Heimskringla

Heimskringla (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈheimsˌkʰriŋla]) is the best known of the Old Norwegian kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland. While authorship of Heimskringla is nowhere attributed, some scholars assume it is written by the Icelandic knight, poet and historian, Snorri Sturluson (1178/79–1241) c. 1230. The title Heimskringla was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts (kringla heimsins, "the circle of the world").

Heimskringla is a collection of sagas about Swedish and Norwegian kings, beginning with the saga of the legendary Swedish-Norwegian dynasty of the Ynglings, followed by accounts of historical Norwegian rulers from Harald Fairhair of the 9th century up to the death of the pretender Eystein Meyla in 1177.

Some of the exact sources of Heimskringla are disputed, but they include earlier kings' sagas, such as Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna and the 12th-century Norwegian synoptic histories and oral traditions, notably many skaldic poems. The author or authors explicitly name the now lost work Hryggjarstykki as their source for the events of the mid-12th century.

No known manuscript attributes authorship to Heimskringla. The matter is summarized as follows by Anthony Faulkes:

The title Heimskringla comes from the first words of the first saga in the compilation (Ynglinga saga), Kringla heimsins, "the orb of the Earth".

The earliest parchment copy of the work is Kringla, now in the National and University Library of Iceland, catalogued as Lbs fragm 82. It is a single vellum leaf from c. 1260, a part of the Saga of St. Olaf; the rest of the manuscript was lost to fire in 1728.

Heimskringla consists of several sagas, often thought of as falling into three groups, giving the overall work the character of a triptych. The saga narrates the contests of the kings, the establishment of the kingdom of Norway, Norse expeditions to various European countries, ranging as far afield as Palestine in the saga of Sigurd the Crusader, where the Norwegian fleet is attacked by Arab Muslim pirates, referred to as Vikings. The stories are told with energy, giving a picture of human life in all its dimensions. The saga is a prose epic, relevant to the history of not only Scandinavia but the regions included in the wider medieval Scandinavian diaspora. The first part of the Heimskringla is rooted in Norse mythology; as the collection proceeds, fable and fact intermingle, but the accounts become increasingly historically reliable.

The first saga tells of the mythological prehistory of the Swedish and Norwegian royal dynasty, the Ynglings, tracing their lineage to Freyr (Yngve) of the Vanaland people, who arrived in Scandinavia with Odin from the legendary Asgard. The subsequent sagas are (with few exceptions) devoted to individual rulers, starting with Halfdan the Black.