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Visions of Sovereignty
in Snorri Sturluson's
Heimskringla

Richard Gaskins
Published online: 05 Nov 2010.

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Sturluson's Heimskringla, Scandinavian Journal of History, 23:3-4, 173-188,
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Visions of Sovereignty in Snorri Sturluson’s
Heimskringla

Richard Gaskins*

Nothing today is more greatly needed than clarity upon ancient notions: sovereignty, liberty,

authority, personality – these are the words of which we want alike the history and the

definition; or rather, we want the history because its substance is in fact the definition.

(Harold J. Laski, Foundations of Sovereignty)

1

1. Preliminary visions

Lurking off the Atlantic coast of Gibraltar, fresh from winning his fourteenth battle
and contemplating a voyage to Jerusalem, O´la´fr Haraldsson awakens to recount a
remarkable dream:

. . . that a man of commanding appearance . . . approached him and spoke to
him, bidding him give up his intention of proceeding further out into the
world. “Return to your own possessions, because you shall be king of Norway
forever.” He understood this dream to mean that he would be king in the land,
and his descendants kings after him for a long time.

2

O

´ la´fr was already called “king” by his crew, a custom started in his twelfth year, as

he began his Viking career. Snorri tells us that this was the practice for warriors
“who were of royal birth”; and while someone else actually held the oar, “Still he
was king over the crew.”

3

* The author expresses his thanks to Sverre Bagge, Peter Riesenberg, and Vilhja´lmur A´rnason for

helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Any misinterpretations or errors that remain are

entirely the responsibility of the author. A preliminary version was presented at the Tenth

International Saga Conference in Trondheim, Norway, on 6 August, 1997.

Richard Gaskins, born 1946, PhD (Philosophy), is Professor and Director of the Legal Studies Program, Brandeis

University, Massachusetts, USA. His published works include Environmental Accidents (1989) and Burdens of

Proof in Modern Discourse (1993). He is currently carrying out research on environmental policy, and political

theory.

Address: Legal Studies Program, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110 , USA

1

(London, 1921), p. 314.

2

OH, 18. (See list of abbreviations on p. 188)

3

Ibid., 4.

Scand. J. History 23

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Snorri follows the same convention in recounting this tale in Heimskringla, where

he refers to the aspiring ruler as “O

´ la´fr konungr”. An even more exalted status

awaits this warrior who eventually becomes O´la´fr helgi [St. Olaf]. But let us stay
longer with the dream, this vision that Snorri dutifully reports. It reminds us of two
equally remarkable visions surrounding O´la´fr’s predecessors. Haraldr ha´rfagri’s
birth was preceded by his mother’s vision of a great tree:

The lowest portion of the trunk was red as blood, but from there on up the

stem was fair and green, and that betokened the flowering of his kingdom. And
above that the tree was white, which signified that he would become old and
hoary. The branches and twigs of the tree foretold about his offspring who
were to spread over all the land; and all the kings of Norway ever since his
time are descended from him.

4

Dreams did not come quite so readily to Ha´lfdan svarti; but after professional

advice sends him to the pigsty, he produces another regal dream for Snorri’s
narrative:

It seemed to him that he had the longest hair of any man and that this hair was
all in ringlets, some touching the ground, some reaching to the middle of his
leg, some to his knees, some to his hip or middle, some reaching down no
farther than his neck, whilst some sprouted out of his skull like little horns. But
his curls were of all colors, with one lock exceeding all others in beauty,
brightness, and length. He related this dream to Þorleifr, and Þorleifr

interpreted it in this wise that a great line of descendants would come from
him, and that they would govern the land with great distinction, though not all
equally so; but that one would arise out of his line who would be greater and
nobler than all the rest. And it is the opinion of all that this lock betokened
Holy King O´la´fr.

5

2. What are these visions about?
These literal visions of dominant kings blend easily into Snorri’s sagas, but they also
raise deeper questions going beyond events in the text. Behind his sweeping account
of Norwegian rulers, what was Snorri’s implicit understanding of sovereignty? Lacking
access to the theories of later political writers, Snorri transmitted vivid, crafted
images of authority in action, covering a surprising range of social and political

functions. With the hindsight of modern political theory, such images document the
elusive prehistory of “sovereignty” as a formal concept – a topic that haunted
political speculation in Europe for some three centuries before Jean Bodin
published his theories in 1576.

6

Snorri’s work, in both content and narrative form,

4

Hha´r, 44.

5

HS, 7.

6

F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1986) emphasizes the term’s “long preparation or

prehistory”, a process “reflecting the slow advance of mutual adjustment between a society and its

state” (pp. 24–25). During the three centuries prior to Bodin, says Hinsley, “men now possessed the

intellectual ingredients necessary for the notion of sovereign power – more than that, they frequently

displayed the need or the wish to give expression to it . . .” (p. 71). On Bodin, see below, note 11.

Scand. J. History 23

174 Richard Gaskins

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directs the modern imagination toward the dynamic source of later notions. It

sketches a remarkably full portrait of supreme authority in its diverse functions,
depicting the secular roots of final judgments concerning human affairs.

Beyond filling in this prehistory of conceptual development, Snorri’s visions

remind 20th-century readers of possibilities that may have been buried in the
reigning definitions of sovereignty. We should welcome these insights at a time
when the conventional boundaries of sovereignty are being stretched beyond
recognition by the force of current events – by new challenges to the nation-state,

by ethnic conflicts within artificial political boundaries, and by a sudden vacuum of
authority in the international order as former power blocs disintegrate.

