SOURCE: Gurevich, A. Ya. “Saga and History: The ‘Historical Conception’ of Snorri Sturluson.” Mediaeval Scandinavia 4 (1971): 42-53.

[In the following essay, Gurevich explores various texts by Snorri to illustrate that the Scandinavians of his time did not interpret history theologically and that their concept of it is implicit in their sagas.]

Discussion of the “general meaning”, or “tendency”, in Snorri's historical construction can be hardly considered finished. Divergencies in the appraisal of his views by H. Koht,¹ Fr. Paasche,² J. Schreiner,³ H. Lie,⁴ G. Sandvik,⁵ and S. Beyschlag⁶ testify to the great difficulties this problem has caused. In my opinion, it would be wrong to see in the Heimskringla only an expression of its author's ideas. Sagas, and kings' sagas in particular, belong to a genre which stands halfway between folklore and literature. The author of a saga did not realize himself as such, and considered his function to be that of “putting together”, “writing down”, but he never regarded himself as a sovereign creator. Accordingly, the contents and structure of a saga cannot be determined by the author's personal attitudes and ideas. That is why it would not be reasonable to search for any complete and systematic “historical theory” in a saga. It is possible to speak only of some general notions, most likely not developed with complete logic and by no means given explicit and direct form by the author. To a predominant extent, such notions belonged to a psychological rather than to an ideological level of social consciousness, and represented the basic fund of ideas that prevailed in the contemporary world. The ideas of Scandinavian society of the period were permeated by mythological and religious concepts. “Historical theory” in such a society is first and foremost a myth. Rationalization of social life and comprehension of developed philosophical categories that were characteristic of feudal Europe were out of the question in thirteenth-century Scandinavia.

To find the “general tenor” concealed in the Heimskringla means to evaluate it as a historical source, and in particular as a monument formed under the impress of a developing historical outlook in a society which thought mainly in categories of myth.

What determines men's actions? Sagas give a definite answer to this question. People's actions and even their lives are determined by fate. Fate is a general determinism, non-differentiated to such an extent that it was thought to govern both social life and nature. The idea of fate represents an acknowledgement of human bondage in the world and of man's dependence on external conditions of existence, conditions which he must accept.

But the notion of fate is imprecise and attitudes to it can be interpreted in different ways. It is either an impersonal force, blind fatality playing the rôle of the highest necessity reigning over the world, or else it is the personal lot of everyone, in which case it is immanent in the individual and represents his destiny.

According to sagas, people in early Scandinavia were more likely to possess yet another notion, of luck and fortune. The terms employed in this connection, such as hamingja, gæfa, heill, auðna, have a more-or-less clearly expressed personal character. In this respect hamingja is the most significative term. It is personal luck, good fortune, and the guardian spirit of a person as well. It leaves the man after his death and is inherited by his offspring or close relative; or it dies together with him.

Luck becomes apparent through a man's actions. Accordingly, positive and deliberate behaviour is imperative for him. Indecision and unnecessary reflection were considered symptoms of lack of luck and were accordingly condemned. Besides, what seems to have been very important for the Norseman's estimation of the categories of “luck” and “success” is that these qualities were not the inalienable and constant possessions of a man—and consequently he could not safely neglect to test and confirm them by his actions. The actions of an individual and their outcome depended on his luck; but that luck is only made manifest by constant exertion of his moral and physical powers. In this respect Norse notions of fate were far from fatalism; there is no sign of passive resignation and submission to a powerful force. On the contrary, a man's conscious awareness of his destiny, revealed by prophecy, divination or dream, stirred him to put forth his best, to do his duty honourably; he was not moved to fear even the prospect of doom, he would not try to avoid it, but face it daringly and proudly.

The Norsemen's ideas of fate and luck reflect their attitude towards human personality and, therefore, their consciousness. Feeling the necessity of his actions, the man sees in them at the same time a manifestation of some power which is connected with him but is not identical with his own personality. This power is often personified in female form, as fylgja, hamingja, embodying a man's luck. The notion that the cause of one's own actions, thought and speech, is not the human personality itself, or not exclusively so, was inherent in the very form of consciousness characteristic of people of ancient Scandinavia. A man's fate exists, it affects him, but it is not created by him at will.

