ANTHONY FAULKESTHE SOURCES OF
SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL: SNORRI’SINTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

Discussion of the sources of Skáldskaparmál in the past has mainly been
concerned with two related issues, first the accuracy with which Snorri
reproduces pre-Christian tradition in his work, and thus his reliability asa witness to that tradition, and secondly the extent to which his work is
influenced by the Christian, Latin thought of the Middle Ages. With regard
to the first of these issues, there has been speculation about the possibility
that Snorri or people of his circle may actually have invented myths aswell as altering or modifying those they inherited from the past. One
particular aspect of the second issue is the question whether Snorri himself
could read Latin. Recent work has started from the assumption that hecould, and has concentrated on attempting to identify the Latin writings
he may have used (Margaret Clunies Ross 1987; Ursula and Peter Dronke1977). Many scholars have taken for granted that Latin books would
have been available to Snorri; characteristic is Halldór Halldórsson in
Old Icelandic heiti in Modern Icelandic (1975), who, having pointed outthat Oddi, where Snorri was brought up, was a place where learning,
including Latin learning, had been highly developed in the 12th century,says: ‘Of course, these points do not suffice to prove that Snorri knew
Latin. But the very fact that in the Skáldskaparmál he attempts to apply
certain classificatory principles to the stylistic devices used in Old
Icelandic and Old Norwegian poetry indicates some sort of schooling’(p. 11), and adds in a footnote (on p. 12): ‘Most scholars who have dealt
with Snorra Edda, such as F. Jónsson, Heusler, Nordal, Meissner andE. Ó. Sveinsson, disregard the question of whether Snorri knew classicalrhetoric or not . . . Stefán Einarsson is fully aware of the fact that Snorri
knew Latin . . . Unfortunately, St. Einarsson does not furnish any evidence
for his assertion, but I think he is right.’ It is one of the purposes of this2

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

paper to examine whether there is any evidence for the assertion, andwhether it can be upheld.
Skáldskaparmál consists mainly of a collection of extracts from poems
that illustrate the use of kennings for various things, and a collection of
narratives that purport to give the origins of various kennings; it begins
with a narrative about the origin of the poetic art itself. Part of the work
is in the form of a dialogue between Ægir and Bragi. This is probably
inspired by the account of the feast Ægir held for the gods described in
the prose introduction to Lokasenna (PE 96), an episode also used bySnorri in Skáldskaparmál ch. 33.
The poems Snorri quotes and the prose stories he retells were probably
all known to him from oral tradition; many of the prose narratives maythemselves be based on poems. It is possible that some had already been
written down by the time of Snorri’s work, though little trace of such
codification has survived. Some eddic poems, certainly, seem to haveexisted in written form by about the beginning of the thirteenth century,
but the evidence indicates that skaldic verse, unless it was being newly
composed by a literate poet, was only written down in the form of
quotations embedded in prose narrative, and few of the verses Snorri
quotes in Skáldskaparmál had been already used in this way. He quotes ahuge number of verses in his Edda, and many more in Heimskringla, andthe survival of a large proportion of skaldic verse is due to its incorporationin Snorri’s writings; he must have known an enormous amount of verseby heart. It is presumed that he acquired much of this from his educationin the household of Jón Loptsson at Oddi.
Some parts of Skáldskaparmál are based on complete poems (orsubstantial parts of them) either eddic or skaldic, for instance Rígsﬂula,ﬁórsdrápa, Ragnarsdrápa, Húsdrápa, Grottasƒngr and other poems now
lost, e.g. one which gave information about the river Vimur. Snorri may
have known these either from oral tradition or from written versions, if
such existed in his time, though many of the longer verse quotations in
Skáldskaparmál have been suspected of being interpolations, since they
are not in all MSS and seem to upset the organisation of the work. The
same kind of sources are the main basis of Gylfaginning, however.
Some of the narratives in Skáldskaparmál are derived from earlier
written sagas. Most notable of such sources is Skjƒldunga saga, probably
compiled from poems and stories in the second half of the twelfth century
at Oddi to celebrate Jón Loptsson’s descent from the kings of Norway.
This saga must have been the primary model for Snorri’sYnglinga saga
(he names it as a source, Heimskringla I, 57), and also provided material

