protect women from unwanted sexual affairs and to deter them from entering morally and socially demeaning unions. Since both the girl and Haraldr are merely twelve years old, their wisdom is astounding. Yet Haraldr on the same occasion demonstrates even more forcefully his innate power of insight. In an age which all listeners knew to be pagan, Haraldr denounces the worship of powerless gods confined to groves and rocks and swears to uphold the omnipotent God who had created heaven and earth. In Snorri's account, Haraldr's knowledge of the true God is innate but vague. In the powerful oath he vows to conquer the country and swears to the god who created him and rules all things that he shall never cut or comb his hair until he has conquered the country or found his death.

The composer of Fagrskinna has a limited objective in describing the reign of Haraldr. He wants to present Haraldr from a Christian perspective. Except for his account of court life and his citation of skaldic verses, he pays little attention to political and historic verisimilitude. The conqueror has to be characterized as a man worthy of esteem. Whereas he lived indubitably in a pagan era Haraldr, the ancestor of Norway's Christian kings, is endowed with the virtue of insight, an innate knowledge of God, and the will to uphold his belief about the nature of God. In his own way Haraldr is also a moral man, since he conquers his desire for the princess. In vanquishing temptation he becomes a better man and a legislator of correct behavior. Luck is clearly with him or, as the composer of Fagrskinna phrases it: Styrkti hann hamingja, “luck supported him” (p. 3).

From a historian's viewpoint Snorri's method of re-creating Haraldr's era must be faulted. Indeed, the stage-by-stage conquest of Norway, as Snorri describes it, is branded as patently incorrect. Also, some of the battles have a dubious quality. Several are clearly ahistorical since Haraldr's opponents bear names which are derived from the districts they head. Etiological tales thus bolster Snorri's account of a protracted conquest. The most famous disagreement concerns the battle of Hafrsfjorðr. Snorri and Old Norse historiographers concur that the battle at Hafrsfjorðr signaled the successful conclusion of Norway's unification, whereas historians tend to view the battle as the most significant but not as the final engagement of the war. There is also disagreement on the causes of the unification. Historians claim that the unification resulted from economic forces which brought about a feeling for national unity and from prior attempts by other leading chieftains to expand their territorial limits. Snorri and saga writers in general ascribe the successful unification to one man only.

It is of course difficult to assess how many of his battle descriptions Snorri owes to single tales on the unification of Norway and how much he owes to his inventiveness. What he does attain by methods unacceptable to historians is to create in his audience a feeling for the drawn-out but ultimately victorious efforts to unify the country. On this historians agree with Snorri. The unification process was protracted, and Norway's territorial unification was a logical step in the development of the country.

A great king is not only a brilliant military strategist. He is also responsible for an administration which fosters external and internal peace. Snorri in his version of Haraldr's rule attempts to measure a historical king against the standards of an ideal mythological kingship and demonstrates how Haraldr in some aspects lives up to the norm and in others falls short. The focal points are Haraldr's stature among powerful, neighboring kings, his administrative policies, and a personality frailty which seriously endangers his major achievement, the unification of the realm.

The stature of a king among his peers is a measurement of his power within and outside of his kingdom. Implicit is the understanding that respect by neighboring kings discourages and inhibits acts of aggression. Snorri narrates two tales which, beside their intrinsic interest and suspense, have the definite function of testing the power of Haraldr against the might of the Swedish and Anglo-Saxon kings. The first tale is about the Swedish king who plans to wrest from Haraldr not only disputed border country but, as he vows, even Vestfold, Haraldr's ancestral kingdom. As in many folktales the instrument of incontrovertible truth is an old man who in the aristocratic setting of the saga is very rich and influential. In a reception symbolic of the respective power of the two kings Áki, as host, provides the Swedish king with an old and sumptuously furnished hall, but assigns to Haraldr a newly built hall with costly new furnishings. At the parting the Swedish king demands an explanation. Áki replies that the old hall with the old furnishings reflected the age of the Swedish king, whereas the new hall symbolized Haraldr's irresistible youth and drive. Thus the tale projects Haraldr's unrelenting course toward the unification of the realm and his ability to preserve the integrity of the kingdom during his lifetime.¹⁹

The second tale is appropriately placed toward the end of the saga, for it reflects Haraldr's assertion of independence, even of superiority, as the Norse sagas claim, to the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelstan (925-939). The Anglo-Saxon king had duped Haraldr through an envoy into displaying a gesture of homage. Haraldr redresses the balance by having his envoy trick King Æthelstan into fostering his son. In Old Norse sagas the foster father is customarily socially inferior to the child's father.

Snorri attributes few administrative changes to Haraldr. The major administrative procedures introduced by him are the appointments of jarls in every district, the abolition of the allodium, and the imposition of a tax. The imposition of the tax is considered historical, the abolition of the allodium is not.²⁰ Both measures, however, confirm Haraldr's image as a tyrannical military leader. They are measures appropriate to warrior kings, who increase power by limiting the freedom of their peers.