7

Most

important, Snorri captures the elements of supreme authority prior to the historical
achievements in state-building that motivated writers like Bodin and Hobbes to
formalize the theory of sovereignty. Indeed we may profit from the fact that

Snorri’s angle of vision is different from theirs, taking us back to a period before the
rise of the modern nation-state, to that part of Europe where political development
came later than anywhere else.

Snorri’s historical remove allows us to disentangle the core element of

sovereignty – some inchoate notion of highest secular authority within a given
territory – from the state institutions that eventually came to administer the
sovereign role. What can we say about such final authority, removed from the
familiar administrative structures of nation-states? How did it appear to thoughtful
men like Snorri? We may find their viewpoint especially relevant to current
anxieties about the global order, in a world that still lacks institutions of
international sovereignty.

8

Snorri stimulates the attentive reader to pose broad

questions about the difference between supreme authority and mere power, under
social conditions where no established state can presume to issue final,
unappealable judgments.

3. The problem of sovereignty

There are no settled definitions of “sovereignty” applicable to all times, places, and

ideologies. For purposes of this paper, the word designates various actions
representing highest or final social authority, rooted in the secular world.

9

Snorri’s

contribution to this general topic must be carefully solicited, since he predates by
more than three centuries the formal concept of sovereignty associated with early
modern thinkers. Twentieth-century readers, understandably, see the problem of
sovereignty in conceptual terms derived from those thinkers. Thus our questions
about current events are framed by a sense of loss: something we assumed to be

7

For current issues in state-based sovereignty, see H. Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors

(Princeton, 1994), and R. B. J. Walker & S. H. Mendlovitz, eds. Contending Sovereignties: Redefining

Political Community (Boulder, 1990).

8

For a historical treatment of these anxieties, see J. Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge,

1995), ch. 6.

9

The best short introduction is S. Benn, “Sovereignty”, in P. Edwards, ed. Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(New York, 1967), vol. 7/8, pp. 501–505. My definition follows Hinsley: “The idea of sovereignty

was the idea that there is a final and absolute political authority in the political community; and

everything that needs to be added to complete the definition is added if this statement is continued

in the following words: ‘and no final and absolute authority exists elsewhere’ ”, op. cit., p. 26.

Scand. J. History 23

Visions of Sovereignty 175

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permanent now shows signs of wearing thin. We need to remember, however, that

classic theories of sovereignty were themselves historically shaped, emerging during
a fierce struggle between the ascendant absolute state and competing oracles of
supreme authority.

10

When Bodin wove the term souverainete´ into his political speculations, he was

attempting to describe a unique, unappealable authority inherent in “the body
politic”, abstracted from the realities of power that separated rulers from their
subjects. It remained for Hobbes, a century later, to associate that absolute

authority with commands of the state – that invented power, variously imagined as a
supreme council or individual, which Hobbes famously derived from contractual
agreement of individuals in the “state of nature.”

11

Most important in these classic definitions is the implied or express assertion of

what sovereignty is not. Snorri anticipated these efforts to define a mode of authority

distinct from divine power exercised by a single god or pantheon of gods. His vision
likewise distinguished the utterly impersonal authority of destiny or fate, along with
later doctrines of natural law residing beyond human authority. “Sovereignty”
captures something distinct from these divine, mythical, or transcendent orders; put

in positive terms, it is supreme authority vested in human agency. It is not, however,
to be reduced wholly to the actions of an absolute king or ruler, or even a ruling
oligarchy. Despite the strong arguments advanced by Hobbes in favor of monarchy
as the wisest mode of sovereignty, theorists from Rousseau, to Madison, to Hegel
have associated sovereignty more generally with normative structures (consisting of
laws, moral rules, constitutions), to which the particular will of kings or legislators is
clearly subordinated.

The conceptual contributions of Bodin and Hobbes belong to an era of strategic

theoretical reflection. Their notion of sovereignty was designed to further a
particular goal within contemporary social conflicts: to separate the mode of
authority associated with emerging nation-states from divine law and natural law,
from “the state of nature” and “the sense of the community”, and from naked

power and power tempered by pre-existing juridical norms. Their purpose, by all
accounts, was to promote a stabilizing force that would bring order to their
respective strife-ridden societies. By projecting the formal concept of sovereignty,
they launched a powerful theoretical device that eventually transcended its

historical context. After Hobbes, it is practically impossible for thinkers to dissociate
sovereignty from the political institutions of the state.

12

We will never know how many conceptual possibilities inhabited the remote

corners of Snorri’s imagination. By turning to his work, we put intervening theories
aside, thinking our way back to a time before “sovereignty” became a formal
principle. In place of conceptual analysis, we seek access rather to certain core

functional elements of supreme authority.

13

In this paper I offer concrete examples –

10

See Bartelson, op. cit., ch. 5.

11

On Bodin and Hobbes, see Hinsley, op. cit., pp. 120–125, 141–152.

12

Ibid.

13

This socio-functional approach to conceptual history parallels the method defended by Quentin

Skinner (“Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” in J. Tully, ed. Meaning and Context:

Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Cambridge, 1988), although I do not share Skinner’s Wittgensteinian

premises. Cf. Bartelson, op cit., pp. 58–69.

Scand. J. History 23

176 Richard Gaskins

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call them visions – of authority in action: dynamic anticipations of that highest

secular “court of appeal,” beyond which human beings may not turn in managing
the social order.