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

3for the chapters in Skáldskaparmál on Hrólfr kraki and Fró›i and themill Grotti; whether he found the entire poem Grottasƒngr in the saga
too is difficult to say. The extracts from Bjarkamál may also be from thissaga, and also the account of Hja›ningavíg (see Finnur Jónsson, Edda
Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, lvi; the story also appears in Ragnarsdrápa,
and a later literary version of it is found in Sƒrla ﬂáttr in Flateyjarbók).
The chapters on otrgjƒld and the Gjúkungar are likely to be derived
from an earlier version of Vƒlsunga saga (though the Sigur›ar saga
mentioned in Háttatal was probably not a written source); there are alsosimilarities to the narratives part in prose and part in verse in the Poetic
Edda. The account of Hƒlgi and his burial (ch. 56) may be derived froman early Hla›ajarla saga.
The genealogical chapters towards the end of Skáldskaparmál (ch. 64),
about Halfdan the old and his sons, have a relationship to a text thatprobably, like Skjƒldunga saga, Vƒlsunga saga and Hla›ajarla saga,
originated in learned historical writing of the late twelfth or early thirteenth
centuries: the fragment Hversu Noregr bygg›ist in Flateyjarbók I, 22–30(another version of this, labelled Fundinn Noregr in editions of Fornaldar
sögur, forms an introduction to Orkneyinga saga in Flateyjarbók). The
relationship of these texts with each other and with Snorra Edda cannot
be said to be clear (Finnbogi Gu›mundsson thought it possible that Snorri
himself compiled the present introduction to Orkneyinga saga, and thatthe ﬂáttr Hversu Noregr bygg›ist in Flateyjarbók was a later redactionof this), but the content seems at any rate to be native genealogical andhistorical or mythological lore. Hyndluljó› may be another product of
the same kind of learned historical speculation.
The various lists of heiti in the latter part of Skáldskaparmál may bepartly based on already existing ﬂulur such as those that are included insome manuscripts at the end of Skáldskaparmál, although Snorri musthave collected many items himself from skaldic poems that he knew andfrom his own vocabulary. Twelfth-century poets like Einarr Skúlason
had already shown an interest in collecting lists of poetical expressions,and Alvíssmál may be a product of the same kind of learned compilation.
It is difficult to be certain, however, which of the ﬂulur may actually bebased on Skáldskaparmál itself (or indeed have been compiled by Snorri).
The short collections of examples of poetic language printed by Finnur
Jónsson as Den lille Skálda (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, 255–9) may
also be older than Skáldskaparmál, or they may be extensions of Snorri’s
work, like the additions to Skáldskaparmál in Codex Wormianus, but it
is likely that Snorri was not the first to begin to classify and collect4

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

examples of poetic diction, just as Rƒgnvaldr Kali’s Háttalykill showsthat he was not the first to codify metrical variations.
The sources of Skáldskaparmál are therefore broadly of two kinds,
Norse poems, most of them at any rate originally oral, and learned, butvernacular, historical writings of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
There does not seem any need to assume extensive oral prose stories orfolk-tales among Snorri’s sources: the above list seems to account formost of his material. Where he seems to narrate myths that go beyond
the extant poetical versions it is likely that he has expanded on hints inpoems known to him, as for instance when he expands a rather obscurereference in Vafﬂrú›nismál into a story of a flood (Gylfaginning ch. 7)—
though in some cases his expansions may be partly based on folk-tales or
be paraphrases of lost poems. Many of his narratives should perhaps be
described as reconstructions of myths (similar to the reconstructions ofhistory we find in sagas) based on allusions and hints in early poems,
such as the story of the origin of poetry and the story of the building ofÁsgar›r. The only material that has its origin in foreign (and originally
Latin) writing is the references to the Troy story in the so-called Epilogus.
It is because this is the only part of Skáldskaparmál not based on native
sources that some scholars have thought it likely that this is not Snorri’s
work, but this judgment is based only on the presupposition that Snorri
would not have used such material himself, or that if he had used it hewould have used it differently. The fact that this section is not in all
manuscripts is not sufficient reason to reject it, since it is not at all certainthat the Uppsala manuscript should be taken to represent the content ofSnorri’s original work better than the Codex Regius, Codex Trajectinus
and Codex Wormianus, and references to Troy appear in parts of thePrologue that are in the Uppsala manuscript, as well as perhaps in
Heimskringla (there called Ásgar›r or inn forni Ásgar›r in accordancewith Gylfaginning’s identification of these with Troy). But whether or
not the references to Troy were included by Snorri, whoever wrote themhad a very inadequate understanding of the Troy story. They are full of
misunderstandings and mistakes, and the writer does not seem to knowmuch of the actual events that were narrated in the Medieval Latin versionsof Homer and in the Norse Trójumanna saga. It is likely that he hadheard a somewhat garbled account of it, but had not actually read any
version of the story himself, though there are indications that he may
have had some knowledge of a version of Trójumanna saga, and perhaps
also of Breta sƒgur. There is a striking correspondence in one of his
untraditional details about the Troy story that corresponds closely with

