![]() ![]() It payed an important role in the nationalist awakening of the 19th and 20th centuries, in the same way as the Icelandic movement for freedom and independence drew inspiration from the Sagas of Icelanders. Heimskringla has been published repeatedly in Norwegian translation, and has become a national Bible to the Norwegian. Snorri has an outstanding talent for drama and is a relist, as may be seen in his unflinching rejection of hagiographical accounts of the lives of Norway's missionary kings, Olaf Tryggvason and St. ![]() What is it that makes Snorri so superior to the other authors of sagas of kings? The magic of good literature will always remain intangible, but several factors are worth mentioning. Each king has his own saga, in chronological order, while the longest and most detailed of the sagas is that of the canonised King Olaf Haraldsson, who was the primary saint of the North. The story becomes more historical with Halfdan the Black and his son, the conquering hero Harald Fairhair. The book begins with legendary Swedish kings, after the clan moves to Norway. Snorri Sturluson's history of the kings of Norway has come to be known as Heimskringla ( The Orb of the World), from the first sentence of Ynglinga saga: "The orb of the world that is inhabited by men has a deeply indented coastline" ![]()
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