{"id":12252,"date":"2019-03-22T18:18:31","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T22:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12252"},"modified":"2019-03-22T18:18:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T22:18:31","slug":"song-of-the-vikings-by-nancy-marie-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12252","title":{"rendered":"‘Song of the Vikings,’ by Nancy Marie Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The famous phrase, \u201cThe history of the world is but the biography of great men,\u201d was inspired by this book [Heimskringla]: Snorri is indeed a deft biographer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


Any Viking aficionado <\/strong>can\u2019t help being aware of Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic chieftain who penned Heimskringla<\/em>, the sagas of the Norwegian kings, and the Prose Edda, which tells us almost everything we know about Norse mythology. He is an essential figure in the lore \u2013 Tom Shippey called him \u201cthe most influential writer of the Middle Ages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, although he has a saga we can read, most of us don\u2019t know a lot about his life (the saga is rather sad and bloody, and was written by a relation who disliked him. I confess I haven\u2019t read it). So Nancy Marie Brown, who wrote Ivory Vikings<\/em>, which I reviewed not long ago, has done us a service by writing his biography for a modern audience in Song of the Viking<\/a>s<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Song of the Vikings <\/em>follows Snorri\u2019s life story, and integrates it with commentary on his important works (some of the attributions have been questioned, but Brown seems to accept them). Thus we get insight on the events of his life through considering the things he wrote that appear to have been informed by them. For instance, the content of Heimskringla<\/em> bears witness to Snorri\u2019s ambivalent attitude toward the institution of kingship \u2013 he was somewhat star-struck by kings (and may have collaborated to subvert the Icelandic republic for a Norwegian king), but he had bitter experience of royal capriciousness. His narrative of Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, may relate to some bad years Iceland suffered following devastating volcanic eruptions, and also the violence that accompanied the breakdown of his own (somewhat cynical) schemes to make himself \u201cthe uncrowned king of Iceland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book begins with an anecdote about J.R.R. Tolkien and\nC.S. Lewis, and we learn much about the amazing influence of Snorri\u2019s work\nthroughout the world\u2019s literature and art \u2013 for better and worse. This is all\nthe more remarkable because his books weren\u2019t even known outside Iceland until\naround the beginning of the 17th<\/sup> Century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was very impressed by Song of the Vikings<\/em>. Any reader interested in Norse history or myth will gain many new insights. Author Brown is a good writer and an impressive scholar. I recommend this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The famous phrase, \u201cThe history of the world is but the biography of great men,\u201d was inspired by this book [Heimskringla]: Snorri is indeed a deft biographer. Any Viking aficionado can\u2019t help being aware of Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic chieftain who penned Heimskringla, the sagas of the Norwegian kings, and the Prose Edda, which tells … Continue reading ‘Song of the Vikings,’ by Nancy Marie Brown<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[1265,1973,2607,2619,3272],"class_list":["post-12252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-reviews","tag-iceland","tag-nancy-marie-brown","tag-snorri-sturlusson","tag-song-of-the-vikings","tag-vikings"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}