Snorri is by no means the only possible source for such speculation. Well before

Bodin and Hobbes, for example, prescient discussions appeared in the 13th-century
writings of Marsilius of Padua, a strong anti-papalist and forerunner of
Machiavelli.

14

In Snorri, however, we find powerful pre-theoretical images,

analogies, and dramatic episodes that support the later construction of formal

concepts. To appropriate these images, of course, I must presume that certain
conceptual continuities link Snorri’s age to our own – that we are not trapped in
utterly separate mentalite´s, despite Steblin-Kamenskij’s forceful polemic.

15

At the

same time, the whole reason for starting down this road is to rediscover sovereignty
from an entirely new perspective, one that predates the rise of modern nation-

states.

4. Snorri’s account of sovereign functions

My reading of Heimskringla examines five recurring sociopolitical functions that
Snorri depicts through the actions of Norwegian kings. These royal activities
objectify Snorri’s references to supreme authority, even as they fulfill the saga

conventions of patterned conflict among powerful men. In their narrative
treatment, these five functions may be thought of as complex ideas looking for
suitable “agents.”

16

Given the absence of an adequate conceptual vocabulary, such

notions had to be embodied in saga action laced with political significance.

Stitching together old stories about Norwegian kings may seem like a curious

project for an Icelander of the early 13th century, coming from a society with
neither king nor state apparatus. Perhaps there were immediate benefits for Snorri’s

reputation in Norway, but surely too there would have been Icelandic interest in
exploring broader political forces through the saga-like presentations of a craftsman
like Snorri. A stateless society cannot ignore problems of authority, the common
good, and social order; it should not have to wait additional centuries for formal

theoreticians to appear on the scene.

Whatever the intended purpose of Snorri’s work, the textual evidence suggests he

mastered this functional perspective on authority and thereby managed, through
his accounts of historical kings, to engage broad issues of common welfare, social
justice, and stability of the political order. Rather than elucidating kingship as such,

he illustrated central “uses of authority,”

17

all of which point in the direction of

future theories of sovereignty. The five functions discussed below all entered into

14

See A. Black, Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 1992). Even prior to Marsilius, John

of Salisbury explored the juridical self-sufficiency of an entirely secular political order.

15

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, The Saga Mind (Odense, 1973).

16

I do not mean simply historical agents, but literary or emblematic actors, who straddle the

sociological distinction between agency and structure. See A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society:

Outline of a Theory of Structuration (Cambridge, 1984).

17

Cf. Skinner, op. cit., p. 55, who emphasizes the uses of words in conceptual discourse, but whose

method would support my functional approach to the representational discourse in sagas.

Scand. J. History 23

Visions of Sovereignty 177

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later conceptual debates, in part through their historical contribution to state-

building activities.

18

(1) Promoting socioeconomic prosperity. While far from asserting strict causal

connections, Snorri often associates the ruler’s conduct with cycles of socio-
economic advance or decline. The precise nature of this link is important to Snorri,
who recognizes both cosmic and practical forces binding the ruler to the economic
health of the larger society. While not rejecting the possible evidence of divine
judgments, Snorri looks for secular reasons behind a particular regime’s success or

failure. Where prevailing traditions may speak in terms of fate, Snorri sees collective
outcomes as linear consequences of the ruler’s concrete policies – harsh methods of
tax collection, failure to protect coastal populations from foreign raids, ill-advised
agricultural ventures, over-extended foreign campaigns.

The pattern is first noted in Ynglinga saga, concerning O

¨ nundr Yngvarsson, who

was “most beloved of all kings.” “In his days there was great prosperity in Sweden”,
where it seems that O

¨ nundr’s ambitious program of timber management and road-

building was as much the cause as the effect of his success.

19

Later in this saga

Snorri digs deeper into the connection between rulers and community prosperity.

While acknowledging that the ruler’s function is both symbolic and practical, Snorri
differentiates clearly between these two modes of explanation in his story about the
Swedish ruler, O

´ la´fr tre´telgja, another leader who made his mark through shrewd

forest management.

A great multitude . . . heard that O´la´fr tre´telgja had developed good
conditions for living in Vermaland and so great a multitude drifted there that

the land could not give them sustenance. There came a very bad season and
famine. They laid the blame for that on the king, as the Swedes are wont to
ascribe to their king good seasons or bad. . . . Those of the Swedes who were
wiser attributed the famine to the fact that the inhabitants were too numerous
for the land to support and they believed that it was not the fault of the king.

20

On the other side of the balance sheet are the harsh conditions that are properly

attributed to bad ruling. In Haralds saga gra´feldar, Snorri passes judgment on the
contentious era when Norway was in the hands of the sons of Eir

õ

´kr blo´ðo¨x.

During the time when the sons of Gunnhildr ruled in Norway there were bad
seasons, and they became worse the longer they ruled, and the farmers
attributed that to the kings, and also complained that they were grasping and
treated the farmers harshly.

21

There is no reason to treat Snorri as a philosopher who formally rejects all

cosmic judgments on earthly rulers, as manifested in the fate of crops and livestock.
His vision, however, opens a path toward secular judgments, in which

18

For a classic overview of this historical research, see Ch. Tilley, ed. The Formation of National States in

Western Europe (Princeton, 1975).

19

Yngl., 33.

20

Ibid., 43.

21

Hgra´, 16.