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

5

the version of Trójumanna saga in Hauksbók, and that is the name
Volucrontem, corresponding to Polypoetes in the original story. This may
have been taken by Snorri from a version of Trójumanna saga, or viceversa, and in any case seems to be derived from a misreading of a text
where the initial p was mistaken for an insular v and the medial p for a c
or r; the person who made these mistakes can hardly have been expert inreading insular Latin manuscripts. There is also an interestingcorrespondence between the Prologue to Snorra Edda and the Hauksbók
version of Breta sƒgur in the name Loricus, which is probably an error
for Locrinus. (See Faulkes 1978–9, 122–4.)
The classification of the kennings and heiti in Skáldskaparmál under theirrespective referents, and the order in which they are arranged, has been said
to be similar to that in some medieval encyclopaedic writings (Bede, Isidore,
Honorius). Again, there are similarities, but these are not so great as toconvince me that Snorri had actually read any medieval Latin encyclopaedia,
only that he knew what they were like. His ordering of topics seems
quite natural for someone of his interests and with the materials he had todeal with, and does not have to be derived from any foreign model.
The classification of rhetorical devices in Skáldskaparmál has somesimilarities to that of Latin treatises on rhetoric, though in fact the closest
analogy to Snorri’s description of the kenning at the beginning ofSkáldskaparmál is in Aristotle:
Er sú grein svá sett at vér kƒllum Ó›in e›a ﬁór e›a T‡ e›a einhvern af Ásume›a álfum, at hverr ﬂeira er ek nefni til, ﬂá tek ek me› heiti af eign annarsÁssins e›a get ek hans verka nokkvorra. ﬁá eignask hann nafnit en eigi hinn
er nefndr var, svá sem vér kƒllum Sigt‡ e›a Hangat‡ e›a Farmat‡, ﬂat er ﬂáÓ›ins heiti, ok kƒllum vér ﬂat kennt heiti. Svá ok at kalla Rei›art‡. (Edda
Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, 86)(This category (kenning) is constructed in this way, that we speak of Ó›inn
or ﬁórr or T‡r or one of the Æsir or elves, in such a way that with each of
those I mention, I add a term for the attribute of another Áss or make mentionof one or other of his deeds. Then the latter becomes the one referred to, andnot the one that was named; for instance when we speak of Victory-T‡r or
Hanged T‡r or Cargo-T‡r, these are expressions for Ó›inn, and these we callkent heiti (periphrastic terms); similarly if one speaks of Chariot-T‡r.)

The passage in Aristotle’s Poetics (XXI. 11–13) that deals with this figureof speech is as follows (he is speaking of metaphor used ‘in the way of
analogy’):When, of four terms, the second bears the same relation to the first as the
fourth to the third; in which case the fourth may be substituted for the second

6

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL
and the second for the fourth. And sometimes the proper term is also
introduced besides its relative term. Thus a cup bears the same relation to
Bacchus as a shield to Mars. A shield therefore may be called the cup of
Mars and a cup the shield of Bacchus. Again evening being to day what old
age is to life, the evening may be called the old age of the day and old age
the evening of life.

There is no likelihood that Aristotle was available in Iceland in thethirteenth century and the similarity must be fortuitous, and Snorri cannot
be said to have based his description closely on any foreign one. Similarly
his use of the term fornafn indicates some familiarity with Latingrammatical concepts: he uses it once in Háttatal to mean ‘pronoun’(pronomen), but in Skáldskaparmál he clearly means what the Romans
called pronominatio and the Greeks antonomasia, the use of a description
to replace a proper name. He divides kennings and heiti further intovi›kenningar and sannkenningar. In spite of the etymology of the termsannkenningar (= ‘true kennings’), it does not seem that Snorri is
contrasting literalness with the use of metaphor; some of his examples ofsannkennningar would probably be analysed by modern readers as
metaphorical, and moreover it is not in connection with sannkenningar
that Snorri discusses metaphor. The element sann- in the term as it isused in Skáldskaparmál seems to be related to the idea of the essential
nature of the persons referred to, in the term as used in Háttatal to theword sanna in the sense of affirm (since the examples are all of affirmatory
or intensive attributives and adverbs; they refer to what can truly be said
to be the case). In distinguishing vi›kenningar and sannkenningar Snorri
seems to be attempting to distinguish descriptions based on accidents
from those based on essences in the Aristotelean sense; all his examplesof vi›kenningar seem to describe people in terms of their ‘accidental’
attributes (possessions, relationships) while his examples of sannkenningar
both in Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal are descriptions in terms of inherent
or innate qualities. In Skáldskaparmál all the examples are descriptionsof people, but in Háttatal, some of them are of things or actions. In bothparts of the work, most of the examples of sannkenningar are not kennings
in the modern sense of the word since they are not constructed with theuse of base-words and determinants. His account of n‡gjƒrvingar makes
it clear that with this term he is thinking of something like extended
metaphor or allegory, but Snorri in general shows little interest in metaphor
and figures of speech—strange if he had read any of the standard classicalor medieval treatises on rhetoric. He sees poetical language largely inTHE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