Snorri's evaluation of these measures is interesting. He does not relate these measures explicitly to the emigration of powerful and independent chieftains from Norway and to the colonization of Iceland, as is customary in the sagas. Also he does not consider these measures political instruments, which aided Haraldr in maintaining the unification.²¹ The third measure, however, the appointment of jarls, is shown to be shortsighted. It is the cause for internal strife during Haraldr's long life. His many sons resent the power of the jarls and set out to kill them. Haraldr's policy to maintain solid friendships with the most powerful jarls within the kingdom is therefore unenduring and is a sign of the impending though temporary disintegration of the realm. For Snorri the cultivation of prudent alliances is basic to the preservation of power. When alliances are allowed to break down, as they did in the final years of Saint Óláfr's reign, royal power disintegrates and the land suffers.

This lack of administrative innovations points out the major flaw in Haraldr's political and military achievements. There are no wise provisions for the continuance of a unified realm after his death. Indeed, his love for women and consequently his many sons militate against the preservation of a unified kingdom. Each son feels entitled to his own kingdom and will not suffer any encroachments on his rights. Haraldr's shortsighted solution is to name Eiríkr Bloodax, his favorite son, as successor to the entire realm. As all sons are equal heirs, according to the custom of the land, the appointment was bound to fail. Brothers kill brothers until Eiríkr is driven from the realm.

Again a folktale crystallizes the folly of Haraldr's sexual indulgence which impairs his function as king. King Haraldr falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a Lapp. Lapps in Old Norse sagas are dangerous magicians and King Haraldr's love is plainly uncanny. He is overcome by such blind passion that after her death he would not leave her for three years. The king's madness, which can be cured only by a trick, symbolizes Haraldr's inexplicable lack of concern for the preservation of the unified realm. The sequel to the tale foreshadows the unnatural internecine hate among Haraldr's sons. Haraldr, after his recovery from this madness, detests his sons by this woman so much that he expels them and provides for them only after an appeal to loyalty and reason. This violent hatred among kinsmen is to be a constant theme in Heimskringla and is to cause serious disruptions of the peace that pagans and Christians alike had always longed for.

Snorri's use of folktales in describing Haraldr's reign, particularly after the unification of Norway, redounds upon the paucity of historical facts available to him. The folktales have however, a pivotal function. They explain in symbolic fashion the inexplicable mixture of success and failure in a powerful king. Snorri's superimposition of administrative practices of his own time upon the period of Haraldr's reign testifies ironically to his attempt to portray the era as historically as he could. These practices were probably considered old and attributed either by Snorri or by tradition to the prominent figure of Haraldr.

Snorri's overriding interest was to write a coherent and credible account for his contemporaries. This he demonstrates at the beginning of the saga when he, in contrast to the writer of Fagrskinna, provides a sequential account of the battles and events which lead to the unification. There was no precedent for this procedure, as far as we know. All Snorri could rely on were skaldic verses and fragmented traditions on the course of Haraldr's military progress. With the little evidence that was available Snorri created a vivid impression of a military man whose imposing personality had such serious shortcomings that they endangered the survival of his military and political achievement, Norway's emergence as a political state.

IV HáKONAR SAGA GóðA “SAGA OF HáKON THE GOOD”: A MODEL KING

The Saga of Hákon the Good is framed by two accounts of treachery and by the description of a land in disarray. The frame, however, is not part of the saga which, in contrast to many sagas in Heimskringla, is a self-contained whole beginning with Hákon's elevation as king and ending with his death. This self-contained structure and the external framing in the previous and succeeding saga suggest that his reign is viewed as a model which rulers should emulate and as period of respite from the strife and hostility which all too often burdened the land.

The first period of moral disintegration described in the frame is the ill-fated rule of Eiríkr and the second is the rule of his sons. In Snorri's account Eiríkr's misrule consists of the ruthless killing of his brothers. His motivation is the pursuit of power, yet his disregard of moral considerations is so blatant that his callousness is explained on a mythic level. A tale serves to illustrate the inexplicable, how the best-loved son of Haraldr the Fairhaired could bring the land his father had united to the brink of disaster. The tale relates the circumstances of Eiríkr's uncanny marriage to Gunnhildr, a woman of unsurpassed beauty, who was enthralled by two Lapps. The dominance Gunnhildr will exert in the mismanagement of the country by Eiríkr and later by his sons is foreshadowed in the successful escape from the Lapps, an escape that she plans and executes. When Eiríkr's men find her in the Lapps' hut, she rescues them and herself by sorcery and by pretending to show the two Lapps a sign of affection. After the Lapps had fallen asleep and she had wrapped two sealskins around their heads, she had them killed. This type of procedure, consummate acts of treachery, are to be commonplace in Eiríkr's reign and the reign of his sons. In both reigns she assumes a dominant role.