Yet it may seem that the notion of chance, of events as undetermined and unforeseen, was alien to the consciousness of the ancient Scandinavians. If something “happens” to a man, it does not happen by chance. Chance as something unexpected, as a surprise, falling out of the universal connection of phenomena, is an idea which emerges in the mentality which can discern various causal chains and by distinguishing freedom from necessity give freedom independent meaning. To take root in the social mind the latter had to cease to be wholly conformist and to embrace both the typical and the individual.

In the kings' sagas luck and success are first of all qualities intrinsic in the king. The nobler the man, the greater his luck with his friends and followers, the easier he wins battles and gains wealth. The king's luck is reputed to be the cause of rich harvests and the country's prosperity. Luck and felicity are properties of a single man, but it is possible to share them by coming into contact with him in some way, by serving him or receiving gifts from him, because luck is embodied in all that belongs to the lucky chief.⁷ The followers of the king who looked for gifts from him were driven by a more complex wish than simple cupidity: they strove to share his luck, his mana.⁸ It was accessible not only through things but also directly, by means of the king's favourable wish or some kind of blessing.

There is in the Heimskringla mention of fate and luck as something unstable and accidental. But a far more characteristic idea in kings' sagas is of fortune as a quality immanent in the king. The inability of the yeomen to withstand the king is a recurrent motif in sagas. The bønder are able to oppose him as long as they have their leader, but after the leader perishes their host is dispersed, even though they are much more numerous in comparison with the king's bodyguard. The cause of demoralization in the yeomen is not their inherent disorganisation but their belief in the king's luck which they cannot compete with. Consequently, the idea of the king's luck was a factor which influenced both the course of events and the decisions taken.

When on arrival in Norway Óláf Haraldsson asked the kings of Uppland to help him in his struggle for the liberation of Norway from foreign dominance, one of these petty kings said: “As to this man Óláf, I surmise that his fate and his good luck will decide (auðna hans ok hamingja myni ráða) whether or not he will obtain power here in Norway” (Ól. helga [Olof's saga helga], ch. 36). Afterwards, worried by the policy of Óláf and the strengthening of his power, these same kings deliberate on the possibility of resisting him. One of them advises “not to risk pitting our luck against that of Óláf Haraldsson” (at etja hamingju) (Ól. helga, ch. 74). The good fortune of Óláf Haraldsson was so great and so long patent for all to see that he had his countrymen's full support and they believed in his capacity to convey part of his own luck to other men. One of his followers, faced with the prospect of a rather risky mission to Sweden, said: “But the king's good luck (gæfa) may do wonders”, and asked Óláf to give him the good fortune he needed for this mission (ok þurfum vér nú þess mjok, konungr, at þú leggir hamingju þína á þessa ferð). The king answered that he would confer his own hamingja on him and all his companions (Ól. helga, chs. 68, 69).

When Magnús Erlingsson was chosen king his supporters voted his father Erling Skakki as his adviser because of his qualities. “Nor will he fail in this business if only luck (hamingja) is on his side” (Magn. Erl. [Saga of Magnús Erlingesson], ch. 1). However, good fortune could abandon the king. Harald Sigurðarson was the luckiest king for almost all his life. Nevertheless, his luck failed him when he invaded England. His horse fell under him as he rode at the head of his army at Stamford Bridge. He rose quickly and said: “A fall betokens luck on the journey”. But the English king, Harold, seeing his fall, passed a contrary and far more reasonable judgement: “A big man and stately; but more likely his good luck has deserted him” (farinn sé at hamingja) (Har. Sig., [Heralds saga Sigur Þarsinar] ch. 90).

