Snorri Sturluson (c.1179-1241) was an Icelandic poet, historian, and politician--one of the most remarkable figures of medieval Scandinavia. A master of skaldic verse and a recorder of fading myth, he authored The Prose Edda to preserve the old Norse poetic tradition and the mythic world it evoked. His work bridges the oral and the literary, the pagan and the Christian, the mythic and the historical--shaping how we know the Norse gods today.