The tale thus explains on a mythic level the acts of fratricide which Eiríkr subsequently commits. There is no censure of Eiríkr. The only words of opprobrium are perhaps the matter-of-fact adjectives used in describing salient character traits. “He was a violent man, grim, rough, and cold. Gunnhildr, his wife, was … most grim.”²² The moral condemnation, however, is implicit in the description of his half-brother's rule; in particular, how Hákon the Good resolves the conflicts of interest besetting every rule. Hákon the Good (948-961) is one of two Norwegian rulers with the surname “good.” The byname bespeaks moral superiority and constitutes a judgment on his reign and his relationship to chieftains and peasants.

Með lög skal land byggva, “The country shall be lived in with (or by) the law,” is the motto according to which Hákon governs his country.²³ The rule of law thrives in peace and Snorri describes Hákon's reign as a period of peace interrupted only by the incursions of the Danes and of Hákon's nephews. Even his elevation to the kingship is achieved without resort to arms. Hákon arrives from England, where he had been raised, during a time when the power of Eiríkr Bloodax had been seriously weakened. There is no battle. As Eiríkr finds himself abandoned, he sails into self-imposed exile.

Hákon's acts are singularly blessed with luck, luck that seems to be predicated at least partially on moral strength. His peaceful entering of the country redounds upon luck as did his instantaneous alliance with Jarl Sigurðr, the most powerful man in the country. Hákon's luck suffuses his decision to promise the peasantry the abolition of the loathsome law on allodium introduced by his father, Haraldr the Fairhaired. The irresistible force of his claim to the kingship is palpable in the unanimity with which he is accepted as king: “they said that Haraldr the Fairhaired had come there and had become young again” (ch. 1, p. 150).

Hákon's right to rule is visible in his resemblance to Haraldr. Yet resemblance in heathen times meant much more than external likeness. The peasants' judgment implies that in Hákon Haraldr was reborn. This by itself denotes an express acceptance of Hákon's claim to rule, but universal perception of Hákon's moral superiority buttresses his claim. The men from the Uppland district hear quickly that the Trondheim men had proclaimed a king who was in every way like Haraldr the Fairhaired except that Haraldr had enslaved the people whereas Hákon wanted the welfare of all. “That news flew like fire in dry grass to the east and to the farthest corner of the country” (ch. 1, p. 151).

The innate luck of selected members of the royal house combined with moral strength marks Hákon's entire reign. One of his first acts is an act of generosity toward the young sons of his brothers. He makes both of them kings. This is in marked contrast to the policy of Eiríkr Bloodax, who rid himself of all rivals and is censured in Fagrskinna as a fratricide. This decision is again an outward sign of Hákon's luck, since by appointing his nephews kings over their inherited districts he wins allies rather than rivals to the kingship. Significantly Fagrskinna attributes this act of political daring not to the beginning of Hákon's rule as Snorri had done but to the end, in the seventeenth year of his reign.

In Old Norse literature there is at times a dual awareness, an awareness of the traditions and concepts of the pagan period and simultaneously a Christian awareness which is superimposed on the interpretation of pivotal heathen events. This dual awareness obtrudes itself on Snorri's description of Hákon's rule. Hákon the Good, the first Christian Norwegian king governing a heathen country, is implicitly lavished with the blessings of the Lord. The religious compromises he imposes upon himself spare his reign the internal strife which arises from the clash of opposing convictions.

The preservation of internal peace suggests the invisible yet tangible working of God and His tolerance for a king who under the pressure of circumstances refrains for the good of the country from Christianizing his countrymen by force. Snorri clearly presents the peril to Hákon's reign, as unity is threatened by Hákon's ill-considered vow to assault the peasantry for having forced him to participate in sacrificial festivities. Unity is restored at the outbreak of an invasion by Eiríkr's sons. The same men who had obliged him to join their sacrifices rally to him in defense of the realm. The didactic purpose of the sequence of events is obvious. Internal dissension and bloodshed must be averted to assure the survival of society. Interestingly, despite the emphasis on góðr friðr, “the good peace,” during Hákon's reign, Hákon is characterized as a great and fearless warrior. In the thick of battle he would scorn the use of helmet and armor and fight visibly in view of the war banner. Indeed, tradition has it that Hákon is killed in his last battle by magic. An arrow shot by a servant boy of Gunnhildr, infamous mother of Eiríkr's sons, wounds Hákon mortally.

Again the dual concept of Hákon's image as a Christian and upholder of peace and his veneration as a warrior king structures the final chapters of his saga. His death is Christian, his burial is pagan. Before dying, he invites Eiríkr's sons to assume the rule. Thus Hákon, in the throes of death, brings about an orderly succession without a trace of hate toward those responsible for his death or toward those opposed to Christianity. He consents to a heathen burial, should this be desired. Accordingly, Hákon is interred as a heathen king in full armor in a burial mound. A poem commemorating his death describes his welcome as warrior king in Valhalla, the pagan abode of slain warriors. In the poem he has become the symbol of prosperity and the good life associated with his rule. A vision of the devastation and tyranny which follow his death concludes the poem. Snorri does not attempt to resolve this dualism. In the moment of death Hákon reveals an innate magnanimity expected of a true Christian. After his death his people commemorate him as the perfect heathen king, the defender of the realm, the bringer of unity, and the respecter of his people's temples and holy places. As the poem notes: “it is on a good day that a chieftain with such character was born” (“Hákonarmál,” stanza 19, p. 196).