7

terms of substitutions of one name for another, rather than in terms oftransference of meaning. He describes and exemplifies n‡gjƒrvingar in a
number of places in both Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal (Edda Snorra
Sturlusonar 1931, 121, 156, 190, 215, 217–18), but always with the
implication that it is somewhat exceptional. Even kennings which seem
to us obviously metaphorical, such as when gold is called fire of the sea
or poetry the ship of the dwarfs as well as ale of dwarfs, are explained bySnorri in terms of substitutions, and the fundamental kenning type asarising from the events of a particular story (e.g. substitution of a word
for sea for the name Ægir as a variation on the kenning-type ‘fire ofÆgir’, based according to Snorri on the story of how Ægir used gold as asource of light when he entertained the Æsir to a feast (Skáldskaparmál
ch. 33); the use of li› as a word for ale and for vessel, so that other words
for ship could be used instead as a variation of the kenning-type ‘meadof the dwarfs’ which arose from an episode in the story of the origin of
poetry (Skáldskaparmál ch. 3; in his account of the origin of the mead of
poetry at the beginning of Skáldskaparmál however, he seems to favour
a metaphorical interpretation of the latter: ‘We call poetry . . . dwarf’s
transportation because this mead brought them deliverance from theskerry’). Indeed Snorri’s interest in word-play, which he calls ofljóst,
both as a device in itself and as a generator of kennings, does not seem tobe justified by its frequency in recorded verse (see in particular Skáldskaparmál ch. 74 and Háttatal stanzas 17–23), while he gives rather little
space to metaphor (Háttatal stanza 6 and the commentary on it, Edda
Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, 121, 156, 190). There are many of the normal
terms and concepts of classical rhetoric for which he has no equivalent(and which he does not discuss), and his system of classification does
not resemble closely any existing classical or medieval Ars Poetica, norhave any verbal similarities been demonstrated between any passages in
Skáldskaparmál and any other Ars Poetica. (Halldór Halldórsson (1975,21–7) has argued for the influence of Quintilian on Snorri’s descriptionof fornafn, vi›kenning and sannkenning, but the similarities are not suchas to suggest that Snorri actually knew the text of Quintilian or that ofany other Latin writer on rhetoric.) The begining of Háttatal is the passage
which is most similar to a classical treatise, though the closest analogy I
have found is in Fortunatianus. Háttatal opens as follows:
Hvat eru hættir skáldskapar?
ﬁrent.
Hverir?

8

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL
Setning, leyfi, fyrirbo›ning.
Hvat er setning háttanna?
Tvent.
Hver?
Rétt ok breytt.
Hverning er rétt setning háttanna?
Tvenn.
Hver?
Tala ok grein.
Hvat er tala setningar háttanna?
ﬁrenn.
Hver?
Sú er ein tala, hversu margir hættir hafa fundizk í kve›skap hƒfu›skálda.
¯nnur tala er ﬂat, hversu mƒrg vísuor› standa í einu eyrindi í hverjum hætti.
In ﬂri›ja tala er sú, hversu margar samstƒfur eru settar í hvert vísuor› í
hverjum hætti.
Hver er grein setningar háttanna?
Tvenn.
Hver?
Málsgrein ok hljó›sgrein.
Hvat er málsgrein?
Stafasetning greinir mál allt, en hljó› greinir ﬂat at hafa samstƒfur langare›a skammar, har›ar e›a linar, ok er ﬂat setning hljó›sgreina er vér kƒllum
hendingar. (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, 213)
(What kinds of verse-form are there in poetry?
They are of three kinds.
What are they?
Those that are in accordance with rule, or licence, or prohibition.
What kinds of rule for verse-forms are there?
Two.
What are they?
Normal and varied.
In what does the normal rule for verse-forms consist?
In two things.
What are they?
Number and distinction.
What kinds of number are there in the rule for verse-forms?
Three.
What are they?
One kind of number is how many verse-forms are found in the poetry ofmajor poets. The second is how many lines there are in one stanza in eachverse-form. The third is how many syllables are put in each line in eachverse-form.
What kinds of distinction are there in the rule for verse-forms?
Two.

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

9

What are they?
Distinction of meaning and distinction of sound.
What is distinction of meaning?
All meaning is distinguished by spelling, but sound is distinguished byhaving syllables long or short, hard or soft, and there is a rule of distinctionsof sound that we call rhymes.)Ars rhetorica III of Fortunatianus (4th century AD; Halm 1863, 120–21,
with the text corrected from Faral 1924, 55 n. 2) begins thus:
Quot sunt generales modi dispositionis?
Duo.
Qui?
Naturalis et artificialis, id est utilitatis.
Quando naturalem ordinem sequemur?
Si nihil nobis oberit in causa.
Quid si aliquid occurrerit necessitate utilitatis?
Ordinem immutabimus naturalem.
Et quid sequemur?
Artificialem.
Quot modi sunt naturalis ordinis?
Octo.
Qui?
Totius orationis [per partes], per tempora, per incrementa, per status, per
scriptorum partes atque verba, per confirmationis ac reprehensionis discrimen,
per generales ac speciales quæstiones, per principales et incidentes.

Again, it is unlikely that Snorri can have known Fortunatianus, and the
topic is different (Háttatal is on metre, Fortunatianus on rhetoric). Apartfrom the general similarity of style, the most striking thing in Snorri’s
account is his use of the terms setning, leyfi, fyrirbo›ning, but these areused in relation to the rules of metre and verse-form, not, like thecorresponding medieval Latin terms pars praeceptiva, pars permissiva,pars prohibitiva, of categories of grammar and figures of speech. One
methodological feature Snorri shares with both classical and medieval
theorists is that his categories in Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal are notmutually exclusive but overlapping: he divides heiti into kend and ókend
heiti, the former being the same as kennings, the latter as (simple) heiti;
sannkenningar can be in the form of kennings and can also be simplexes,
and all of these, and vi›(r)kenningar as well, can operate as fornƒfn. It
seems that Snorri knew what classical treatises on language and rhetoric
were like, but there is no indication that he ever actually read one. He
arranges his classification like them, but his categories are different. Both