Scand. J. History 23

178 Richard Gaskins

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socioeconomic conditions are traced back through a causal chain to the wisdom or

moral character of the ruler. To the extent these stories anticipate sovereignty, they
suggest a functional mode of supreme authority that unites administrative power,
community prosperity, and moral accountability. Administrative action need not be
reduced to policies of an established state, although historically the two have been
closely related. Historians of state-building processes in late medieval Europe could
find in Snorri’s secular approach a premonition of Weberian rationality – that
seemingly inexorable modern force that ultimately produced administrative

science, and that now threatens to engulf tradition-bound nation-states in the
process of global transformation.

22

(2) Declaring the law and abiding by it. In Ha´lfdanar saga svarta, Snorri records the

judgment that “King Ha´lfdan was a very wise man, both truthful and fair-dealing.
He both made laws and kept them himself. He compelled all to keep them; and in

order that violence should not overthrow the laws, he set up penalties. . . .”

23

The

authoring of laws was the key to political authority in classical political theory, and
it became the touchstone of sovereignty in modern thinkers like Bodin. Other
prominent law-givers mentioned in Snorri’s work include Ha´kon go´ði, who

sponsored the Gulaþingslo¨g and Frostaþingslo¨g;

24

while O´la´fr helgi’s legal prowess

earned the praise of the Icelandic skald Sighvatr Þo´rðarson:

Do thou, liege-lord, lay down
laws for all the land that
may prevail among all
men and stand forever!

25

The key issue here is the ruler’s reciprocal duty to abide by the authority of law,

which distinguishes the legitimacy of sovereign power from the mere exercise of will
or force.

26

Thus the Swedish king O´la´fr sænski Eir

õ

´ksson is condemned by “the

wisest men” in East Gautland for his underhanded dealings with Emundr af

Sko¨rum, law-speaker and spokesman for Norwegian settlers from points west: “And
all were agreed that the way the king behaved toward them was against all law and
decency.” This hapless king eventually seeks advice on retaining his royal office,
and is sternly advised to gather the populace to a meeting, and “do not behave with

obstinacy but offer to abide by the laws and the established rights of the
country. . . .”

27

Such reflexive obligations of supreme authority are sometimes eloquently

advanced by representatives of popular assemblies, speaking on behalf of customary
rights of fair treatment. As the participants in the Frostaþing tell Ha´kon go´ði,

22

On possible Weberian connections, see D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Stanford, 1995), pp.

59–66.

23

HS, 8.

24

HG, 11.

25

OH, 94.

26

Hinsley, op. cit., p. 107.

27

OH, 94.

Scand. J. History 23

Visions of Sovereignty 179

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We all want to follow you and to have you be our king so long as one of us

farmers who are at the assembly now is alive, if you, sire, will observe
moderation and ask only that of us which we can give you and which is within
reason.

28

But precisely which law was the ruler obliged to follow? The bold legal innovations
of Haraldr ha´rfagri were condemned by the farmers who were forced to surrender
ancestral lands – events cast in ignominy by numerous saga descriptions of the

exodus from Norway and subsequent settlement in Iceland. Haraldr was not a mere
law-breaker, but the creator of a new legal order, based on administrative reforms
that anticipate future state-building activities.

29

Confrontations over unpopular royal commands figure heavily throughout

Snorri’s work, especially in clashes between a traditional legal order, tied to heathen

practices, and the efforts by both O

´ la´frs to impose Christianity. O´la´fr Tryggvason is

told bluntly by the Trondheim chieftains, “that the king should not break the laws.
‘It is our wish, king, . . . that you make the sacrifice as other kings have done here
before you.’ ”

30

In these disputes, which echo the property battles instigated by

Haraldr ha´rfagri, the king deliberately imposes what he sees as a superior system of
law, higher than the mere customs of an earlier social order. Complaints of
lawlessness thus arise in strategic opposition to the king’s higher jurisdiction, and
are generally answered by the sort of idol-smashing O

´ la´fr unleashes on the

Trondheim chiefs. Even greater intolerance gets turned against sorcery and other
supernatural powers.

Snorri’s narrative presents the full tension between competing standards of

lawfulness. In these examples, a bid for higher political authority asserts the ruler’s
independence from both customary law and aristocratic traditions. Yet even a sui

generis legal standard binds its creator and guardian. In Snorri’s imagination, the
sheer novelty of the royal legal standard is more important here than the king’s
rhetorical appeal to divine authority. The new law speaks to a king’s aspirations to

exercise supreme authority, which nonetheless obeys its own legal standards.

31

At

the same time, sheer wilfulness and cruelty in Christianization overstep the line of
lawful supremacy, even on its own terms, as O´la´fr Tryggvason seems to
acknowledge in hearing Icelanders’ accounts of Þangbrandr prestr’s heavy-handed

conversion efforts in their country.

32

(3) Resolving disputes and combating factions. Complex disputes set the stage for nearly

everything we know about the culture that produced medieval sagas. All the kings
in Snorri’s work play familiar saga roles in protracted feuds, exploit rifts in the
population, harry the coastlines far and wide, and basically find their place in the
common matrix of social strife. But their behavior also reveals socially constructive
action, superimposed on the crafted tensions of saga narrative. The capacity to

28

HG, 15.

29

Hha´r, 6.

30

OT, 68.

31

See Hinsley, op. cit., p. 107.

32

OT, 84. I believe Snorri thought his christianizers were asserting divine authority for their own

strategic purposes of secular law-giving. But he did not suggest the irony of later historical

developments, as competition grew between Church interests and the power of secular monarchs.