Despite Christian influence Scandinavian notions of fate were not essentially altered. The belief in fate ruling both the world in its entirety and the life of every man was too deep-rooted in social consciousness to give place easily to new ideas. A temperate approach to matters of faith, free of exultation and rhetoric, prevails in Heimskringla, distinguishing it from medieval histories of Western Europe. If we leave aside stories about Christian miracles and references to God Almighty who gives victories to kings, Providence, according to Snorri, is not in the least the foundation of the march of history. From his point of view, the forces guiding human actions are not so much in the right hand of God, to whom he appeals from time to time (mostly through his personages), but are focused in men themselves. The idea of destiny in the kings' sagas has little in common with the theory of world-governance by the Creator's supreme will. There are men mentioned in Heimskringla who had no belief in gods but only trusted “in their own might and main” (á mátt sinn ok megin). This outlook was very significant from the standpoint of Scandinavian ethics in that epoch.⁹ One of these “atheists” asserted that such a belief was quite sufficient for him. “But now I mean rather to believe in you, sire,” said he, addressing Óláf Haraldsson, on whose side he wished to fight at Stiklastaðir (Ól. helga, ch. 215). Belief in himself and his own vigour was somehow linked with trust in the might of another man who was thought to have peculiar qualities and abilities. It seems that Snorri had no doubt about this belief. Here we again see a tendency to accentuate the activity of a man under the influence of his own inner stimuli, following his personal destiny and not trying to justify his behaviour by referring it to some transcendent power.

In the Heimskringla the notion of fate is connected with Snorri's general ideas of history and its driving forces. The destiny of an individual king is his own personal destiny, but it is easy to see that the texture of history, as Snorri understands it, is formed by the intertwining and conflicting destinies of kings. In order to understand the “historical conception” of the kings' sagas it is necessary to bear in mind that the fate of an individual is not exclusively his own destiny inherent in him only. At the same time it concludes the destiny of his kin. The Norwegian kings, while doubtlessly having individual peculiarities, were nevertheless first of all representatives of the royal race. The subject of each saga in the Heimskringla is the life of one of the Norwegian kings, while all the kings' sagas together form an accomplished and well-proportioned whole—the saga of the royal dynasty of Norway, where each saga is a link in the whole chain of the Heimskringla.

Historical science today uses the notions of “Antiquity”, “Middle Ages”, “Modern”, but also in the past a distinction was made between old and new times. This distinction is reflected in the classification of sagas as sagas about contemporaries, i. e. about people of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sagas about Icelanders of the period from the late ninth century to about 1100, and sagas of ancient times (Fornaldarsögur). ornaldarsögur tell of the legendary epoch and the way they represent it differs essentially from the way in which writers represented the chronologically nearer and better known periods.

Heimskringla comprises both epochs, and the sagas of the Norwegian kings are preceded by Ynglinga saga, concerning the oldest rulers of Sweden and Norway. Myths and historical reality are interwoven in this saga based upon Thjódólf's Ynglingatal, and it is only with great difficulty that historical facts can be disentangled. Distinction between legend, myth, epic on the one hand, and actual history and its facts on the other, which is so important for modern historians, was far from axiomatic for the medieval mind. Following Thjódólf, Ari, and some other authors, Snorri rationalized myth by turning heathen gods into ancient kings (Ari called Yngvi king of the Turks and Njörð king of the Svear). By means of this euhemerism he gave order to the legendary matter, temporal sequence and the shape of history.

Other kings' sagas do not touch upon the legendary epoch of the Ynglingar. They give accounts of Norwegian history beginning with Hálfdan the Black or his son Harald Fairhair. The Latin Historia Norwegiae is the only exception: it calls Yngvi the first king of Norway. We should then ask why Snorri did not consider it possible to begin his survey of the Norwegian kings with Harald Fairhair or his immediate predecessors, leaving aside the remoter, cloudy past. Or in other words: What is the function of Ynglinga saga in the whole structure of Heimskringla?

According to Snorri, the kings of Norway were connected with the old rulers of Sweden by kinship. The Swedish kings in their turn descended from Óðin or from Yngvi-Freyr. Óðin was regarded as the supreme god in the Scandinavian myths, the head of the divine Æsir, but Ynglinga saga depicts him as the ruler of Ásgarð in the realm of the Æsir somewhere in Eastern Europe. Under this powerful chief the North was colonized and its whole population came under Óðin's lordship. The people paid tribute to him and he defended the country and made sacrifices in order to have peace and good harvests. Snorri depicts Óðin as a culture hero. He taught the people every art and craft. According to Snorri, people in olden days worshipped Óðin and his progeny and believed that Óðin's death meant his departure to the old Ásgarð, the place of his perpetual abode.

