Fagrskinna, a Catalogue of the Kings of Norway: A Translation with Introduction and Notes

Book Description
This volume includes the first complete translation of a thirteenth-century vernacular history of Norway from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. An immediate source for the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson, it is a central text in the Old Norse genre of Kings’ sagas. It includes extensive citation of skaldic verses, some of them preserved nowhere else. This translation preserves many of the metrical features of this complex verse form, which are explained in the commentary along with aspects of historical and cultural interest arising from the text. The introduction places the text within the Kings’ saga tradition and examines the particular concerns of its anonymous author. The volume will be of use to historians and those interested in Old Norse literary history.

About the Author
Alison Finlay, D.Phil. (1994), University of Oxford, is Senior Lecturer in English at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of articles on Old Norse literature and translator of The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Men of Hitardale (Hisarlik, 2000).


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The Fagrskinna was likely produced at the instigation of King Hákon Hákonareson of Norway (d. 1262), says Finlay (English, U. of London), to supply a complementary account of the earlier history of his kingdom, using similar contemporary accounts as both a model and a source of information. Unlike the family sagas, she says, it seems to have been composed by a conservative arranger of earlier written sources, and drew little if anything from oral tradition except skaldic poems. To support her translation of the 130 chapters and additions, she includes a glossary of both Norse terms and English ones she uses in the translation, illustrations and maps, and indexes of places and peoples and of people. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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