Scand. J. History 23

180 Richard Gaskins

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broker disputes and thus to end escalating strife is a rare and prized quality in the

sagas, and such gifts enter into the inchoate vision of sovereignty found in

Heimskringla. O´la´fr helgi, for example, brokers one such dispute between two
claimants to a northerly island, basing his decision on competent evidence supplied
by reliable witnesses. The loser, although receiving no compensation, declares “it is
in no wise humiliating to obey the judgment of the king, however the case might
turn out later”.

33

The larger function is equally clear in the breach, when rulers fail

to meet its rigorous demands. Thus Snorri notes the dismissive comment of Halldo´r

Brynjo´lfsson about O´la´fr helgi’s overzealous moves toward Christianization: “The
leaders of the country would not accept his jurisdiction and equitable judgments,
and gathered an army against him, laying him low in his own land.”

34

The capacity to transcend self-interest is unusual for Snorri’s all-too-human

kings, who generally appear as partisans rather than wise arbiters. My emphasis

here is less on human personalities than on the recurring function of dispute-
solving, actions that stand out precisely because they are different from the strategic
behavior of most kings, as Snorri describes them. This important theme appears in
much Icelandic literature, including the I´slendinga so¨gur, where powerful, clever men

like Snorri goði and S

õ

´ðu-Hallr use their influence to settle disputes for strategic

purposes. Amidst these examples, we find clear hints that reconciliation is also
necessary for the good of society as a whole. Whereas most “lawyers” in these sagas
appear as standard combatants, the wise Nja´ll Þorgeirsson proclaims the stabilizing
function of legal settlements for the entire social order: “With laws shall our country
be built up, but with lawlessness laid waste.”

35

The vision of sovereignty becomes clearest in instances where the fundamental

social order is threatened or defined: for it is here that supreme secular power must
rise to the challenge. Sverre Bagge notes the episode in Magnu´ss saga Erlingssonar, in
which Erlingr skakki persuades the assembly at V

õ

´kin to condemn to the devil his

earthly adversaries, Sigurðr jarl and his followers. As Bagge notes, “Snorri is
evidently shocked at such unprecedented harshness and calls it an abominable act.

The reason for this reaction is probably a fundamental distinction between conflicts
‘within’ society, such as conflict between pretenders and the – very rare – conflict
when society as a whole must defend its fundamental values”. Although Bagge
believes that Snorri’s kings are essentially strategic actors within prevailing social

norms, he properly notes that, apart from examples like the one just cited, “the
unity of society is not often focused in Snorri’s narrative, probably because it is
taken for granted.”

36

That said, things taken for granted in the texture of saga events may well be of

overriding concern to the saga author. Snorri’s acute sensitivities to narrative
balance and his unusual restraint in imposing self-interested judgments on events –

33

OH, 140. This resolution was short-lived, however, as the losing party eventually abandoned O

´ la´fr’s

cause and killed his adversary’s father (OH, 158, 169).

34

Hsig, 100.

35

Brennu-Nja´ls saga [I´slenzk Fornrit Series, vol. 12] (Reykjav

õ

´k, 1954), p. 172. In a footnote to this

passage, the esteemed editor of this volume, Einar O

´ lafur Sveinsson, reports that the first half of

Nja´ll’s formula was widely used in contemporary Norwegian legal codes, and that the entire

statement occurs in both the Frostaþingslo¨g and Ja´rnsiða.

36

S. Bagge, Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (Berkeley, 1991), p. 122.

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Visions of Sovereignty 181

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representative of other, anonymous, saga authors – can itself be taken as a model

for supreme secular authority: a demonstration, as it were, of qualities sometimes
visible in kingly behavior. This narrative equilibrium of competing forces, faithful to
the impersonal norms of Snorri’s craft, supports his premonitions of social and
national unity, along with his abhorrence of disunity and fragmentation in human
affairs. Heimskringla ends with a disturbing vision of lawlessness: that roving body of
Birchlegs, who

had grown to be a very numerous army. It was composed of tough and
weapon-skilled, unruly elements who pursued a headlong, reckless course after
they thought they had a sufficient force. In their band they had few who could
counsel them or knew the laws and could govern a land or lead an army; and
though some few were more able, the great mass of them would do what

seemed best to them.

37

Anticipations of supreme authority occur too in such negative examples.

(4) Protecting Norway against foreign incursions. The aesthetic reach of authorship may

aspire to universality, but in human affairs unity is usually secured by observing
boundaries. National unity thus requires its external counterparts, and Heimskringla
is filled with the transnational disputes of ambitious rulers. The basic point appears
in Ynglinga saga, when Swedish King O´ttar Egilsson breaks his father’s compact with
King Fro´ði frækni, on the grounds that “Swedes never paid tribute to the Danes,
and that he would not either.”

38

O

´ la´fr helgi is able to recruit supporters among the English for overthrowing

Danish rule in England, “because people were more willing to have a king of their
own country to rule over them.”

39

Upon his return to Norway, O

´ la´fr informs his

stepfather, Sigurðr sy´r Ha´lfdanarson (whose support for restoring family power
O

´ la´fr questions), that “I know the temper of the people and that all would be eager

to escape servitude under foreign chieftains as soon as they have the confidence that

this can be accomplished”. Sigurðr responds by challenging O´la´fr’s overbearing
ambition, which he likens to the “ways of foreign chieftains”. O´la´fr’s mother sees it
differently, however, and stresses the special distinction of becoming “supreme king
of Norway”, even if it means a rule as short-lived as that of O

´ la´fr Tryggvason.