V HARALDS SAGA GRáFELDAR²⁴“SAGA OF HARALDR GREYCLOAK”: THE VIOLATION OF MORAL AND SECULAR LAW

As Snorri's sagas of the Norwegian kings approach the eleventh century, the accounts of treachery and deception, amorality for the sake of power and in the name of Christianity, increase in quantity and intensity. The reign of Hákon the Good represents in retrospect an interlude when the king, his chieftains and peasants, despite deep differences on the vital issue of religion, would live together as men of good will. What united Hákon the Good and the country at large was an abiding respect for the law.

Disrespect for the law marks the reign of the sons of Eiríkr, led by Haraldr Greycloak, a considerable portion of the rule of Jarl Hákon the Evil, and the five-year term of King Óláfr Tryggvason, Norway's first missionary king. In the Saga of Haraldr Greycloak Snorri indicates that the lawlessness of Eiríkr's sons redounded upon frailty of character. In the first chapter Snorri illustrates their character faults, which drive them to violate the law. Eiríkr's sons are rapacious, vindictive, susceptible to slights of honor and, as Snorri alludes to in the first paragraph of the saga, they are perfidious. The perfidy which characterizes their dealings is suggested subtly by the use of a simple and neutral verb in describing a reconciliation meeting: Ok var þar allt mælt til sætta, “and reconciliation was pronounced” (p. 198). The verb mæla, “to speak, pronounce,” is after a complete reading of the saga, a felicitous choice for this typical perpetration of guile. The colorless verb denotes their treacherous modus operandi, the fair words which cloak their habitual schemes. Censuring their lawlessness in the detached manner of Icelandic saga writing, Snorri notes: “they did not often keep the laws which King Hákon had set down except those which were to their liking” (ch. 2, p. 204). Snorri ascribes implicitly the misery, sterility, and devastation of the country to their amorality. “The fertility of the land was lost” (ch. 2, p. 203).

Deceit, as Snorri subtly indicated in the first paragraph of the saga, is the hallmark of their political designs and stratagems to enlarge their territory. The motif of deceit becomes pronounced in the third chapter, when Snorri allows Gunnhildr, the queen mother, to assume command of political strategy. Her victim-to-be is the most powerful chieftain of the country, Jarl Sigurðr, formerly Hákon's most trusted friend. The means used to eliminate him are betrayal and the adept manipulation of an inferior man craving self-importance and respect. The enormity of the perfidy is palpable in that Gunnhildr and her sons choose as their instrument Grjótgarðr, Jarl Sigurðr's younger brother. He is less esteemed than the jarl. By promising him his brother's jarldom and by charging that Sigurðr had conspired to make him a little man, they subvert Grjótgarðr's loyalty from his brother to themselves. Grjótgarðr turns informer. On a starlit night, when Jarl Sigurðr visits a farm with a small retinue, Eiríkr's sons, commanding an army, burn down the farm and the men in it. There is no overt censure, only the stark, dispassionate report of the event and the intrigues preceding the act of arson.

Treachery pervades all dealings of the brothers against potential rivals, even against their own kinsmen, whom King Hákon had honored by appointing them district kings. Eiríkr's sons plot a concerted plan to kill Tryggvi and Guðröðr as soon as they suspect them of conspiring against them. The elaborateness and secrecy of the plot against Tryggvi and Guðröðr underscores their perfidiousness. Eiríkr's sons announce that they are going on a Viking expedition, as was their wont. At the point of departure the brothers are so angered during a drinking bout featuring the traditional mannjöfnuðr, “a competitive verbal game comparing the stature of two chieftains,” that they go their separate ways. That their rage may have been simulated is indicated by subsequent events. One brother and his men sail to King Tryggvi to invite him to join on the Viking expedition. When Tryggvi meets them in a small boat he is assaulted and slain. Meanwhile Haraldr Greycloak surprises Guðröðr at a feast during the night and kills him. The fact that Snorri never allows his audience to observe the planning of the two-pronged ambush dramatizes the nefariousness of the plot as do the ambush in the dead of night, the pretense of friendship and camaraderie, and the subsequent rendezvous of the brothers.

Haralds saga gráfeldar does not end with Haraldr's death. The account of his death is reserved for the following saga, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, “Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason,” which also contains a description of the rule of Hákon the Evil who governed Norway after Haraldr's death. In a formal sense, the conclusion of Haralds saga gráfeldar seems arbitrary. Thematically, however, the end of the saga is apposite, for the saga concludes with a summary of the famished, dismal state of the land and of the kings' responsibility for the country's distress (ch. 16, pp. 220-24). By reserving for Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar the report of Haraldr Greycloak's death and by presenting the reign of Hákon the Evil as a prelude to Óláfr's rule, Snorri achieves a structural continuity. This structural unity has a moral basis. Underlying the account is Snorri's fundamental condemnation of the treachery perpetrated by these rulers whose use of perfidy has become so lethal that the instrument of their survival turns into a weapon of self-destruction.

