Page:The Prose Edda, Brodeur (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916).djvu/15

 HE life of Snorri Sturluson fell in a great but contradictory age, when all that was noble and spiritual in men seemed to promise social regeneration, and when bloody crimes and sordid ambitions gave this hope the lie. Not less than the rest of Europe, Scandinavia shared in the bitter conflict between the law of the spirit and the law of the members. The North, like England and the Continent, felt the religious fervor of the Crusades, passed from potential anarchy into union and national consciousness, experienced a literary and spiritual revival, and suffered the fury of persecution and of fratricidal war. No greater error could be committed than to think of the Northern lands as cut off by barriers of distance, tongue, and custom from the heart of the Continent, and in consequence as countries where men's thoughts and deeds were more unrestrained and uncivilized. Even as England, France, and Germany acted and reacted upon one another in politics, in social growth, in art, and in literature, so all three acted upon Scandinavia, and felt the reaction of her influence.

Nearly thirty years before Snorri's birth, the Danish kingdom had been the plaything of a German prince, Henry the Lion, who set up or pulled down her rulers as he saw fit; and during Snorri's boyhood, one of these rulers, Valdamarr I, contributed to Henry's political destruction. In Norway, Sverrir Sigurdarson had swept away the old social order, and replaced it with one more highly centralized; had challenged the power of Rome without, and that of his own nobles within, like Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa. After Sverrir's death, an interregnum followed; but at last there came to the throne a