Heimskringla

Heimskringla The genealogy research I’ve done traces one line of my Norwegian heritage to the Yngling Kings, which are chronicled in the Heimskringla. This history was written by Snorri Sturluson, who is also famous for compiling the Prose Edda.

I have Lee Hollander’s translation of the Poetic Edda, and it is one of my favorite translations because it is faithful to the original poetry. I’m sure eventually I will have to get various translations of this Heimskringla as well, because it turns out these are the stories of my ancestors.

From Wikipedia:

The name Heimskringla was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts (kringla heimsinsthe circle of the world).

Heimskringla is a collection of sagas about the Norwegian kings, beginning with the saga of the legendary Swedish dynasty of the Ynglings, followed by accounts of historical Norwegian rulers from Harald Fairhair of the 9th century up to the death of the pretender Eystein Meyla in 1177. The exact sources of his work are disputed, but included earlier kings’ sagas, such as Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna and the twelfth century Norwegian synoptic histories and oral traditions, notably many skaldic poems.

This is very interesting stuff, and I look forward to diving in more deeply.

Initial post on Ancestry

I just uploaded a bunch more detail to the Ancestry page of this site. It’s only a bare beginning, just a list of names with some basic info and a lot of Wikipedia links. This ancestry traces back to the Viking Sagas, and the Yngling dynasty, which is the oldest known Scandanavian dynasty. this goes back through Snorri Sturluson’s writing, and they are mentioned in Beowulf.

This ancestry walks an intriguing line between history and mythology. I look forward to diving in more deeply and adding as much info as I can find. This will likely be a project that unfolds over many years.

Hello, and a Kobo

Welcome to my new blog. I’ve kept blogs before but this one will be a bit different. The more time goes on, the more disenchanted I become with facebook, so I will be posting here more often, with these posts automatically feeding onto my facebook wall.

I’ve been reading more lately, so it’s only natural I want to write more. Perhaps this blog will see some of it.

Speaking of reading more, I had a kindle a while ago but it died. I had to fight amazon to get them to replace it, they finally did, and the replacement died within a few months. No more kindle for this guy. Besides, I am not a fan of locking units full of DRM and other such nonsense.

So, today I ordered a Kobo Touch. It looks to have even more functionality than the Kindle, and it supports several additional ebook filetypes (mobi, epub, pdf, etc etc). And it has the eInk screen which I find essential to keep eye strain under control. I’m looking forward to getting it soon.