10

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

in his treatment of metrics and that of rhetoric he seems to have made no
close use of Latin writers, though echoes of them can be discerned here
and there (it is interesting that Snorri uses so many terms taken fromelementary grammar and applies them to rhetoric and metre). But there
is no likelihood that he had read either Fortunatianus or Quintilian.
Snorri’s concern is with the structure and function of nominal groups inpoetical language, not with categories of meaning, and not with poetic
structure on a higher level either, showing that he was not acquainted
with twelfth-century theory any more than with classical. The way inwhich an Icelandic writer dealt with figures of speech who had readDonatus and Priscian and other text books can be seen in the third andfourth Grammatical Treatises.
Otherwise Háttatal is mainly based on and structured round Snorri’s
own poem in honour of King Hákon and Earl Skúli. The identification offeatures of verse form owes a lot to Hallr ﬁórarinsson and Rƒgnvaldr
Kali’s Háttalykill, but the space devoted to some kinds of variations of
the hending system shows that he was particularly interested in the poetryof some particular early skalds, such as Bragi, Egill, Kormakr and Einarr
skálaglamm, who are also quoted frequently in Skáldskaparmál. Many
features selected for exemplification in Háttatal probably derive from
Latin poetry, but not directly: refhvarf, for instance, does not appear often
in Norse verse and almost certainly is imitated from Latin, but Snorri has
only developed the examples of Háttalykill. Similarly kimblaband andhrynhenda, some kinds of runhenda, etc., may all have had their origins
in foreign poetry, but had been used by poets in Scandinavia before Snorri
and were not his own importations. There is no evidence in Háttatal that
he read Latin poetry (or French). Thus, though many of the variant verse
forms Snorri illustrates in Háttatal may have their ultimate origins inmedieval Latin or French verse, most of them would have been known to
Snorri from Rƒgnvaldr’s Háttalykill or other earlier Norse poetry, and it
is unlikely that he himself was responsible for adapting any foreign
poetical devices into Icelandic verse from his own reading (or hearing)of foreign poetry.
As far as Gylfaginning is concerned, the only parts that are not clearlybased on native oral sources are the Prologue and the occasional references
to Troy in Gylfaginning itself. These also have for this reason been
supposed to be not Snorri’s work, but there is no need to think him
incapable of such writing. The prologue indeed seems to me a masterly
theoretical account of the origin of heathen religions which may in someways be historically accurate. The theological opening, the brief accountTHE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

11of geography, and the references to Troy all go back ultimately to Latin
writings, and the author shows some knowledge of contemporary
theological controversies, e.g. about the doctrine of creation ex nihilo
and the limits of human reason (see Faulkes 1983). But he is not himself
attempting to reconcile reason and revelation and is not himself ascholastic writer. And again there are no quotations or verbal correspondences that can be pointed to to indicate precisely what texts wereused as sources, and the most likely thing is that Snorri gained all thisknowledge orally from people who had read Latin works—either formallyin a school (at Oddi?) or informally by talking to learned men, such as
Styrmir, a man of Latin learning who was known to Snorri. The geography,
it has recently been pointed out by Rudolf Simek (1990, 189–92), could
easily have been acquired from looking at a map or diagram of the worldsuch as existed in many medieval MSS, rather than from reading a Latin
text. In any case, many pieces of classical geography and indeed theology
had been translated into Icelandic in the twelfth century, though it isunnecessary to suppose that Snorri had read any of these translations
himself. The references to Troy, as has been pointed out above, show no
detailed knowledge of the story, indeed conflict at many points with thestandard Latin versions, and it looks as though the whole immigration
theory was borrowed from Skjƒldunga saga with only slight additions
based on Snorri’s own reasoning or imagination and a smattering of
information derived from talking with someone who did know the Troy
story. It seems to me inconceivable that anyone of Latin learning could
be so ignorant of this story.
Neither the theory of euhemerism nor the allegorical application of
Norse myth to classical legend need be based on reading Latin works ortranslations, since the essential ideas were available in native works before
Snorri’s time (the allegory used in the Epilogus (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar
1931, 87–8) is strikingly lacking in any tendency to provide moral
interpretations of the allegory: the writer simply makes Norse mythological stories perversions of events in the Troy story, almost treating
myths as romans à clef, so that one set of pseudo-historical events
corresponds to another. If the details of the Troy story in Snorra Edda
are based on a written source at all, they are probably based on a versionof Trójumanna saga (and possibly Breta sƒgur), which would then join
the list of early learned vernacular histories used by Snorri such asSkjƒldunga saga, rather than on any Latin version; but it is doubtful
whether they are based on knowledge of a written text at all. One only
has to read the books of writers who did use Latin sources, such as Saxo

