Heimskringla - Snorri Sturluson [DerHammer].epub

Heimskringla – History of the Kings of Norway
By Snorri Sturluson

Heimskringla is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (1178/79–1241) ca. 1230. The name Heimskringla was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts (kringla heimsins - the 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. Snorri had himself visited Norway and Sweden. For events of mid-12th century, Snorri explicitly names the now lost work Hryggjarstykki as his source. The composition of the sagas is Snorri's.
The earliest parchment copy of the work is referred to as Kringla. It voyaged from Iceland to Bergen, Norway and was moved to Copenhagen, the University Library. At that time it had lost the first page, but the second (the current beginning of the Ynglinga Saga) starts Kringla heimsins, "the Earth's circle" of the Laing translation.

In the 17th century copies were made by Icelanders Jon Eggertson and Asgeir Jonsson. Eggertson's copy went to the Royal Library at Stockholm. The Copenhagen manuscript was among the many valuables destroyed in the Copenhagen Fire of 1728. Only one leaf of the manuscript survived and it is now kept in the National and University Library of Iceland.

This edition of Heimskringla, is the translation of Lee M. Hollander.

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Information:
Format: ePub (2.0)
File Size: 8269 KB (original) 4544 KB (this edition)
Print Length: 881 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0292730616
Language: English
ASIN: B00992AOT2
ISBN: 978-0-292-73061-8 (printed edition)
Publisher: University of Texas Press (July 5, 2010)

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Comment:

This is an important work by Snorri Sturluson, for the understanding of our Norse heritage. I may warn you, it's packed full of Christian/anti-Heathen propaganda. But if you're not an idiot, you know how to look through that, and make use of its valuable parts.

About this release:
Despite being a premium product, and despite still being probably the best eBook version around, it was nothing but a mess “under the hood”, to say the least.
So I removed some +10 unused formatting styles, merged a few other unnecessary duplicate ones; and then basically changed the appearance somewhat of what was still there.
Among other things, the main text was not set to any specific font usage, except in instances of “Old-Norse” words – where letters such as “o med kvist” (letter o with ogonek) was referenced to use with fonts that ain't even standard setup. So, I removed those instances and set the whole document to use the free font Noto (serif) instead, then subset these fonts and embedded them in the actual document. I also took the liberty to remove the "superscript" of note references numbers, as these always just makes the text look ugly on eReaders.

If your reader can't handle embedded fonts, some still let you to install and use other fonts. If your reader can't handle external fonts at all, don't worry – you'll still be able of reading like 99,90% of the contents anyway. There are but a few letters in a few words now and then that need special treatment. Anyway, you can download Noto Serif here: https://code.google.com/p/noto/https://code.google.com/p/noto/ . There are other fonts that can handle these few problematic glyphs as well, but this one I know works with the majority (all?) eReaders, while some other's don't.

I also put some efforts into freshen up the lousy scanned cover, improved the quality of all the images throughout the book – and thus also decreased their size by more than half. In the end: Despite embedding fonts, I pulled down the weight of this eBook from 8269 KB to 4544 KB, and improved its looks in doing so.

Thus you can honestly say you get a better product for free, than if you pay almost $25 for it. That's the [DerHammer] way. As long as you seed, I'll keep doing it. Fair deal, right?