VI ÓLáFS SAGA TRYGGVASONAR, “SAGA OF ÓLáFR TRYGGVASON”

A. THE FALL OF HARALDR GREYCLOAK AND THE RULE OF JARL HáKON THE EVIL

Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar²⁵ opens with an account of treachery and thus continues the theme dominant in Haralds saga gráfeldar. With only brief interludes the theme of treachery pervades major events of the saga: the description of Óláfr's birth and childhood, Jarl Hákon's conspiracies to win Norway and to safeguard his rule from Óláfr, Hákon's death at the hands of a slave, Óláfr's efforts to convert prominent heathens, and Óláfr's death in a sea battle five years after his ascension to the kingship.

The narrative on Óláfr's birth and childhood is traditionally relegated by scholars into a fairy-tale world presented as history. As is common in fairy tales, the hero must fight against overwhelming odds to win the kingdom for which he is destined.²⁶ Indeed, the account may be read as a folktale in which Óláfr escapes the snares of Gunnhildr and slavery in a foreign country to become by serendipity the favorite of the queen at the Russian court. Yet Snorri lent the traditional folktale elements a historic and fateful perspective. Gunnhildr's treachery and cruelty in ordering that the infant Óláfr, son of the slain King Tryggvi, be killed, is replicated in Óláfr's conduct as king. In the persecution of his enemies Óláfr will be as cruel, clever, and relentless as Gunnhildr had been.

In Old Norse sagas the art of relating synchronous events is undeveloped. Synchronous events must be related sequentially, as if they were separated by time. Snorri attenuates this awkwardness. He presents Jarl Hákon's conspiracy to win Norway in the traditional sequential manner, after his report on Óláfr's childhood and youth, but he unifies the two sections by the theme of treachery. Jarl Hákon's conspiracy is a well-planned and deftly executed scheme of treachery in contrast to Gunnhildr's abortive attempts to have Óláfr slain.

In masterminding the conspiracy to regain Norway following his exile, Jarl Hákon displays a professionalism superior to Gunnhildr's. There is, however, the same contempt of human bonds, the exploitation of human motivation, and the compulsion to serve one's self-interests best. Indeed, in a brief statement in the previous saga Snorri had indicated the consanguinity of the two by commenting that: “a great fondness developed between Hákon jarl and Gunnhildr, but sometimes they harmed each other by perfidy” (Haralds saga gráfeldar, ch. 6, p. 211).

The scenario of Hákon's conspiracy recalls Gunnhildr's successful scheme to eliminate Jarl Sigurðr, Hákon's father. Both exploit the trust placed in kinship and both manipulate their victims' craving for self-importance and power. The difference lies in the staging. Hákon's intrigue takes place not in a politically divided Norway, but in the powerful kingdom of Denmark. The men played off against each other are the famous Danish king, Haraldr Gormsson, his energetic and power-hungry nephew, Gold-Haraldr, and Haraldr Greycloak. The confidant of Haraldr Gormsson and Gold-Haraldr is Jarl Hákon. He encourages on the one hand Gold-Haraldr to claim half of his uncle's kingdom and, on the other hand, exhorts the king to resist his nephew's demands. Concomitantly, Hákon allays the king's fear of compromising his royal honor by publicly violating kinship ties.

The pawns in this power game are Gold-Haraldr and Haraldr Greycloak. Haraldr Greycloak is to be the first victim. King Haraldr Gormsson had accepted Hákon's counsel that it was preferable to slay a Norwegian Viking rather than a Danish nephew. Accordingly the Danish king invites Haraldr Greycloak, his foster son, to take over the land and fiefdom he had possessed before he had assumed the Norwegian kingship. In an ambush by Gold-Haraldr, Haraldr Greycloak is killed. For the first time Haraldr Greycloak had encountered a disregard of human bonds which equaled or even surpassed his own.

The nefariousness of Hákon's scheme is underscored in the sequel. Hákon receives the king's permission to kill Gold-Haraldr, in order to regain his jarldom and rule over Norway. Hákon plays on the king's fear of a popular nephew who is to succeed Haraldr Greycloak and exploits the king's desire for greatness. With Hákon reinstated as jarl, King Haraldr would rule over two large kingdoms, surpass his father in power, and would be rid of dangerous rivals.²⁷

According to Norse tradition, Jarl Hákon's reign is highly successful until shortly before his death. Upon his assumption of the rule the fertility of the land is restored, fish return, and the corn grows once again. He defends the realm against invaders. He is loyal to his religion and for a long time to the Danish king. He surmounts the crises which confront him with intelligence, tenacity, and dispatch. He resolves a conflict of loyalty when he breaks his allegiance to the proselytizing Danish king rather than compromise his pagan religion. He rallies his countrymen against the most renowned and feared warrior group, the Jómvikings, and achieves victory in one of the most famous battles in Norwegian history. He forebears to punish his unloved, contumacious, and illegitimate son Eiríkr for slaying his most trusted associate and for accepting from the Danish king the jarlship over several Norwegian districts. The lack of tensions within the land and the country's prosperity testify to the wisdom and correctness of his rule.

