Heimskringla

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Heimskringla ( Old Norse for circle of the world ) is the title of a medieval work on the history of the Norwegian kings , which was written around 1230 and is attributed to Snorri Sturluson . The work has been handed down without any indication of the author.

History of the attribution to Snorri Sturluson

It all started with an award assignment from the “Kongelige danske Videnskabernes Selskab” (Royal Danish Society of Scientists) from 1870. This assignment was based on certain premises that were formulated as a question. The first two questions concerned Snorri as the author, the last two the scope of Heimskringla and its relationship to Icelandic medieval historiography. The task already presupposed that it was a coherent work of a certain size that had been passed down more or less completely. This view goes back to the first edition by Johan Peringskiöld Heimskringla eller Snorre Sturluson's Nordlänske Konunga Sagor (Stockholm 1697). He took the name "Heimskringla" from a copy made in 1682 by the Icelandic Jón Eggertsson. Its original in the University Library of Copenhagen was called Kringla or Heimskringla . The handwriting lacked the prologue, so that the first word of the Ynglinga saga “Kringla heimsins” was decisive. The name was already used by Torfaeus and probably goes back to Ole Worm , who used it in an introduction to the edition of the translation into Norwegian by Peder Claussøn Friis "Norske kongers Chronica".

Gustav Storm won the gold medal for his work on this award task. The work was published at the expense of the "Kongelige danske Videnskabernes Selskab" under the title Snorre Sturlasöns Historieskrivning (Copenhagen 1873). In 1914 Sigurður Nordal published his dissertation Om Olaf den bright saga in Copenhagen . While Storm was of the opinion that the saga about Olav the Saint was younger than the rest of the Heimskringla text, and was based on this, Nordal reversed this chronology so that Snorri wrote the saga about Olav earlier. Both assumed that all parts of the Heimskringla came from the same author, with Nordal relied on Storm and Storm had taken them over from the task of the price assignment.

First has Konrad Maurer suggested that it is in the Heimskringla IN QUESTION a compilation work that had been composed only after Snorri death of many individual works, only some of which were from himself.

In addition to the above-mentioned Kringla manuscript , there were two other manuscripts, Jöfraskinna and Gullinskinna , both of which were destroyed in the library fire in Copenhagen in 1728, but have been preserved in fairly reliable copies. Another two manuscripts have been destroyed in Norway and Sweden. De la Gardie No. 3 burned in 1702 in Uppsala. However, there are copies of parts and a translation into Swedish Norlands Chrönika och Beskriffning by the Icelander Jón Rugman, which appeared in print in 1670.

Jonna Louis-Jensen thinks it is likely that it was not Snorri Sturluson, but Ólafur Þórðarson hvítaskáld who did the final editing of the Kringla and put the individual parts together. It relies on Stefán Karlsson, who showed that the main parts of the two most important manuscripts of the Grágás , the Staðarhólsbók and the Codex Regius, were written in the same hand. It was a professional writer. After him, the priest Þórarinn kaggi comes into consideration. Ólafur Þórðarson hvítaskáld was Snorri's learned nephew. He died in 1259. According to Stefán Karlsson, the Kringla manuscript could not have been completed before 1258. Its final editing is therefore not excluded. Þórarinn kaggi died in 1283. He too came from the Sturlung family. He was the illegitimate son of Ólafur Þórðarson's cousin Egill Sölmundarson, who was the son of Snorri's sister Helga.

Origin and structure

Snorris Heimskringla reaches from the mythical prehistory, which he describes in the first part of the Ynglinga saga, to the year 1177 . For his history, Snorri used older models, the Fagrskinna (the beautiful parchment; around 1230 ) and Ágrip af Nóregs konunga sögum (Outline of the history of the Norwegian kings; end of the 12th century ). For the last chapter of Heimskringla, which describes the years 1035 to 1177 , Snorri drew from Morkinskinna (the rotten parchment; 13th century ). Compared to its predecessors, Snorri's dynastic history of Norway in the Middle Ages is shaped by a critical historical method that was progressive for its time and that gives a clearly structured picture of the Norwegian kings. Nevertheless, the Heimskringla lacks a coherent presentation, since it is composed of a compilation of independent sagas, each of which can be considered a literary work on individual Norwegian kings. As in the Skáldskaparmál , Snorri also uses skald poems in the Heimskringla as a commentary and illustration of his descriptions.

The work is divided into three parts. Heimskringla (Hkr) I: from the beginning to Olav the Holy, Hkr II: the story of Olav the Holy and Hkr III: the story after. The manuscripts are divided into two classes: one class contains Hkr II, the other does not. Jöfraskinna and Gullinskinna belong to this group . There is also a separate saga about Olav the Saint. The separate saga of Olav the Saint is inserted in Jöfraskinna . It is therefore not certain that the story of Olav the Saint was already present in the original Snorris. It is also possible that a later editor added the separate saga of Olav the Holy, slightly abbreviated, into the Heimskringla .