12

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

Grammaticus or Óláfr hvítaskáld to see how different Snorri is, both instyle and content, and the difference is presumably that he based most of
his work on native traditions and had not read widely in Latin.
The prologue and Gylfaginning also use Háleygjatal and Ynglingataland maybe other Norse genealogies, and these are also among Snorri’s
sources for Heimskringla. In that work he also made great use of skaldic
verse, though in a different way from in Skáldskaparmál—here it is assources for historical facts, and he discusses their usefulness in his
prologue, where he also speaks of the accounts of learned men, some ofwhich may have been oral. Heimskringla is however largely based on
historical writings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including Ari,
Eiríkr Oddson’s Hryggjarstykki, Ágrip, the earliest lives of St Óláfr andÓláfr Tryggvason, and maybe those of other kings; and also the compilations Fagrskinna, Morkinskinna, Orkneyinga saga and Færeyingasaga. All these were vernacular histories except the two sagas of Óláfr
Tryggvason by Oddr Snorrason and Gunnlaugr Leifsson.
It seems to me significant that Snorri nowhere refers to Latin writers or
claims (even falsely) to be quoting them. He does not even, as far as I
remember, quote from the Bible. Most medieval authors make somepretensions to Latin learning and air whatever authorities they haveknowledge of, and include at least tags and snippets of quotations. Snorri
nowhere even mentions the name of a Latin writer (except Sæmundr thewise, who is not referred to as an author), though he does name some ofhis vernacular sources, and quotes from them extensively and almost
verbatim on occasions.
He probably did not in fact use Gunnlaugr’s life of Óláfr Tryggvason,and one might speculate that this was because of its hagiographicalapproach which Snorri may have found unacceptable, tendentious, or
simply unusable; or because of its language. He did make use of Oddr’s
life, of which two versions of a translation survive, though the passages
Snorri has used are not close to either version. He may have used theoriginal, which is now lost, or possibly the discrepancies are because hemade free use of the translations. But it may be that his variations indicatethat he did not in fact have access to the original, or that there was a third
vernacular version that he made use of. In any case this is the only Latinbook which there is any likelihood that Snorri used, and it is doubtful. It
is striking that it appears that he made no use of Sæmundr the Wise,
Theodoricus, Historia Norwegiæ or Adam of Bremen. Snorri must be
the only major medieval historiographer of whom it can be said that hemade hardly any use of Latin sources. And it is not because there wereTHE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

13

not any available in Iceland and Norway, nor because he had any aversion
to using written prose sources. Similarly, it is very surprising that Snorri
appears to have made no use of Saxo Grammaticus’ work in his Edda
(Saxo seems to have made free use of Icelandic sources), though it mustsurely have been available in Iceland, even though the work does notseem to have existed in many medieval manuscripts (some scholars haveargued for the use of Saxo in Kn‡tlinga saga, though others (e.g. Weibull
1976) have posited a common source). Again, it may be that Snorri did
not like Saxo’s style and approach, but it is perhaps more probable thathe simply couldn’t read it.
Egils saga, which many have thought also to be by Snorri, used similarsources to Heimskringla; in addition a version of Landnámabók may havebeen used. With the events that are supposed to have taken place inEngland, it is striking how great are the discrepancies from English
sources, and it seems unlikely that the author had access to any documents
either in Anglo-Saxon or Latin. There is no evidence that Snorri in anyof his writings used the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: such dates as correspond
to English sources are derived from Anglo-Saxon regnal lists andgenealogies, which he certainly had access to, but which he could ofcourse have used without having a knowledge of the language in which
they were written, since the information he takes from them is mostly
just proper names and figures. An example is his statement in Heimskringla
I, 153 that King Æ›elstan ruled for 14 years, 8 weeks and 3 days. This
was not derived from any narrative source, but from a version of thecompilation of royal genealogies and regnal lists found in Árni Magnússon’s
copy of material from the lost Codex Resenius (Faulkes 1977, 187).
If we turn from the content of Snorri’s writings to his style and rhetoric,
he is of course noted for his use of the so-called ‘native’ saga-style—restrained, free of over-blown rhetoric, sparing in use of figures of speech.
In fact many have supposed that he was in large measure responsible forthe development of the saga-style as we know it in the family sagas, andfor Icelandic prose having avoided following the path of imitation of
Latin prose style. Just as Saxo Grammaticus gives an impression of what
Gylfaginning would have been like if it had been written by an
ecclesiastically trained scholar, so Oddr Snorrason’s Óláfs saga and theextracts from Gunnlaugr Leifsson’s underline the difference between thestyle of secular Icelanders and that of ecclesiastical ones; Sverris saga
also has a very different style and approach from Heimskringla. I believe
the difference is largely one of dependence on Latin models. In fact in
Heimskringla one of the ways of distinguishing passages derived from

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THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