In relating the legends of the Ynglingar, Snorri took no responsibility for their authenticity. He hardly seems to believe in the divine nature of the Æsir and their royal offspring. However, the transformation of Óðin and the Æsir into legendary kings does not mean that Snorri considered them to be ordinary men. God and man coalesced in the culture hero. He is progenitor, tutor and benefactor of the people, he reveals to them mysteries of nature and teaches them useful practices. Therefore his wisdom and power immeasurably exceed ordinary men's abilities. The culture hero stands at the beginning of social life. He exists in his own specific time, which is distinguished from the transient time of human life. Being the personage of the myth, he is in a certain sense eternal.

In countries intensively Christianized the heathen gods, if they were not rejected completely, were degraded into evil spirits and devils or some might even be transformed into saints. In Scandinavia the new religion took a long time to overcome traditional beliefs. Eddaic and skaldic poetry flourished on their basis, especially on the heathen mythological system. Old beliefs, however, retained for their aesthetic significance, were doubtless at the same time still quite viable as beliefs. In the North there existed a peculiar situation which may be characterised as a period of “dual religion”. In fact, while prohibiting and persecuting heathen worship, the Church tolerated the heathen mythology which found a lively response in people's minds.

Thus Óðin and other Æsir were no longer gods for the author of the Heimskringla because there existed only one true and almighty God, that is “White Christ”. As a matter of fact, it seems that the distinction between the hypostases of the Holy Trinity was hardly comprehensible to the newly-converted. To the highwayman Arnljót Gellini, who believed only “in his own might and main” but wanted to believe in the king also, Óláf Haraldsson explained Christian dogma and told him: “If you want to believe in me, then you must believe what I shall teach you. This you are to believe, that Jesus Christ created heaven and earth and all human beings; and that after death all shall go to him who are good and have the right faith” (Ól. helga, ch. 215).¹⁰

At the same time the Æsir were not adopted and transformed by Christianity neither into saints nor devils. Óðin, being a culture hero in the Ynglinga saga, plays no part elsewhere in Heimskringla except in one significant instance in the Saga of Óláf Tryggvason. In the guise of a one-eyed old man with a hood pulled over his face he came once to King Óláf's feast and late at night entertained him with stories of different countries and olden times and kings (Ól. Tr., ch. 64). Óðin is delineated in this episode with manifest sympathy, he is a sage and an excellent story-teller, amusing the Christian king. Only the bishop feels a dislike for him and tries twice to interrupt his conversation with Óláf, but neither the king nor Snorri feels any resentment towards him. The heathen wisdom is not reputed impious or fallacious. Only the heathen sacrifices (the meat which the old man gave to the king's cook) are rejected.

From Snorri's point of view Óðin is hardly a god, and people having the true faith do not worship him, but it is more interesting to talk with him than with a clergyman. Here Óðin is a being of supernatural abilities and wisdom but powerless before the Christian God and his symbols.

The history of the Æsir and Ynglingar is depicted in the Ynglinga saga in an unbiassed and calm way—just like the whole of the Heimskringla—and in this sense is remote from the intolerance of the Latin medieval Christian literature inimical to paganism. Unlike Saxo who wrote of the heathen gods with contempt and indignation, Snorri did not mock or censure the religion of ancient Scandinavia. Both in Ynglinga saga and the subsequent sagas he spoke of heathen witchcraft and magic as if he believed them to be real. Snorri spoke both of heathendom and of its Christian adversaries sine ira et studio.

The interpretation of Óðin in the Heimskringla gives the impression that Snorri both believes and does not believe in him. At present Christ is ruling the universe, but in the remote legendary past the Scandinavian peoples lived under the rule of the Æsir. Probably Snorri plays with the myth, knowing its high aesthetic value, but if so, he is playing with it in a very serious way. In Ynglinga saga there is a certain distance between the story and the story-teller. The latter hints that the story told by him is not always to be taken in earnest, but he would not guarantee that everything he says was not a fact either. At the stage when it is interpreted by Snorri the myth is moving from the sphere of the “serious”—where it had been in the heathen epoch when it was believed in absolutely. Now it falls within the sphere of artistic fiction, though this process of displacement was as yet far from complete. The myth was still in part a mode of perceiving reality through history.