Content by chapters

The Heimskringla consists of:

Heimskringla as a historical source

The value of the Heimskringla as a historical source in terms of modern scientific historiography has been controversial since the saga criticism. In any case, for his time, the European High Middle Ages, Snorri Sturluson was an exceptional scientist, who cannot be denied a historical awareness and the effort to historical transmission (in the sense of an emic cultural observation ). However, there is a contradiction in the assessment of Snorris as the first "historian" for West Scandinavian history, that he took over and compiled his sources with only minor changes. Then one would have to ascribe this predicate “historian” to the authors of his sources.

It is particularly important that at the time of writing the literary genre “historiography” in today's sense did not exist in Europe. The works that presented themselves as historiography were always trend writings with political intent. The pure preservation of the past for posterity was alien to the authors. It was either a question of praise for the ruler or social criticism or the legitimation of traditional claims or the portrayal of Christianization as a success story or similar goals that were pursued with a work.

That the purely historical interest was not in the foreground can be clearly seen in the Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar, in which the destruction of the pagan temple of the Ark is described. There the king took a gold ring on the temple door and later had it brought to the pagan Queen Sigrid of Sweden as a present at the courtship. This found that the gold ring had a copper core inside. There was an argument between the two at a meeting, in the course of which the king slapped Sigrid, whereupon the latter prophesied a violent end to him. The whole is a literary composition around the symbol of the inner worthlessness of paganism, depicted on the copper in a gold ring ( Lit .: Niedner p. 267 f .; Glauser p. 39).

Snorri's own sources ranged from mythological and oral traditions, which he collected from contemporary witnesses, to the works mentioned above. He is the co-founder of a "Scholar Icelandic Prehistory" (after Andreas Heusler ), which stood on the threshold between mythology (from a euhemeristic perspective) and historical science. This prohibits a general assessment of the Heimskringla as a historical source, and it depends on individual dates and descriptions whether they can be assessed as mythical, quasi-historical or historical. That Snorri, as Egon Mogk accused him, wrote mythological short stories that are historically unreliable is no longer represented in this general public. The closer the events are to his own lifetime, the higher the weight of his statements. Valuable sources are also his quotations from old skald stanzas from the time of the rulers he deals with.

text

German

Old Norse

  • Heimskringla eða Sögur Noregs konunga ( online )

English

  • The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway

New Icelandic

  • Snorri Sturluson: Heimskringla. (Ed. Bergljót S. Kristjánsdóttir et al.). Reykjavík 1991. ISBN 9979-3-0309-3 ( online )

Norwegian

literature

  • Jürg Glauser: From author to compiler . In: Hans Fix (Ed.): Snorri Sturluson. Contributions to the work and reception. de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-11-016182-6 , ( Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde supplementary volume 18), p. 34.
  • Kolbrún Haraldsdóttir: The historian Snorri. Author or compiler? In: Hans Fix (Ed.): Snorri Sturluson. Contributions to the work and reception. de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-11-016182-6 , ( Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde supplementary volume 18), p. 97.
  • Lee M. Hollander (transl.): Heimskringla. History of the Kings of Norway. Published for the American-Scandinavian Foundation by the University of Texas Press, Austin TX 1991, ISBN 0-292-73061-6 , (English).
  • Jonna Louis-Jensen: Heimskringla - Et værk af Snorri Sturluson? In: Nordica Bergensia 14 (1997) pp 230-245.
  • Rudolf Simek , Hermann Pálsson : Lexicon of Old Norse Literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 490). Kröner, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-520-49001-3 , pp. 156-157.
  • Jirí Starý: Naivety and criticism. The Old Norse historiography . In: Heinrich Beck, Wilhelm Heizmann, Jan Alexander van Nahl (eds.): Snorri Sturluson: Historians, poets, politicians . de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-033631-3 , ( Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde supplementary volume 85), pp. 93–128.
  • Jan de Vries : Old Norse literary history . Volume 2: The Literature from about 1150-1300 . 2nd Edition. de Gruyter, Berlin 1967, ( Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie 16), pp. 293–295.
  • Diana Whaley: Heimskringla . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . Volume 14: Harp and Lyre - Hludana Hlodyn . de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1999, ISBN 3-11-016423-X , p. 238.

Web links

Commons : Heimskringla  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b On the previous: Louis-Jensen p. 231.
  2. ↑ "The ene [scil.:Sorte Königs sagas] begynder from Harald Harfager / og kaldis Kongbogen /… The anden som kaldis Kringlu Heimsens / aff de to første i Bogen / shall be vøre beskrefuen aff Snorre Sturlesøn / fordum Lagmand paa Iceland. … Denne he den Chrønicke som vi nu her fremsetter. ”Quoted from Louis-Jensen p. 232.
  3. ↑ Konrad Maurer: About the expressions: Old Norse, Old Norwegian and Icelandic languages. In: Treatises of the philosophical-philological class of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Vol. 11 Munich 1868. pp. 457-706, 490.
  4. ↑ On the previous: Louis-Jensen p. 232.
  5. ↑ Stefán Karlsson: Kringum Kringlu . In: Árbók Landsbókasafns 1978. Reykjavík. Pp. 5-25.
  6. ↑ Louis-Jensen p. 243, especially footnote 12.
  7. ↑ On the previous: Louis-Jensen p. 239.