Edda
Encyclopedia
The term Edda applies to the Old Norse
Poetic Edda
and Prose Edda
, both of which were written down in Iceland during the 13th century in Icelandic, although they contain material from earlier traditional sources, reaching into the Viking Age
. The books are the main sources of medieval skald
ic tradition in Iceland and Norse mythology
.
, site of the church and school where students, including Snorri Sturluson
, were educated. The derivation of the word "Edda" as the name of Snorri Sturluson’s treatise on poetry from the Latin "edo", "I compose (poetry)" by analogy with "kredda", "superstition" from Latin "credo", "creed" is now widely accepted.
poems from the Iceland
ic medieval manuscript
Codex Regius
("Royal Book"). Along with the Prose Edda
, the Poetic Edda is the most expansive source on Norse mythology. The first part of the Codex Regius preserves poems that narrate the creation and foretold destruction and rebirth of the Old Norse mythological world as well as individual myths about gods concerning Norse deities. The poems in the second part narrate legends about Norse heroes and heroines, such as Sigurd
, Brynhildr
and Gunnar
.
The Codex Regius was written down in the 13th century but nothing is known of its whereabouts until 1643 when it came into the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson
, then the Church of Iceland
's Bishop of Skálholt
. At that time, versions of the Prose Edda
were well known in Iceland, but scholars speculated that there once was another Edda—an Elder Edda—which contained the pagan
poems Snorri quotes in his book. When the Codex Regius was discovered, it seemed that this speculation had proven correct. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to Sæmundr the Learned, a larger-than-life 12th century Icelandic priest. While this attribution is rejected by modern scholars, the name Sæmundar Edda is still sometimes encountered.
Bishop Brynjólfur sent the Codex Regius as a present to King Christian IV of Denmark
, hence the name Codex Regius. For centuries it was stored in the Royal Library in Copenhagen
but in 1971 it was returned to Iceland.
In 2009, HarperCollins
posthumously published J.R.R. Tolkien's retelling of the Poetic Edda. Titled, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun
, the book was composed in an English language
recreation of Old Norse alliterative verse
.
ic manual of poetics which also contains many mythological stories. Its purpose was to enable Iceland
ic poets and readers to understand the subtleties of alliterative verse
, and to grasp the mythological allusions behind the many kenning
s that were used in skaldic poetry.
It was written by the Icelandic scholar and historian Snorri Sturluson
around 1220. It survives in seven main manuscripts, written down from about 1300 to about 1600.
The Prose Edda consists of a Prologue
and three separate books: Gylfaginning
, concerning the creation and foretold destruction and rebirth of the Norse mythical world, Skáldskaparmál
, a dialogue between Ægir
, a supernatural figure connected with the sea, and Bragi, a god connected with skald
ship, and Háttatal
, a demonstration of verse forms used in Norse mythology.
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
Poetic Edda
Poetic Edda
The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems primarily preserved in the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript Codex Regius. Along with Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda is the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends, and from the early 19th century...
and Prose Edda
Prose Edda
The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...
, both of which were written down in Iceland during the 13th century in Icelandic, although they contain material from earlier traditional sources, reaching into the Viking Age
Viking Age
Viking Age is the term for the period in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, spanning the late 8th to 11th centuries. Scandinavian Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. The Vikings also reached Iceland, Greenland,...
. The books are the main sources of medieval skald
Skald
The skald was a member of a group of poets, whose courtly poetry is associated with the courts of Scandinavian and Icelandic leaders during the Viking Age, who composed and performed renditions of aspects of what we now characterise as Old Norse poetry .The most prevalent metre of skaldic poetry is...
ic tradition in Iceland and Norse mythology
Norse mythology
Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...
.
Etymology
There are several theories concerning the origins of the word edda. One theory holds that it is identical to a word that means "great-grandmother" appearing in the Eddic poem Rígsþula. Another theory holds that edda derives from Old Norse óðr, "poetry." A third, proposed in 1895 by Eiríkr Magnússon, but since discredited, is that it derives from the Icelandic place name OddiOddi
Oddi at Rangárvellir was a center of learning in South Iceland during the Middle Ages.For centuries it was the central home of the powerful family, Oddaverjar. The two best known leaders in Oddi were Sæmundur Sigfússon the Learned and his grandson Jón Loftsson . The famous historian Snorri...
, site of the church and school where students, including Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...
, were educated. The derivation of the word "Edda" as the name of Snorri Sturluson’s treatise on poetry from the Latin "edo", "I compose (poetry)" by analogy with "kredda", "superstition" from Latin "credo", "creed" is now widely accepted.
The Poetic Edda
The Poetic Edda, also known as Sæmundar Edda or the Elder Edda, is a collection of Old NorseOld Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
poems from the Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
ic medieval manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
Codex Regius
Codex Regius
Cōdex Rēgius is an Icelandic manuscript in which the Poetic Edda is preserved. It is made up of 45 vellum leaves, thought to have been written in the 1270s. It originally contained a further 8 leaves, which are now missing...
("Royal Book"). Along with the Prose Edda
Prose Edda
The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...
