Page:The Prose Edda, Brodeur (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916).djvu/19

Rh or tragic interplay of ambitions, passions, and destinies behind the mere chronicled events, he had almost ideal qualities as an historian.

Poet he was too, though the codified rules, the cryptic phrase, and conventional expression, which indeed "bound" together the words of the singers of ancient Scandinavia, must spoil his verse for us. Yet it is well to remember that in his own lifetime, not his natural prose, but his artificial poetry was famous throughout the North.

Snorri's greatest work is undoubtedly the Heimskringla. Beginning with a rationalized account of the founding of Northern civilization by the ancient gods, he proceeds through heroic legend to the historical period, and follows the careers of his heroes on the throne, in Eastern courts and camps, or on forays in distant lands, from the earliest times to the reign of Sverrir, who came to the throne in 1184, five years after the author's birth.

"The materials at Snorri's disposal," says Magnússon, "were: oral tradition; written genealogical records; old songs or narrative lays such as Thiodolf's Tale of the Ynglings and Eyvind's Haloga Tale; poems of court poets, i.e., historic songs, which people knew by heart all from the days of Hairfair down to Snorri's own time. 'And most store,' he says, 'we set by that which is said in such songs as were sung before the chiefs themselves or the sons of them; and we hold all that true which is found in these songs concerning their wayfarings and their battles.' Of