The theme of treachery is resumed only at the end of his life when anxiety over maintaining his power and an uncontrollable susceptibility toward women seize him. At a time when he is blind to the limits of his power and violates the wives of chieftains, he fatefully conspires to have Óláfr Tryggvason, now a famed warrior, lured to Norway. This act of treachery is to be his undoing. Óláfr returns as a revolt against Hákon is under way. Óláfr does not have to fight an arduous battle. Jarl Hákon's son Erlendr loses his life, Hákon's sons Eiríkr and Sveinn flee to Sweden, and he himself is killed by a slave. The tale of Jarl Hákon's death demonstrates on a lower social level the pervasive disregard of human bonds in the service of self-interest. The slave's relationship to the jarl had been close. Both had been born in the same night, a circumstance, which caused the length of their lives to be intertwined. Nevertheless the slave killed Hákon partly because of fright but more importantly in the hope of securing gain.

There is a curious mixture of good and evil in Snorri's account of Hákon's rule. His conspiracy to regain his jarldom and his planned ambush of Óláfr Tryggvason constitute ample justification for the pejorative surname he acquired for an altogether different reason, his staunch support of paganism. Nevertheless, prosperity is the hallmark of his rule and this traditionally denotes the quality of government in a political as well as in a spiritual sense. His death is occasioned by two factors, the excesses he indulged in at the end of his rule and the revelation of God's will. The time for Norway's conversion to Christianity had come.

B. THE CRUELTY AND DECEIT OF A MISSIONARY KING

A sense of triumphant success despite Óláfr's innate cruelty and deceitfulness pervades Snorri's account of Óláfr's meteoric rise. His destiny is to be the first missionary king. His luck in escaping from the bonds of slavery, his esteem at the Russian court, and his ability as a Viking chieftain evidence that he is the man to Christianize Norway, an accomplishment which neither the popularity of Hákon the Good nor the cruelty of Eiríkr's sons had attained. A hermit's prophetic but highly ambivalent judgment of Óláfr's impending missionary activity reflects Snorri's own ambivalence toward the missionary king: “you will help yourself with this and many others” (ch. 31, p. 266). The utterance of course may simply mean that the souls of Óláfr and his converts will be saved. Yet the statement also seems to have a moral intent. The comment might mean that God as judge would have to weigh Óláfr's acts of cruelty against his missionary work.²⁸

The themes of cruelty and deceit used toward the enemies of God are introduced even before Óláfr sets foot on Norway and claims the throne. On the journey to Norway, on a brief stopover in the Orkney Islands, which had been colonized by Norwegians, Óláfr in an ambush forces the jarl to convert with his people or face immediate death and the destruction of their land.

An incident during his bid to take over the Trondheim district affirms that the cruelty evident in his threat to the jarl of the Orkneys is inborn. In a reflex action so swift that it must have been dissociated from forethought, Óláfr, on seeing a handsome man fleeing a ship, grabs a tiller and aims it with such force that it shatters the skull of the victim. The man's handsomeness had been his undoing, for Óláfr had mistaken his prey for Hákon.²⁹

The cruelty is perhaps nowhere so blatant as in Óláfr's disposal of Hákon's body. He had Hákon's head carried to an island where thieves and criminals were hanged. He then had the head strung from the gallows, stoned by his army, and reviled with the ignominious and legal designation níðingr, “nithing.”³⁰ In describing the desecration of Jarl Hákon's head, it becomes clear that Óláfr's cruelty is as much an outgrowth of passion as it is an instrument of policy. Cruelty is his most effective weapon in eliminating recalcitrant pagans. During his entire reign the torture killings are merciless. One prominent pagan is bound, his mouth opened, and a snake forced down his throat. In summing up his cruelty, Snorri remarks: “he tormented his enemies, some he burned to death, some he had mad dogs tear apart, some he had lamed or thrown over cliffs” (ch. 85, p. 333).

That God supported Óláfr, though only for a span of five years, is implicit in his success. His acceptance as king is nearly as spontaneous as that of Hákon the Good: “the crowd jumped up and did not want to hear anything but that Óláfr Tryggvason should be their king” (ch. 51, p. 299). His successful attempt to impose his will on the country and to curb at least partially the self-determination of the leading chieftains and their kin is the sole subject of Snorri's political account of Óláfr's reign. He brings the country region by region under a more direct control by persuading or forcing the inhabitants to convert. With political astuteness he concludes strong alliances, with skill he silences or kills leaders of the opposition, and with impunity he destroys idols in the sight of incredulous pagans. He coerces also the sons of prominent Icelandic chieftains to pledge the Christianization of the island in return for their freedom. Indeed, his stature as missionary king is based on a sure grasp of political realities and on a fearless and cruel combativeness undaunted by hardship and magic.