, the Poetic Edda is the most expansive source on Norse mythology. The first part of the Codex Regius preserves poems that narrate the creation and foretold destruction and rebirth of the Old Norse mythological world as well as individual myths about gods concerning Norse deities. The poems in the second part narrate legends about Norse heroes and heroines, such as Sigurd
Sigurd
Sigurd is a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga. The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving Sigurd (Old Norse: Sigurðr) is a legendary hero of...
, Brynhildr
Brynhildr
Brynhildr is a shieldmaiden and a valkyrie in Norse mythology, where she appears as a main character in the Völsunga saga and some Eddic poems treating the same events. Under the name Brünnhilde she appears in the Nibelungenlied and therefore also in Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des...
and Gunnar
Gunnar
Gunnar is a male first name of Nordic origin The name Gunnar means fighter, soldier and attacker . Gunder is a Danish variant, Günther is the modern German variant...
.
The Codex Regius was written down in the 13th century but nothing is known of its whereabouts until 1643 when it came into the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson
Brynjólfur Sveinsson
Brynjólfur Sveinsson served as the Lutheran Bishop of the see of Skálholt in Iceland. His main influence has been on modern knowledge of Old Norse literature. He is currently pictured on the Icelandic 1000 krónur bill....
, then the Church of Iceland
Church of Iceland
The National Church of Iceland, or Þjóðkirkjan, formally called the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland, is the state church in Iceland. Like the established churches in the other Nordic countries, the National Church of Iceland professes the Lutheran branch of Christianity. Its head is the...
's Bishop of Skálholt
Skálholt
Skálholt is an historical site situated in the south of Iceland at the river Hvítá.-History:Skálholt was, through eight centuries, one of the most important places in Iceland. From 1056 until 1785, it was one of Iceland's two episcopal sees, along with Hólar, making it a cultural and political...
. At that time, versions of the Prose Edda
Prose Edda
The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...
were well known in Iceland, but scholars speculated that there once was another Edda—an Elder Edda—which contained the pagan
Norse paganism
Norse paganism is the religious traditions of the Norsemen, a Germanic people living in the Nordic countries. Norse paganism is therefore a subset of Germanic paganism, which was practiced in the lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes across most of Northern and Central Europe in the Viking Age...
poems Snorri quotes in his book. When the Codex Regius was discovered, it seemed that this speculation had proven correct. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to Sæmundr the Learned, a larger-than-life 12th century Icelandic priest. While this attribution is rejected by modern scholars, the name Sæmundar Edda is still sometimes encountered.
Bishop Brynjólfur sent the Codex Regius as a present to King Christian IV of Denmark
Christian IV of Denmark
Christian IV was the king of Denmark-Norway from 1588 until his death. With a reign of more than 59 years, he is the longest-reigning monarch of Denmark, and he is frequently remembered as one of the most popular, ambitious and proactive Danish kings, having initiated many reforms and projects...
, hence the name Codex Regius. For centuries it was stored in the Royal Library in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
but in 1971 it was returned to Iceland.
In 2009, HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
posthumously published J.R.R. Tolkien's retelling of the Poetic Edda. Titled, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is a narrative poem composed by J. R. R. Tolkien. The book was released worldwide on May 5, 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and HarperCollins....
, the book was composed in an English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
recreation of Old Norse alliterative verse
Alliterative verse
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of many Germanic...
.
The Prose Edda
The Prose Edda, sometimes referred to as the Younger Edda or Snorri's Edda is an IcelandIceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
ic manual of poetics which also contains many mythological stories. Its purpose was to enable Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
ic poets and readers to understand the subtleties of alliterative verse
Alliterative verse
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of many Germanic...
, and to grasp the mythological allusions behind the many kenning
Kenning
A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry...
s that were used in skaldic poetry.
It was written by the Icelandic scholar and historian Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...
around 1220. It survives in seven main manuscripts, written down from about 1300 to about 1600.
The Prose Edda consists of a Prologue
Prologue (Prose Edda)
The Prologue is the first section of four books of the Prose Edda, and consists of a euhemerized Christian account of the origins of Norse mythology: the Norse gods are described as human Trojan warriors who left Troy after the fall of that city and settled in northern Europe, where they were...
and three separate books: Gylfaginning
Gylfaginning
Gylfaginning, or the Tricking of Gylfi , is the first part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda after Prologue. The Gylfaginning deals with the creation and destruction of the world of the Norse gods, and many other aspects of Norse mythology...
, concerning the creation and foretold destruction and rebirth of the Norse mythical world, Skáldskaparmál
Skáldskaparmál
The second part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" is effectively a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined...
, a dialogue between Ægir
Ægir
Ægir is a sea giant, god of the ocean and king of the sea creatures in Norse mythology. He is also known for hosting elaborate parties for the gods.Ægir's servants are Fimafeng and Eldir.- Description :...
, a supernatural figure connected with the sea, and Bragi, a god connected with skald
Skald
The skald was a member of a group of poets, whose courtly poetry is associated with the courts of Scandinavian and Icelandic leaders during the Viking Age, who composed and performed renditions of aspects of what we now characterise as Old Norse poetry .The most prevalent metre of skaldic poetry is...
ship, and Háttatal
Háttatal
The Háttatal is the last section of the Prose Edda composed by the Icelandic poet, politician, and historian Snorri Sturluson. Using, for the most part, his own compositions, it exemplifies the types of verse forms used in Old Norse poetry...
, a demonstration of verse forms used in Norse mythology.