The Prose Edda and Heimskringla

Snorri is traditionally credited as the compiler, around the 1220s, of the work now called the Prose Edda, a handbook written to teach the traditional forms and mythological allusions of skaldic poetry to a Christian Icelandic audience two centuries removed from the conversion. Its sections, including Gylfaginning, a sustained narrative retelling of the major Norse myths, preserve by far the fullest connected account of the Norse deities and cosmology to survive from the medieval period, drawing on older poetic sources, some of which also survive independently in the separate collection known as the Poetic Edda.

He is also credited with Heimskringla, a history of the kings of Norway from legendary origins down to his own near contemporary period, written in the saga style and valued both as literature and, cautiously, as a historical source. Snorri's authorship of both works rests on medieval attribution and internal and manuscript evidence rather than a signed text, and scholars continue to debate the precise extent of his personal composition versus compilation of earlier material, but the attribution to him is the strong scholarly consensus and the one the manuscript tradition itself preserves.