Consequently the pedigree of the Norse kings which Snorri expounds in Ynglinga saga does not seem to him fictitious. Ynglingatal on which Snorri based this saga was, according to him, as trustworthy a source as other poems of the skalds which he praised so much and quoted not only in order to embellish his narrative but also to corroborate it. At any rate, the idea that the historical Swedish and Norwegian kings were descended from Ynglingar was in Snorri's mind a very serious and ideologically meaningful conception.

Snorri cites Óðin's prophecy that his progeny would inhabit the Northern part of the world (Yngl.,[Ynglinga saga] ch. 5). The descendants of Óðin ruled the population as he had done and gradually colonized waste woodland. Thus there arose the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway under the rule of the Ynglingar.

Snorri relates that under one of the descendants of Yngvi, King Vísbur, a quarrel began among the Ynglingar kin. Vísbur forsook his wife with two sons and took another woman. When his sons grew up, they demanded that their father should return the gold necklace which he had presented to their mother as a morning-gift. When he refused, the brothers threatened that this necklace would cause the death of the “best man in his line”. Plotting parricide they asked for the help of Huld the sorceress (völva) who forewarned them that she could conjure the ruin of Vísbur but that henceforth slaughter of kinsmen would always run in the race of Ynglingar. The brothers agreed to that. They fell upon their father unawares at night and burned him in his hall (Yngl., ch. 14). This was the origin of the enmity in the Yngling clan, which in fact continued through the whole history of the Norwegian kings related in Heimskringla. Without lingering on the legendary part of the history in Ynglinga saga, we can allow that already in the time of the sons of Harald Fairhair this enmity—amounting to fratricide—played a large part in Snorri's narrative. King Eirík Blood-axe killed some of his brothers (Har. hárf. [Saga of Haraldr harfagi], chs. 34, 35, 43), but he was exiled from Norway by Hákon the Good, the youngest son of Harald. Then the sons of Eirík invaded Norway, and having finally caused the death of their uncle Hákon, took the crown. The struggle continued later on almost without interruption, so that to expound it would mean rehearsing the whole history of Norway, down to Sverrir. Suffice it to say that Snorri sees the unity of the history of Norway as determined by the two factors mentioned above: first, by the foundation of the dynasty of the Ynglingar by Yngvi whose descendants ruled the country (the historical and mythological motivation of their rights); second, by the dissension which split the Ynglingar from the very start—it was a clan doomed to internal strife. The second factor explains the events of the history of Norway from the ninth to the twelfth century and, at the same time, gives the narration of this history an intensely dramatic effect. The Norwegian royal clan shared the burden of the malediction of the völva, Huld. The events of the clan's history are manifestations of inexorable fate.

The circumstances which, according to Snorri, accompanied the curse of Huld show that he really attached special importance to it. Heimskringla repeatedly depicts murders, and particularly assassinations of kinsmen. But as a rule they are conveyed with reserve and with judicious attachment to facts in the typical manner of sagas. The sagas give only an outline of events. Snorri did not confine himself to the information given by Thjódólf about the death of Vísbur but introduced a new motif, the tale of Huld's sorcery and her curse, which adds to it extraordinary significance and particular historical importance. In this way the parricide is raised up to become the source of the tragedy which determined the whole subsequent history of the Ynglingar.

At this point we may advance a hypothesis. As is well known, the idea of the rise of evil and the struggle between evil and good is at the centre of Voluspá. Fratricidal strife, pregnant with the ruin of mankind and the gods, is an important manifestation of the evil abroad in the world. The völva prophesies bloody struggle between brothers and near kinsmen till the end of the world (Voluspá, 45).

The close similarity of the prophecies of the völva in the lay of the Edda and of Huld in Ynglinga saga is undoubted. It is possible to conjecture that Snorri was influenced by the eddaic prophecy of the völva when he tried to explain the origin of enmity and homicide among the Ynglingar. There is no mention of the curse of Huld in the passages from Ynglingatal quoted in the kings' sagas, and it is possible to suppose that it is a later invention inspired by Voluspá. Who the originator of this motif was, Snorri or one of his predecessors, is in the long run of no special importance. That the influence of the eddaic prophecy was perfectly possible may be explained by the great popularity of the cosmological and eschatological ideas of Voluspá. It is known that Snorri made much use of this poem in his Prose Edda. If this supposition is justifiable, the whole history of the Norwegian kings ascending to the Ynglingar assumes an even more dramatic aspect. It proves to be an integral part of the historical drama of the world which is doomed to end in a cosmic catastrophe. From the viewpoint of the thirteenth-century readers of Heimskringla, versed in eddaic poetry, the history of the Norwegian kings had developed against the background of a great tragic myth. Even if Snorri and his contemporaries no longer fully believed the heathen legends and prophecies, they had by no means lost interest in them and in a way linked them with the Christian faith.