Snorri’s ecclesiastical predecessors’ work from his own is by the style—certain passages that he has taken verbatim from earlier histories areeasily distinguished from his own writing by their more latinate stylewhich betray their clerical origin. I think it would scarcely be possible
for a writer trained in Latin grammar and rhetoric to write as Snorri does;
Latin style was held in such high regard in the Middle Ages that anyone
who was able to reproduce it could not have avoided it. It is not just that
Snorri favours the ‘humble style’ like many other thirteenth century
writers; he does not seem to have a high, rhetorical style, and rarely uses
either metaphor or symbolism—except in his poetry, which like otherskaldic verse, makes extensive use of figures of speech. Snorri does notmake use of loan-words or tags of Latin origin, and there is not even in
his case any reason to suppose the knowledge of florilegia or anthologies
of Latin epigrams or poems to explain any echoes of Latin literature. He
does not parade his learning—he may have had little to parade.
I would like to pause for a moment on the name Edda. I and others
recently have returned to the old view that the most likely origin of thename of Snorri’s work is that he himself coined the term on the basis of
the Latin word edo on the analogy of the derivation of kredda from credo,a derivation which is transparent from the account of ﬁrándr’s kredda inFæreyinga saga which Snorri certainly knew. The word Edda would thenbe a deprecatory or hypocoristic term for ‘a little ars poetica’ just as
kredda means ‘a sort of creed—but not the official one’. The main
objection to this derivation is not that Snorri would have been incapableof making it, but that edo does not ordinarily have to do with compositionof poetry, though it can refer to the production (‘giving forth’) of literarywork. I think this pseudo-learned formation represents just the sort ofpartial understanding of a learned language that one might expect fromsomeone on the fringes of the world of learning, who was not over-awed
by it but had a limited understanding of it.
A similar smattering of learning appears in Snorri’s double use of theword fornafn—once as a grammatical term, once as the supposed Icelandic
equivalent of a rhetorical one. He has only half absorbed the concept. This isanalogical with the way in which Snorri has cast Skáldskaparmál and
Háttatal in the form of Latin treatises, but without maintaining the formright through, which shows only partial absorption of the methods of thelearned treatise. Snorri emulates learned Latin treatises as modern philologists
emulate modern scientific treatises—without reading them (and he gets
some of the concepts wrong, as philologists get relativity or the laws ofthermodynamics wrong; so also Snorri gets the Troy story wrong).

THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

15

Snorri’s prologues, as has been pointed out by Sverrir Tómasson in his
recent book on the prologues in Icelandic writings (1988), are not as
deeply influenced by the conventions of Latin learned prefaces as theprologues in other Icelandic books. That to Snorra Edda, particularly, isby no means normal in its content and style; the various versions of the
prologue to Heimskringla and Óláfs saga helga refer to some of the topics
normal in a learned preface, particularly in the account of sources andauthorities, but have nothing about the purpose or origin of the work,
and Snorri’s only apologies are for talking too much about Icelanders
and for using poems as sources. The latter point shows some acquaintancewith current learned concerns about the relative reliability of verse andprose as sources for historical writing, and Snorri shows his usual
unabashed independence from normal learned conventions in insistingthat poems can be a source for historical truth if there is reason to thinkthat they are contemporary and uncorrupted in oral tradition—like manyothers of Snorri’s attitudes, so unexpected in a medieval writer that it
tempts us to call it an anticipation of modern attitudes. Again, the prologue
to Sverris saga shows us what the prologue to a historical work by areally learned writer should be like.
Snorri, it seems, was not ‘learned’ in the sense of having had an
education in Latin literature. He gained his learning, his knowledge ofhistorical and theological concepts, from Ari, Skjƒldunga saga and othervernacular Icelandic histories of the preceding generation. De Vries(1964–7, II 226) has suggested that there may also have been among his
sources for both Heimskringla and Skáldskaparmál notes, schedae, bySæmundr the wise, though it would be difficult to demonstrate this.
So much for content and style. Let us now consider briefly Snorri’s
attitudes of mind, the way he presents and interprets his material. His
normal interpretation of myth, when he interprets it at all, is euhemeristic,that is he, like many medieval historiographers, assumes that gods andtheir deeds did have objective existence, but that they were really humans
who came to be worshipped as gods after their deaths. This concept iswidespread in Latin mythography, but was also well established invernacular Icelandic writing before Snorri’s time, and he could well have
got it from Ari and Skjƒldunga saga. Only rarely does Snorri flirt withother kinds of interpretation, such as allegory—historical allegory in the
Epilogue in Skáldskaparmál, moral allegory in the names of some of theÁsynjur in Gylfaginning and in the story of ﬁórr and Útgar›aloki. The
absence of moral allegory and the reluctance to interpret myths morally
at all is one of the most striking differences between Snorri as mythographer

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THE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