Except for the description of Óláfr's fall, Snorri's Óláfr has little of the glamour attributed to the king in other sagas. He is presented as a man with few personal bonds though in the summary of his personal qualities Snorri states that he is loved by his friends. One traditional and wistful episode highlights the endemic loneliness of those in continuous pursuit of power. One day in early spring Óláfr takes from a peddler an angelica unusually large for the time of the year and gives it to his wife. Contemptuously she slaps his hand, upbraids him for a trifling gift when he should have forced her previous husband to return her possessions. The incident illuminates two facets of life which mar the existence of the mighty. There is no place for gestures of love, for none is expected, a fact which recalls the lack of warmth particularly apparent at critical moments in Snorri's life. There is only time for expanding power to the exclusion of warmth and mercy.

The deprecatory gesture of a woman in misery symbolizes both the immaturity of her taunt and Óláfr's foolishness in acting upon it. Her words, reminding Óláfr of the might of her father, the Danish king, and reproving Óláfr's alleged pusillanimity toward her brother Sveinn, reflect not only her lack of love for Óláfr but also her disregard for basic human values. A hero had to disprove a taunt even at the cost of his life and her challenge ultimately leads to Óláfr's death in an ambush. Óláfr swears to reclaim her possessions and to force King Sveinn to yield in combat. The fateful foolishness of the oath is apparent. This will be the sole expedition in which Óláfr summons the fleet for purely secular and frivolous reasons: the acquisition of territory without the spiritual backing of a religious cause.

Óláfr's embrace of a secular, egotistical cause coincides with the rising momentum of an organized opposition toward him. Snorri relates that many flee to Óláfr's enemy, Jarl Hákon's son Eiríkr, an accomplished warrior, who is the friend of the King of Sweden and the brother-in-law of the Danish king. Óláfr's mortal enemy, the spurned Queen Sigríðr of Sweden, marries the Danish king. Slowly a mighty and determined coalition is formed.

In scenes which would normally depict the might and splendor of a great king, there is instead a mounting sense of foreboding. The brief description of Óláfr's character prior to the angelica episode is reminiscent of an obituary notice. His mustering of an overseas fleet commanded by select warriors from the entire realm has a resplendent but ominous ring. The warm reception of Óláfr and his fleet by the Wendish king and his acquiescence to Óláfr's property claims only heighten the feeling of awe and imminent danger. The feeling engendered is that the stature and personality of a man can be appraised best before his fall.

As is typical of saga literature, the warning signs of approaching adversity are visible except to the man marked by death. In Óláfr's case the blindness toward the ambush into which he is to be led is signaled by his close friendship with Jarl Sigvaldi, leader of the Jómvikings and notorious for committing acts of treachery upon oblivious victims. Snorri declares expressly that Jarl Sigvaldi is sent to Óláfr by the Danish king. The impending danger is also adumbrated by the eagerness of many of Óláfr's men to sail home. A sense of doom and dissolution attaches itself to Óláfr's diminished fleet, as yet still powerful and resplendent.

Significantly Óláfr's death results from methods he had so successfully employed in his missionary efforts. He and his select group of warriors sail into a trap set with intelligence and secrecy. Yet ironically his heroic stand in the battle and the valor of his men redeem Óláfr as a man. What is remembered are not his wanton cruelty and wily stratagems, but the glory of a doomed and outnumbered warrior fighting his utmost against the superior force of two kings and a battle-proven jarl. Also remembered is the cowardliness of Jarl Sigvaldi who, after the call of victory, rows energetically to the battle.

Notes

1. For references, see Finnur Jónsson's edition, Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. For an introduction and bibliography, see Anne Holtsmark, “Edda, den yngre,” Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder (København, 1958), III, 475-480. The title Edda might refer to the farm Oddi or to the Old Norse word for poetry, ‘óðr.’

2. A kenning is a poetic circumlocution consisting of at least two nouns; e.g., Þórr is called the son of Óðinn.

3. Most studies treat the mythological and religious content of the work, the authenticity of the mythological matter, the intrusion of Christian thought into pagan myths, and the problem of the prologue, in which the Æsir are Trojans from Asia who assume divinity by virtue of fraud. Anne Holtsmark, Studier i Snorres mytologi, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, Skrifter, II. hist-filos. klasse, ny serie Nr. 4 (Oslo, 1964) shows that Snorri was conversant with ecclesiastical idiom and that his style reveals a thorough scholastic training. Siegfried Beyschlag, “Die Betörung Gylfis,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 85 (1954), pp. 163-81, is primarily concerned with the beguiling of Gylfi's mind. See also Hans Kuhn, “Das nordgermanische Heidentum in den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 79 (1942-43), pp. 133-66; Anker Teilgård Laugesen, “Snorres opfattelse af Aserne,” “Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 57 (1942), pp. 301-15. For the viewpoint that Snorri's mythological material is inauthentic, see Eugen Mogk, Zur Bewertung der Snorra-Edda als religionsgeschichtliche und mythologische Quelle des nordgermanischen Heidentums (Leipzig, 1932) and Walter Baetke, Die Götterlehre der Snorra-Edda (Berlin, 1952), issued respectively as Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil.-hist. Klasse, Nrs. 84 and 97.