40

Snorri recounts O

´ la´fr helgi’s long struggle against the Danish King Knu´tr r

õ

´ki,

which ultimately cost O

´ la´fr his power and his life. Snorri casts this episode as a

struggle to protect Norwegian independence from foreign domination, and
specifically (with the narrator’s hindsight of later events) from the “oppression
and slavery” of Danish tyranny.

41

Protection from foreign invasion was just as

important to the Danes, according to Snorri, who records the Danish nobility’s
worries about O´la´fr’s threatened depredations while Knu´tr is away in England.

37

ME, 43.

38

Yngl, 27.

39

OH, 27. But O

´ la´fr helgi eventually faced misgivings from local Norwegian kings, who suggested they

might prefer benign neglect from a foreign king over the “tyranny” of an aggressive domestic

reformer like O

´ la´fr Tryggvason (OH, 36).

40

Ibid., 35.

41

Ibid., 247.

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182 Richard Gaskins

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Following Knu´tr’s own suggestion, their solution is to designate his son king. As

U´lfar jarl Sprakaleggsson declares,

Both I . . . and many other chieftains and leaders of this country have
frequently complained to King Knu´tr that people thought it dangerous to be
here without a king . . . Governing presents more difficulty now than before,
because heretofore we have been so fortunate to be spared the attacks of
foreign potentates, whereas now we hear that the king of Norway plans to

invade us, and we suspect that the king of Sweden may join him in such an
attempt.

42

In recent scholarship on medieval state-building, historians have shown how

geopolitical threats hastened the development of regal administrative structures,

which were designed to meet both military and financial demands of warfare.

43

It

seems distinctly probable that an Icelander like Snorri could anticipate this
connection, from his geographic perspective of North Atlantic isolation. If the
supreme authority of sovereignty depends on permitting each society to be its own

legal master,

44

the apparatus of kingship may in fact not be essential for

maintaining that authority, absent the threat of foreign invasion. Snorri has already
presented some negative examples of Norwegian overlordship in the case of the
Orkneys and Faeroe Islands. The ambiguous loyalties of the skald Sighvatr
Þo´rðarson – caught between O´la´fr helgi and Knu´tr r

õ

´ki – seem appropriate to

describe Snorri’s own posture. Snorri captures the main point in a powerful speech
by the Icelander Einar Eyo´lfsson, who “is able to see most clearly”:

If you wish to have my opinion, then I would say that it were best for the
people of our country not to subject themselves here to pay tribute to King
O´la´fr, nor to pay all those taxes such as he has imposed on Norwegians. And
we would impose that bondage not only on ourselves but both on ourselves

and our sons and all our people who live in this land; and that bondage this
land would never be free or rid of. And though this king be a good one, as I
believe he is, yet it is likely to be the case, as always hitherto, that when there is
a change in the succession there will be some kings who are good and some

who are bad. But if our countrymen would preserve their freedom, such as
they have had ever since they settled here, then it would be best not to let the
king get any hold here, whether it be a piece of land or our promises to pay
fixed taxes, which might be interpreted as due from subjects.

45

(5) Providing leadership and representing exemplary behavior. Deprived of leadership,

Snorri notes, men “lose their initiative”, and military defeat becomes inevitable.

46

The marks of exemplary leadership are spread throughout Snorri’s descriptions of

42

Ibid., 148.

43

For a recent overview see Th. Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and

Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997).

44

See OH, 141.

45

Ibid. 125.

46

Ibid., 176.

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Visions of Sovereignty 183

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extraordinary prowess and singular qualities. There was little doubt that O´la´fr

Tryggvason “had become famous in all lands for being handsomer and more stately
and taller than any other man”, alongside many other superlatives catalogued by
Snorri.

47

The other O´la´fr was “competitive in all games and always wanted to be

the first in everything, as was proper, befitting his rank and birth”.

48

Such

distinctions follow conventions familiar to readers of other sagas, conventions that
Snorri would appear to parody in his famous mannjafnaðr scene in Magnu´ssona saga.

49

Across the whole of Heimskringla such descriptions, in their cumulative effect,

suggest that Snorri wanted to separate authority from personality. Kings come and
go, he seems to say, and none can sustain their personal eminence forever. The
exception who proves the rule is O

´ la´fr helgi, who became a saint, according to one

source, as the only way to retain pre-eminence after being personally rejected in his
own land. On the eve of his final battle, O

´ la´fr has a vision that transcends his own

kingdom:

I saw ever farther, until I saw the whole world, both land and sea. I recognized
clearly the places I had before been to and seen. And as clearly I saw places I

had not seen before – some that I had heard about as well as such that I had
not heard spoken of, both places inhabited and uninhabited, as far as the
world extends.

50

Despite the religious interpretation immediately bestowed on this vision by the

bishop, it rather suggests a secular glimpse of universal authority – that elusive
standard within sovereignty that transcends any finite earthly ruler. Moving still

closer toward his military defeat, O

´ la´fr reports the further dream of climbing a

ladder, “and that he mounted it up into the air so far that the heavens opened
before him, so tall was the ladder. ‘I had come to the topmost rung’, he said, ‘when
you awakened me’ ”.

51

As he stands one human step short of universal insight,

O

´ la´fr’s earthly ambitions collapse on the field at Stiklastaðir.

