.... He is best known out$de Iceland as the general editor of the fslenzk Fornrit edition, as the last editor of the text of Orkneyinga saga, and as the author of a book on Snorri Sturlusonl which, despite his recent disclaimers, is not only the best book on the subject, but also an excellent...

... traditions can be found in Norse texts where one might least expect it, such as in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (ca. 1240). Snorri says that he has assembled it, the fullest medieval compendium of pagan Germanic myths, as a resource for poetic allusions and tropes. He is anxious for young poets...

... the general characteristics of Old Germanic poetry and the specific characteristics-metrical, structural, and stylistic-of skaldic verse, and ending with a brief account of Snorri Sturluson, the great medieval authority on the genre, in whose Edda and Heimskringla are preserved most of the poems...

... ritual (he identifies this stage with the Wanen) ; then they go through a stage of mythological elaboration for which there is much fuller evidence (Asen) ; and their final fate is treatment at the hands of the sophisticated mythographer, best exemplified by Snorri, who feels free...

..., that the author of Eyrbyggja had more popular material about the Fr6dAr-hauntings and the ghost of Thorold Clubfoot than about the dealings between Snorri and Amkel godi. Some things in the saga are of such a nature that it is incredible that any writer of fiction could have taken any pleasure...

...) and Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla. But the intrinsic worth of a work of literature is not the only measure of its importance for the scholar. As literary monuments Nj6Zs saga and Egils saga rank with Gottfried’s Tristan and Wolf- ram’s Parzival; and Hrafnkels saga is certainly one of the finest...

... literary life of that whole concept of the nature and function of literature evoked by such terms as “convention,” “decorum,” and “struc- ture.” Since Snorri Sturluson (an Icelander, as it happens), there has been no important tradition of formal criticism in Norway, no shared poetic or even any...

... Baer 373 without question to the first place the Egils saga, a veritable master- piece which recent Icelandic scholars have been prone to claim for its author no less a person than Snorri Sturluson himself. A. LEROYANDREWS...

... further than the mythological stage, a mosaic which even defied the systematizing efforts of the mythographers of Snorri’s age. Full scholarly notes and an index of mythological names enhance the reference value of the book. HUMPHREYMILNES...

...Lydia Baer Lydia Baer 373 without question to the first place the Egils saga, a veritable master- piece which recent Icelandic scholars have been prone to claim for its author no less a person than Snorri Sturluson himself...

...) ; Snorri’s Prose Edda is mentioned with- out indications concerning the author or time and place of compo- sition (p. 33) ; likewise the Ynglingatal and SkjQldungusaga lack temporal and geographical elucidations (p. 53 f while the Gret- tissaga, first cited incidentally without explanation (p...

... (Asen) ; and their final fate is treatment at the hands of the sophisticated mythographer, best exemplified by Snorri, who feels free to rearrange, rationalize, and even Christianize. It is illuminating to see the pattern emerge. For instance, Odin’s three marriages correspond...

... to the ON mythic river Geiruimul “bristling with spears” ( Grimnismcil 27 ; Snorri, Prose Edda, “Gylfaginning” ch. 38). It may be related to that other stream, SliBr, which is full of knives and swords (V~lospci36, Grimnismcil 28). Both rivers have something to do with the world of the dead...

... left no record: he is a fire-reverie of Carlyle’s. Both Torfaeus and Sax0 Grammaticus supposed that Odin had been an actual Norse- man, and Snorri assigned him the role of inventor of poetry, a bard later deified by an admiring people (p. 23). But only Carlyle makes Odin the single mortal...

..., and Snorri records that Olaf the Wood-Cutter, one of l7 Beginnings of English Society, Pelican Book (Harmondsworth, 1952), p. 42. 12 BE0WULF the ancestors of the kings of Norway, was sacrificially burned in his house after a number of crop...

... four hundred years, fell back on the Old Norse sagas. Two important works came from this period, Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda and the Heimskringla, the latter soon ranking second only to the Bible in household popularity in 8  Coke (1552 – 1634), who published Institutes of the Lawes...