Page:The Prose Edda, Brodeur (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916).djvu/16

x both powerful and enlightened, who extended the reforms of Sverrir,and having brought about unity and peace, quickened the intellectual life of Norway with the fructifying influence of French and English literary models. Under the patronage of this ruler, Hákon Hákonarson, the great romances, notably those of Chrétien de Troyes,were translated into Norse, some of them passing over into Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. Somewhat later, Matthew Paris, the great scholar and author, who represented the culture both of England and of France, spent eighteen months in Norway, though not until after Snorri's death.

Iceland itself, in part through Norway, in part directly, drew from the life of the Continent: Sæmundr the Learned, who had studied in Paris, founded a school at Oddi; Sturla Sigvatsson, Snorri's nephew, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and visited Germany; and Snorri himself shows, in the opening pages of his Heimskringla, or History of the Kings of Norway, the influence of that great romantic cycle, the Matter of Troy.

Snorri Sturluson was In the fullest sense a product of his time. The son of a turbulent and ambitious chieftain, Sturla Thórdsson, of Hvamm in western Iceland, he was born to a heritage of strife and avarice. The history of the Sturlung house, like that of Douglas in Scotland, is a long and perplexed chronicle of intrigue, treachery, and assassination, in all of which Snorri played an active part. But even as among the Douglases there was one who, however deep in treason and intrigue, yet loved learning and poetry, and was distinguished in each, so Snorri, involved by sordid political chicanery, found time not only to compose original verse which was admired by his contemporaries, but also to record the myths and legends, the history