The Meaning of Authorship in Snorri

Although there is sufficient evidence that Snorri in one way or another was responsible for writing or editing the collection of kings' sagas known as Heimskringla , and thus can be regarded as its author, the exact meaning of this latter term seems more doubtful. Most scholars, since the mid-nineteenth century (e.g., Munch, 1857: 1032, 1040 ff.; Petersen, 1866: 235 ff.; and Storm, 1873: 1 ff., 77 ff., etc.), have regarded him as an author in more or less the modern sense. Halvdan Koht in 1913 went further in this direction, not only regarding Snorri as an independent

writer and a critical examiner of his sources, but as a historian with an overall interpretation of the period he was describing (1921:76 ff., see also chap. 2). Both Koht's critics among the philologists and the relatively few scholars who examined Snorri's scholarship and literary style in the following period have believed in Snorri as an author in the real sense and given additional arguments for this (Nordal, 1973: 132 ff.; Lie, 1937). There are, however, different opinions. In the nineteenth century P. E. Müller (1823) and Konrad Maurer (1867: 119 ff.) regarded Heimskringla as mainly a compilation of earlier, written works, and this view has been revived by Lars Lönnroth, who points partly to the rather vague references to Snorri's authorship in the sources and partly to the considerable differences between the individual sagas of Heimskringla (Lönnroth, 1964: 83 ff.; see also Olsen, 1965: 68).

A similar but more radical hypothesis has been brought forward by M. I. Steblin-Kamensky: the concept of authorship did not exist in the medieval North. There was no word for "author" as distinct from "scribe" and no "authorial view" in the works (1973: 51 ff.). Nor was there any distinction between fiction and historical literature. Authors were simply transmitting "syncretic truth," neither deliberately creating a story like modern authors of fiction, nor reconstructing the past like modern historians (1973: 21 ff.). Consequently, one searches in vain for a consistent view of history in a work like Snorri's Heimskringla (1973: 61 f.).^[1] In one sense, Steblin-Kamensky's ideas are a return to the older view of Snorri as a compiler, and more generally they are related to the romantic idea of the sagas and other older literature as the expression of a collective "Volksgeist." But they are better regarded as a part of a new tendency to examine the specific character or "mentality" of cultures of the past, which is also expressed in recent studies of oral cultures (see Ong, 1982 with ref.). No study of Heimskringla from this point of view has appeared, but there has been an increasing interest during the last two decades in the oral background to the Icelandic sagas, which has led to some revision of the bookprose theory, though no new synthesis has emerged (Scholes and Kellogg, 1966: 43 ff.; Clover, 1985: 273 ff.).

In one sense, it is a perfectly legitimate task to analyze the ideas of politics, man, and society in Heimskringla , even if Steblin-Kamensky is right, as we will then have the opportunity to examine the mentalité collective of which Snorri was a part without the complication of an individual author whose ideas might be different from those of his milieu. But it is of crucial importance both for the analysis itself and for the use of its results to know to what extent we are dealing with a real author, a compiler, or the expression of collective mentality. A full examination of this question, however, would amount to a complete literary analysis of Heimskringla . This will not be attempted here. I shall

mostly confine myself to drawing conclusions from Snorri's treatment of the various topics dealt with below. Some problems, however, need especial examination, the first of which is Snorri's own concept of historical authorship, including his attitude to the use of sources for reconstructing the past.