and most writers in other languages, not only Latin but Anglo-Saxon(Ælfric and Wulfstan). Aetiology, etymology and word-play are Snorri’s
preferred ways of interpreting the origins of both myths and kennings.
Just as the closest parallel to his account of the kenning is in an author,
Aristotle, that he cannot possibly have read, so the most similar treatmentof mythology is found in Hyginus, another author that it is inconceivablethat Snorri read, whether or not he knew Latin: the similarity must
therefore again be coincidental. The third Vatican mythographer (thetwelfth-century Alberich of London) he is not like in his manner andtone. Nor does Snorri use the other interpretation of heathen gods belovedof ecclesiastics, that they are really devils trying to deceive human beings
into false worship. Although deception is at the heart of Gylfaginning as
concealment is Snorri’s characterisation of the underlying nature of thekenning, the deception is the trickery of Loki-like figures rather than thatof the devil, and I am not persuaded that the concept of demonic deception
is to be found in Snorri’s work. It is the same with his historiography:
like the sagas of Icelanders, Heimkringla seems to lack a clear ideology,
or else it adopts a stance of careful detachment. It is not only secular but
lacks the universal characteristic of Latin writers, a clear moral andpolitical standpoint. His characters, moreover, are quite unlike those eitherof the saints’ lives or of ecclesiastical history.
It is not that Snorri is not an intellectual writer, or that he is unlearned
and naive. But his learning seems to be exclusively in native historiography and poetry. He is actually rather ill-informed about both classicalstory and classical theory. But his thinking is analytical and in its own
way didactic. Skáldskaparmál is written to instruct young poets. But his
habits of mind and way of thinking are not those of the cleric educated in
Latin, though parts of the prologue to his Edda come quite close to
ecclesiastical thought. Impressive though the parallels to it in scholastic
theological writers are, he remains much less abstract in his thought thanthey are, and again the most striking thing is the total lack of quotations
or tags from Latin authors. The most there is is a distant reminiscence of
passing remarks of such writers as Abelard, Honorius Augustodunensis,
or Guillaume de Conches. Snorri does not think like a scholastic
theologian, and it is absurd to think that he read any scholastic writers.
He knowledge of their ideas, such as it is, must come at second handfrom hearing his compatriots preaching and commenting on sacred texts.
I do not think that the ordering of his material in Skáldskaparmál, or thatin the prologue to his Edda, is so strikingly like that of medieval Latin
writers that it is necessary to assume that he had read them. His order isTHE SOURCES OF SKÁLDSKAPARMÁL

17

logical, and so is theirs, and thus they are similar. He does not write as anencyclopaedist; he is not explicating the ‘truth’ about the universe, nor
the concepts about the universe he attributes to heathen poets; he uses
aetiology not to explain the origins of things, nor to explain what heathens
thought the origins of things in general were, but to explain archaic
poetical references. He is explicating poetry, and his manner and method
seem to me to be totally Icelandic.
I think it hardly possible that Snorri could have read writers like Peter
Comestor, Honorius Augustodunensis and Guillaume de Conches,
extracted material from them to use in his writings, and remained totally
untouched by them in other ways (stylistically, in attitudes and so on).
But is is a question whether in the Middle Ages it was possible to develop
a facility for abstract thought and analysis without a Latin background,to be able to handle ideas and become self-conscious as a writer withouta school training. There is a limit to the possibility of retaining independent
habits of thought in spite of extensive reading. Most writers about Old
Icelandic literature still assume that there was a native secular culture inmany respects separate from the ecclesiastical Latin culture of medieval
Europe, and recently the tendency has been to claim that Snorri
participated in the latter as much as in the former. I would like to question
this claim. Unlike Latin writers, Snorri’s writing, in modern critical jargon,
is not metaphorical but metonymical; in Schiller’s terminology he is naive
rather than sentimental. He is neither a theologian nor a mythologer, but
a historian in all his writings.

References:
Dronke, Ursula and Peter. 1977. ‘The Prologue of the Prose Edda: Explorationsof a Latin Background’. Sjötíu ritger›ir helga›ar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20.
júlí 1977. Reykjavík, 153–76.
Clunies Ross, Margaret. 1987. Skáldskaparmál. Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica
and medieval theories of language. Odense.
Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. 1931. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen.
Faral, E. 1924. Les Arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle. Paris.
Faulkes, Anthony. 1977. ‘Genealogies and regnal lists in a manuscript in Resen’slibrary’. Sjötíu ritger›ir helga›ar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. júlí 1977. Reykjavík,
177–90.
Faulkes, Anthony. 1978–9. ‘Descent from the gods’. Mediaeval Scandinavia 11,
92–125.

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Faulkes, Anthony. 1983. ‘Pagan Sympathy: Attitudes to Heathendom in the
Prologue to Snorra Edda’. In Edda. A Collection of Essays. Ed. R. J. Glendinningand Haraldur Bessason. Manitoba, 283–314.
Flateyjarbók I–IV. 1944–5. Ed. Sigur›ur Nordal. Reykjavík.
Halldór Halldórsson. 1975. Old Icelandic heiti in Modern Icelandic. Reykjavík.
Halm, C. 1863. Rhetores Latini minores. Leipzig.
Heimskringla I–III. 1941–51. Ed. Bjarni A›albjarnarson. Íslenzk fornrit XXVI–XXVIII. Reykjavík.
PE = (Poetic) Edda. 1962. Die Lieder des Codex Regius. I. Text. Ed. Hans Kuhn.
Heidelberg.
Simek, Rudolf. 1990. Altnordische Kosmographie. Berlin.
Sverrir Tómasson. 1988. Formálar íslenskra sagnaritara á mi›öldum. Reykjavík.
Vries, J. de. 1964–7. Altnordische Literaturgeschichte I–II. Berlin.
Weibull, Curt. 1976. ‘Knytlingasagan och Saxo. En källkritisk undersökning’.
Scandia 42, 5–31.

Originally published in Snorri Sturluson. Kolloquium anläßlich der 750.
Wiederkehr seines Todestages. Ed. Alois Wolf. Gunter Narr Verlag
Tübingen 1993, 59–76.