Should the reader nevertheless insist on taking that last step, it would possibly

carry him or her on to that elusive term “luck” (hamingja), which describes an
ambiguous normative companion in the lives of Snorri’s kings. I cannot attempt
here to disentangle this slippery term from its religious connotations, or from

deterministic notions of strictly personal fate or destiny.

52

But we know that O´la´fr

helgi is both propelled and defeated by the presence or absence of luck. At one of
the many turning points in his turbulent career, in strategic retreat in Russia and
contemplating a bold return to power in Norway, he reflects on his own rise and
fall.

Most often he considered whether there was any possibility of regaining his

dominion in Norway. And as he was pondering this he called to mind that

47

OT, 31.

48

OH, 3.

49

MS, 21.

50

OH, 202.

51

Ibid., 214.

52

See Bagge, op. cit., pp. 218–224.

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184 Richard Gaskins

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during the first ten years of his rule all things had gone well and prospered for

him, but that later matters had become difficult and gone wrong, and that
when he had tried his luck everything went against him. So now he was
doubtful it was wise to trust his luck so much as to proceed with a small band
against his enemies. . . .

53

Despite some theological complications at this juncture, O

´ la´fr must place his

purely personal fate into the hands of an unknown court of highest appeal. No one

knows what to call it, or how to influence it; but through it the course of Norwegian
political history is decisively shaped. Was it perhaps a reminder that politics and
society transcend the will or interest of a single human being, even the king? Was it
one more fleeting vision of universal authority, at once human and impersonal –
anticipating a conceptual paradox that endures in modern notions of sovereignty?

5. The divergence of power and authority
Current interpretations of Heimskringla owe a substantial debt to Sverre Bagge,
whose recent comprehensive study has become the standard reference for social
and political implications of the entire work. My approach in this paper assumes a
great many points he develops at length, including his approach to textual problems
and to Snorri’s style of authorship. My interest in sovereignty, however, shifts the

discussion in a different direction from that chosen by Bagge, who focuses on
strategic interpersonal action and downgrades “constitutional” questions.

Bagge presents sound reasons for rejecting two possible routes of political

analysis. He argues persuasively against interpreting Heimskringla as an extended
conflict between the respective class interests of kings and magnates, as an earlier
generation of historians wanted to do. As Bagge shows, the conflicts in Snorri’s
narrative are structurally similar to the interpersonal feuding portrayed in other

sagas, and do not fit comfortably into the rhetoric of class struggle. Bagge also
distinguishes Snorri’s point of view from that of contemporary royalist ideologies,
which were influenced jointly by clerical doctrines and by the neo-Roman, post-
Carolingian school of legists.

54

Having disposed of these alternatives, Bagge

concludes that Heimskringla is essentially about personal power relationships, and he
uses the interpretive model of “rational action” to focus on conflicts between “long-
term political interests” attached to powerful individuals and families.

55

One senses

the whole atmosphere of Sturlunga saga in these power struggles projected by Bagge,
leading us to the plausible conclusion that Snorri’s portrayal of earlier Norwegian

kings was deeply rooted in his Icelandic environment of escalating strife.

Yet Snorri’s narrative also reveals the critical distinction between power and

authority, which was to become central in later theoretical debates on sovereignty.
On this point, Bagge’s analysis leaves room for further exploration; perhaps we can
get something more from Snorri’s magisterial history than the circular maxim,

53

Ibid., 187.

54

See also S. Bagge, The Political Thought of the King’s Mirror (Odense, 1987), and From Gang Leader to

Lord’s Anointed: Kingship in Sverris saga and Ha´konar saga Ha´konarsonar (Odense, 1996).

55

Bagge, op. cit., pp. 75–90.

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Visions of Sovereignty 185

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“Nothing succeeds like success”.

56

The rational actor model goes surprisingly far,

but it tends to reduce complex action to a single dimension.

57

Separate from the

ideologies of class struggle and neo-royalism, Snorri grasps the importance of
authority and legitimacy in power relationships, even though he cannot describe
authority through modern concepts of state-sanctioned power. His kingly role
models may indeed be the human actors Bagge correctly identifies, but they also
embody broader normative concerns, at least at key narrative moments. When
O

´ la´fr helgi is awakened one step short of his infinite vision, he clearly knows where

that next step would have taken him, albeit from this side of the line. If we make the
same extrapolation from the many tedious power struggles Snorri inherits from his
sources, where do they all point? Bagge is careful to emphasize that power is
regulated by “long-term” interests. Snorri seems to extend that long term to its
natural limit – to that infinite horizon where parallel lines run together.

It does not tax our own imaginations too far to sense this element of normative

projection elsewhere in Icelandic sagas, beyond the konungaso¨gur.

58

But it is here, and

especially in texts like Heimskringla, that emblems of earthly authority appear on full
display. W. P. Ker praises Snorri for his subtle mastery of “the Icelandic art, that

device which never grows old, of letting things make their own impression before
the explanation comes.”

59

6. Lessons for modern historians
Sources like Heimskringla relate to our present age by illuminating the origins of
modern political institutions in the images and symbols of prior centuries. As
political philosopher Michael Walzer has written,

The state is invisible; it must be personified before it can be seen, symbolized
before it can be loved, imagined before it can be conceived.. . . The image is

prior to . . . theoretic understanding, as it is to articulation, and necessary to
both.

60

Recent historical sociology has focused intensively on early political development,

including incipient state-building activities in the centuries covered by Snorri’s
history.

