Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar
Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar ("The Saga of Haakon Haakonarson") or Hákonar saga gamla ("The Saga of Old Haakon") is an Old Norse Kings' Saga, telling the story of the life and reign of King Haakon Haakonarson of Norway. Content and style. The circumstances of the saga's composition are exceptionally well understood, as they are recorded in some detail in "Sturlunga saga" (particularly "Sturlu þáttr"): the saga was written in the 1260s (apparently 1264–65) by the Icelandic historian and chieftain Sturla Þórðarson (nephew of the noted historian Snorri Sturluson). Sturla Þórðarson was at the court of Haakon's  son Magnus Lagabøte when Magnus learned of his father's death in Kirkwall in Orkney. Magnus is said to have immediately commissioned Sturla to write his father's saga. This was awkward for Sturla: 'King Hákon had instigated the death of Sturla's uncle, Snorri Sturluson, in 1241. Sturla rightly regarded Hákon as his most dangerous enemy, for he had steadfastly resisted the king's subjugation of Iceland to Norway, which was accomplished in 1262–1264. Skúli Bárðarson (d. 1240), Hákon's most dangerous rival for royal power, was the maternal grandfather of Magnús, who supervised the composition of his father 's biography, much as King Sverrir is said to have "sat over" Karl Jónsson as the Icelandic abbot wrote Sverrir's biography'. Manuscripts and transmission. The saga survives in three main redactions, preserved primarily in the manuscripts Eirspennill, Codex Frisianus, and Flateyjarbók. However, there is not yet a satisfactory stemma of the saga, as the relationships between its manuscripts are complex. According to Kari Ellen Gade's edition of the verse in the saga in the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages edition, the key manuscripts of the saga are: