Sæmundur fróði

Sæmundr Sigfússon (1056–1133), called Sæmundr fróði, the Learned, was an Icelandic priest and scholar of the chieftainly family of Oddi. He studied abroad, probably in France, and returned to Iceland around 1076 to found at Oddi a center of learning that educated Snorri Sturluson a century later. He wrote a Latin history of the kings of Norway, now lost but used by later writers, and helped establish the tithe law of 1096. In the seventeenth century the Poetic Edda was wrongly attributed to him, which is why older editions call it the Edda of Sæmund. Folk legend remembers him as a magician who outwitted the devil.