61

In the sheer variety of European social and cultural conditions, going

back to the period after the fall of Rome, historians have tried to account for
divergences among state structures in the early modern era. Medieval Scandinavia
presents an exceptional experience in state-building, coming from the periphery of

Europe and resisting the faster pace of political development nearer the center.
Elements of that exceptionalism include the late arrival of Christianity, the absence

56

Ibid., p. 96.

57

On reductive problems in rational actor theory, see Karl-Dieter Opp, “Rational Choice and

Sociological Man”, Jahrbuch fu¨r neue politische O¨konomie, vol. 3: (1984), pp. 1–16.

58

For an interesting development of this idea, see V. A´rnason, “Morality and Social Structure in the

Icelandic Sagas”, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 90 (1991), pp. 157–174.

59

W. P. Ker, “The Early Historians of Norway”, in Collected Essays, vol. 2, (London, 1925), p. 145.

60

“On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought”, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 82 (1967), p. 194.

61

Cf. Ertman, op. cit.

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186 Richard Gaskins

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of decayed Roman political institutions, the distance from neo-imperial state-

building of the Carolingian type, a tradition of decentralized community
governance, the spread of literacy and vernacular culture beyond the elite control
of court and church, and relatively mild geopolitical military tensions, at least by
comparison with southern and central Europe.

Snorri’s history thus connects with a vast sociological project, provided one can

retrieve the data from the distinctive narrative style of Icelandic saga writing. It
makes no difference here whether Snorri himself was a deeply original historian, or

mainly a “fitter and trimmer” of prior written sources, many now lost.

62

Heimskringla

captures a vanished era in which the administrative apparatus of governing was still
taking shape, in which power conflicts started to exert pressure to centralize military
and financial practices, and in which personal disputes reflected a larger struggle
between traditional authority and new moral and legal initiatives.

More important than the sociological connection is the normative contribution of

konungaso¨gur to the developmental history of modern concepts like sovereignty and
legitimacy. With whatever ruthlessness self-interested actors play their endless
political games, one cannot escape the conclusion, as Bagge acknowledges, that

some “sort of basic legitimacy seems to be a necessary condition for playing the
game at all”.

63

Snorri provides no formal ethical system, but the orientation of all

action toward legitimate authority is never absent from his narrative. Bagge
properly distinguishes between claims of legitimacy that inhere within a given social
structure, and the broader legitimacy of the structure itself. If Snorri says little
about the former, he says practically nothing about the broader concept. And yet
images and visions of highest authority are spread throughout his 800 pages of

narrative; saga writing predates modern conceptual analysis but nonetheless
participates in the timeless discussion of limits to power. Without the state to
represent these anticipations of sovereignty, Snorri permits them to appear within
his narrative of ordinary conflict – as assumptions, aspirations, and visions.

Normative debate in modern democracies needs more historical and

comparative depth, especially as it tries to look behind the surface of state
authority. As one recent commentator suggests, this debate needs to focus on “the
centrality of an ‘impersonal’ structure of public power . . ., of a diversity of power
centres within and outside the state, including institutional fora to promote open

discussion and deliberation among alternative political viewpoints. . . . The idea of
a community which rightly governs itself and determines its own future – an idea at
the very heart of the democratic polity itself – is . . . today deeply problematic.”

64

The brittleness of modern authority can be detected as well in Snorri’s sagas, as

O

´ la´fr Trygvasson learned in the course of his fateful sea battle with Eir

õ

´kr jarl

Ha´konarson, when an arrow from an enemy ship strikes and cracks the bow of
O

´ la´fr’s comrade, Einar þambarskelfir. “What cracked there with such a loud

report?” asks O´la´fr. “Norway out of your hands, sire,” comes the reply.

65

O´la´fr

62

Th. M. Andersson, “Kings’ Sagas”, in C. J. Clover & J. Lindow, eds. Old Norse—Icelandic Literature, A

Critical Guide (Ithaca, 1985), p. 221.

63

Bagge, op. cit., p. 86.

64

Held, op. cit., pp. 15–17.

65

OT, 108.

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Visions of Sovereignty 187

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thought the situation was nowhere near that desperate, although soon he would

disappear beneath the sea, never to resurface. O

´ la´fr helgi could also see beyond the

long-term consequences of strategic action, after his well-meaning retainer
impetuously kills a potential ally, Erlingr Skja´lgsson. “Wretch that you are, to
strike him down,” says O´la´fr, “With that blow you struck Norway out of my
hand.”

66

Today our sense of political stability is just as fragile as these old stories suggest.

We must keep searching for images and symbols to carry us beyond the invisible

boundaries of nation-states.

Abbreviations

All citations to Heimskringla are to the edition prepared by Bergljo´t S.

Kristja´nsdo´ttir, Bragi Halldo´rsson, Jo´n Torfason, O¨rno´lfur Thorsson (Reykjav

õ

´k:

Ma´l og menning, 1991). Individual sagas within this collection are cited in the text
by abbreviation and chapter number. English quotations are adapted from Lee M.
Hollander’s translation (Austin, 1965).

Yngl

Ynglinga saga

HS

Ha´lfdanar saga svarta

Hha´r Haralds saga ha´rfagra
HG

Haralds saga go´ða

Hgra´ Haralds saga gra´feldar
OT

O´la´fs saga Tryggvasonar

OH

O´la´fs saga helga

Hsig

Haraldar saga Sigurðarsonar

MS

Magnu´ssona saga

ME

Magnu´ss saga Erlingssonar

66

OH, 176.

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188 Richard Gaskins

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