4. The translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

5. Transl. Jean I. Young, The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, Tales from Norse Mythology, p. 52.

6. See Sigurður Nordal's interpretation of “Völuspá,” in “Three Essays on Völuspá,” Viking Society for Northern Research, Saga Book, 18 (1970-73), pp. 79-135.

7. Heiti is a poetic substitute.

8. See Andreas Heusler, Die gelehrte Urgeschichte im altisländischen Schrifttum, Abhandlungen der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin, Hist.-phil. Kl. (Berlin, 1908). Kees W. Bolle, “In Defense of Euhemerus,” Myth and Law among the Indo-Europeans, ed. Jaan Puhwel (Berkeley, 1970), pp. 29-30, points out that Snorri's thinking is deeply mythical. When Snorri localizes Troy in Turkey near the center of the earth, he could not have phrased it “more mythologically,” since the gods always live near the center of the earth.

9. See Konstantin Reichardt, “Die Thórsdrápa des Eilífr Goðrúnarson: Textinterpretation,” PMLA, 63 (1948), pp. 329-91.

10. “Háttalykill” (ca. 1145), ed. Jón Helgason, Anne Holtsmark, Háttalykill enn forni, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana Nr. 1.

11. Gustav Storm, ed., Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, pp. 69-124.

12. Hákonarssaga Hákonarson, ch. 285, p. 624.

13. Snorri's Óláfs saga helga exists also as a separate work and is referred to as such. It also exists in interpolated versions. See Sigurður Nordal, Om Olaf den helliges saga, en kritisk undersøgelse (København, 1914).

14. See Siegfried Beyschlag, “Möglichkeiten mündlicher Überlieferung in der Königssaga,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 68 (1953), pp. 109-39.

15. The only version of the saga that Snorri surely knew was written ca. 1220 by Styrmir the Wise. Styrmir's work is lost except for fragments in Flateyjarbók and other reworkings of Snorri's “Saga of Óláfr the Saint.” It is doubtful or unknown whether he knew other versions.

16. For a discussion on the prehistoric Yngling kings, see Marlene Ciklamini, “Ynglinga saga: Its Function and Its Appeal,” Mediaeval Scandinavia, 8 (1975), pp. 86-99.

17. Heimskringla I, pp. 94-149. The dating of Haraldr's life is controversial as is the dating of the lives of his immediate successors. For a thorough discussion of chronological problems, see Ólafía Einarsdóttir, Studier i kronologisk metode i tidlig islandsk historieskrivning (Lund, 1964).

18. Ed. P. A. Munch, pp. 3-13. For Fagrskinna's dating, see Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Om de norske kongers sagaer, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, Skrifter II, hist.-filos. kl. (Oslo, 1936), p. 176.

19. In Heimskringla Haraldr never sought to extend his dominion beyond the confines of Norway. He only sought to defend his land from within and without against ravaging Vikings.

20. Allodium is old inherited land to which the king had no legal right. The allodium question revolves around the type of tax imposed. The tax is thought of as a realty or a head tax.

21. The emigrants are Haraldr's unrelenting enemies. Also the colonization of Iceland and of the Faroe Islands is related to the wars waged during the unification.

22. Ch. 43, p. 149. Fagrskinna [ed. by P. A. Munch and C. R. Unger,1847], p. 14.

23. This is a proverbial saying. Hákon's role as a lawgiver and his respect for law contribute to his greatness.

24. Heimskringla I, pp. 198-224 (ruled from 961-970).

25. Heimskringla I, pp. 225-372.

26. Toralf Berntsen, “Sagaringen om Olav Trygvason,” Edda, 22 (1924), p. 227. See also Motifs H311, T55, in Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folkliterature (Bloomington, Indiana, 1956, 1957), III, p. 398, V, p. 340; Inger M. Boberg, Motif-Index of Early Icelandic Literature, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana Nr. 27 (Copenhagen, 1966), pp. 151, 243.

27. Gwyn Jones, “The Historian and the Jarl,” History Today, 19 (1969), p. 235. Lars Lönnroth, “Studier i Olaf Tryggvasons saga,” Samlaren, 84 (1963), pp. 54-94, treats the fictional character of the entire tradition; Gwyn Jones, The Legendary History of Olaf Tryggvason (Glasgow, 1968).

28. The episode is modeled on a dialogue of Pope Gregory, in which Saint Benedict and the Gothic King Totila are the actors. For the dialogue in Old Norse, see Þorvaldur Bjarnarson, ed., Leifar fornra kristinna frœða íslenzkra, pp. 147-48.

29. See also a doublet to the story, ch. 78, p. 325.

30. The term of abuse connoted an emotive abrogation of Jarl Hákon's legal standing and loss of personal honor. Óláfr ruled from 995-1000.