Óðin's prophecy that his descendants would rule in the North and the curse of the völva formed the mythological background of the real history of Norway. But did it have any sense beyond these sacred premises?

The author of a saga did not as a rule attempt direct general reasoning. The meaning of the historical process was revealed in sagas not by philosophizing but by demonstration of human deeds and historical events. In this respect the kings' sagas and the minds imprinted on them differed radically from West European historiography of the same period, with its Christian interpretation of history which thrust proper historical narration into the background. Of the two levels on which history was developed in West European chronicles the principal and determinant one was not that concerned with human history but the transcendent one concerned with the history of the “City of God”. The authors and the readers (or auditors) of the kings' sagas, on the contrary, were interested first and foremost in the history of human relations which had, from their standpoint, an independent value. The mythological motifs gave the narrative integrity and deepened its meaning without subduing it and without making the human actions a mere illustration of philosophical and theological theses.

Like his Scandinavian contemporaries, Snorri comprehended history through the concepts of fate and luck fundamental to their mentality. H. Lie points out that in his description of the Norwegian kings Snorri makes wide use of antithesis.¹¹ A military chief and a peaceable king alternate with each other, a mild prince alternates with an oppressor, and a heathen ruler with a Christian in the kin of the Norwegian sovereigns. These contrasts give additional interest to the narration and make it rhythmic. Moreover, one can see that in comparison with the kings of the twelfth century the old kings appear more significant and imposing. Indeed, the last kings presented by Snorri are overshadowed by the personalities of their regents, such as Gregorius Dagsson and Erling Skakki. The characters of the kings given by Snorri contain many well-differentiated psychological traits and are soundly observed. Nevertheless, on the whole, they are constructed on the same model, and almost all the kings prove to be worthy rulers who possess the qualities required and expected of a king—courage, vigour, skill, generosity and so on. Later on, the kings also acquired some typical Christian virtues which did not, however, obtain a self-sufficient significance. To understand the “historical conception” of the kings' sagas it is important to deduce one factor from all these characters, namely, that a king must take care of the prosperity and welfare of his country. This is his main function. In the pagan period this function was fulfilled by sacrifices and feasts, in Christian times by piety and justice. In both cases the king was mediator between the supreme power and his subjects.

Snorri had at his disposal other means for a wider retrospective survey of whole periods of history in the speeches of the dramatis personae of his sagas. These speeches are most important for a study of the cast of mind predominant in Heimskringla. It has been established by H. Lie that in these speeches the craftsmanship of Snorri, as an entirely independent and creative author of historical narrative, is revealed to the fullest extent.

One of the conclusions drawn from an analysis of the speeches contributed by Snorri is that a normal state of affairs is possible when there exists a balance of power between the king and his subjects, especially the nobility. If the king breaks this equilibrium by increasing taxes, breaking law or neglecting custom, he risks his power and life. If that happens, the balance cannot be re-established at once for the nobles and the mighty yeomen who lead the rebellion are compelled to ask foreign rulers—Danes—for support and to invite them into the country. Meanwhile, the Danish kings treat the inhabitants of Norway even worse than their own oppressors did. “Those times had been the worst in the land when the Danes had power over Norway” (Magn. Erl., ch. 23). As a result the people give their support to the new pretender from the Norwegian royal line and the latter, once established, begins to abuse his power again. History repeats itself in this way and it is only in the short periods when the Norwegian kings are conscious of the need to observe old customs and acknowledge the people's rights that the country prospers and enjoys peace. Such were the reign of Hákon the Good, the first part of the reigns of Óláf Tryggvason and Óláf the Saint, and the period following Magnús the Good's consent to listen to Sighvat Thórðarson's advice in his Bersoglisvísur that he should not oppress the bønder.

