Snurri (or Snorri, depending on who's talking) Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician; he wrote sagas, and also wrote the Prose (or Younger) Edda, from which we get a big chunk of our knowledge of Norse myth and poetry. He was assassinated under the orders of the Norwegian king on my birthday (or the day after) in 1241.

Kind of a heady thing for me to take that name, now that I think of it. (I also had a D&D character named for him at one point :-)) I started using it as an email address a while back, and it's just stuck.