Thus, there is in the Heimskringla a certain picture of an oscillation of royal power. The king grows strong by diminishing the rights of the people, and then follows the inevitable dethronement of the despot and subjugation of the country by a foreign ruler. After that there is a new liberation by a legitimate king but, when his power is consolidated, he in his turn begins to oppress the yeomen and provokes discontent and rebellion. Forerunners are revived in the new kings, and the whole history recurs. It is not difficult to see in this picture the cyclical perception of human history which was intrinsic to the outlook of the ancient Scandinavians.¹² At a certain point this scheme of periodic pulsation alien to unilinear development becomes complicated by the conversion to Christianity which partly modifies it but cannot wholly reorganize it.

It is hardly necessary to reiterate that Snorri's idea of a balance of power or harmony of interests between king and nobles (representing the people) is connected with his view on relations between Iceland and the Norwegian crown.¹³

Snorri sees in the traditional form of the saga the best and only possible form for rendering the history of the Norwegian kings. But this literary form excludes any direct expression of the author's own attitude to historical events. The ideas concerning the historical process and its essence are comprised in the very matter of the kings' sagas, in the choice of topics and in the manner of presentation—they are merely implicit. Icelandic historiography of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was not concerned with the dichotomy of secular and sacred history. The history depicted in the Icelandic sagas develops entirely on the earth and is made by active men pursuing their own human interests and goals. The idea of fate which so much occupied the minds of the Scandinavians of that epoch did not presuppose the dualism of time and eternity which lies at the very heart of Christian historical thought. Fate is the inner stimulus of human behaviour. As was said above, fate is not raised above and beyond men, but is implicit in them, in their actions and in purely human collisions. Fate is the synonym of luck, of personal success obtained by a man as a result of a maximum exertion of all his mental and physical powers. In contradistinction to a Christian inclined to appeal to God's will at crucial moments, a Norseman could reveal the meaning of his destiny only through his own deeds.

Differing from Christian chronicles and histories by their peculiar realism, sobriety, mundane character and almost complete neglect of heavenly power and divine devices, the Icelandic sagas could not, however, compete with West European historiography of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in philosophic speculation. They did not, and in fact could not, raise consciously the problem of the meaning of human history. The theological interpretation of history was an inevitable stage in the rational comprehension of a historical process, a stage which could be overcome only after transition to modern times and even then only in part. As we may see, the kings' sagas were very far from such a philosophy of history. It is possible, indeed necessary, to see in them a certain attitude to the course of human affairs, but we must remember that this attitude was not expressed in a conscious, worked-out system of ideas and values. The “historical conception” is latent in the sagas, it is not explicitly formulated but follows from the narrative itself.

Notes

1. H. Koht, Innhogg og utsyn i norsk historie (1921).

2. Fr. Paasche, “Tendens og syn i kongesagaen”, Edda, XVII (1922).

3. J. Schreiner, Tradisjon og saga om Olav den hellige (Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo. II. Hist.-filos. Kl., 1926).

4. H. Lie, Studier i Heimskringlas stil, Dialogene og talene (Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, II. Hist.-filos. Kl., 1936).

5. G. Sandvik, Hovding og konge i Heimskringla (1955).

6. S. Beyschlag, “Snorris Bild des 12. Jahrhunderts in Norwegen,” Festschrift Walter Baetke (1966).

7. V. Grönbech, The Culture of the Teutons, II (1931), 6 f., 16 f., 54.

8. A. Gurevich, “Wealth and gift-bestowal among the ancient Scandinavians”, Scandinavica, 7 (1968), 128 ff.

9. See E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North (1964), 263 ff.

10. Of Christ as creator of the universe see also the Legendary Saga of Óláf the Saint, ch. 33.

11. H. Lie, Studier i Heimskringlas stil. Dialogene og talene, 102 ff., 119 ff.

12. A. Ya. Gurevich, “Space and Time in the Weltmodell of the Old Scandinavian Peoples,” Mediaeval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 48 ff.

13. G. Sandvik, Hovding og konge i Heimskringla; H. Koht, “‘Tendens’ i Heimskringla?” Historisk tidsskrift (1956).