The Poetic Edda: A Collection of Old Norse Poems

Product Information

The persistence of Odin's self-sacrifice in Scandinavian folk tradition was documented by Bugge (1889) in a poem from Unst on the Shetland Islands: Also used is málaháttr ('meter of speeches'), closely related to fornyrðislag, but with longer lines, similar to the meter of the Old Saxon Heliand. Hávamál ( English: / ˈ h ɔː v ə ˌ m ɔː l/ HAW-və-mawl; Old Norse: Hávamál, [note 1] classical pron. [ˈhɒːwaˌmɒːl], Modern Icelandic pron. [ˈhauːvaˌmauːl̥], ‘Words of Hávi [the High One]’) is presented as a single poem in the Codex Regius, a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking age. The poem, itself a combination of numerous shorter poems, is largely gnomic, presenting advice for living, proper conduct and wisdom. It is considered an important source of Old Norse philosophy.

At the same time, the fate of everything was set in stone by a group of seeresses. In the very beginning, two families of gods were involved in a war, ending with a truce and a wallaround their divine citadel of Asgard. However, they would not live in peace forever because the universe has been doomed since the very moment of its creation. Every god has a specific enemy with whom they will do battleand many will be slain, including the chief god Odin. Context Rúnatal [ edit ] "Odin's Self-sacrifice" (1908) by W. G. Collingwood. The younger Jelling stone (erected by Harald Bluetooth c. 970) shows the crucifixion of Christ with the victim suspended in the branches of a tree instead of on a cross. [9] English translators are not consistent on the translations of the names of the Eddic poems or on how the Old Norse forms should be rendered in English. Up to three translated titles are given below, taken from the translations of Bellows, Hollander, and Larrington with proper names in the normalized English forms found in John Lindow's Norse Mythology and in Andy Orchard's Cassell's Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend. Boer, R.C., ed. (1922), Die Edda mit historisch-kritischem Commentar I: Einleitung und Text (in German), Haarlem: Willink & Zoon

Look for more clues & answers

The few demonstrably historical characters mentioned in the poems, such as Attila, provide a terminus post quem of sorts. The dating of the manuscripts themselves provides a more useful terminus ante quem. After the mythological poems, Codex Regius continues with heroic lays about mortal heroes. The heroic lays are to be seen as a whole in the Edda, but they consist of three layers: the story of Helgi Hundingsbani, the story of the Nibelungs, and the story of Jörmunrekkr, king of the Goths. These are, respectively, Scandinavian, German, and Gothic in origin. As far as historicity can be ascertained, Attila, Jörmunrekkr, and Brynhildr actually existed, taking Brynhildr to be partly based on Brunhilda of Austrasia, but the chronology has been reversed in the poems. Bellows, Henry Adams, ed. (1923), "The Poetic Edda: Translated from the Icelandic with an Introduction and Notes", Scandinavian Classics, New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation, XXI & XXII Olive Bray, The Elder or Poetic Edda, commonly known as Sæmund's Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems, London: Printed for the Viking Club, 1908, pp.61–111( online transcription). Auden, W. H.; Taylor, Paul B., eds. (1969), The Elder Edda: A Selection, London: Faber., ISBN 0571090664

The poems of the Old Norse collection known as the Poetic Eddarespond to one of humankind’s greatest urges – the search for origins. Subtle, complex and suggestive, yet disarmingly direct in style, these tales of gods, heroes and monsters, of love, war, folly and deceit, inhabit a world more primal in character than any other corpus of European mythology. We do not know who composed them, or when, but ever since their rediscovery in the 17th and 18th centuries they have inspired intellectuals and artists in all media, for whom these poems held the tantalising key to a shared Northern identity.Scholarly distinction between Eddic and Skaldic works largely derives both from differing manuscript traditions and their typical matter and style. THE FIRST POEM OF THE COLLECTION OF POEMS KNOWN AS THE EDDAIS THE VÖLUSPÁ, MEANING THE PROPHECY OF THE VÖLVA. the Rúnatal by most editors following Müllenhoff. Stanzas 65, 73–74, 79, 111, 133–134, 163 are defective. Bragi Boddason (“the Old”; early 9th century. Sometimes believed to be the poet god Bragi incarnate!) Dróttkvætt stanzas had eight lines, each with six syllables and all featuring an internal rhyme. Three syllables per line were stressed, with the last one being unstressed.

In the Viking Age, stories often came in the form of an entertainer performing them as a song or poem. They would develop over time, and change slightly both over time and across distances and countries. That is not to say that the main themes weren’t fairly stable, but there wasn’t one true original version. Maybe the most important thing to understand about the Poetic Edda is that it was never one book. The different poems making up the collection we often perceive as a whole were originally separate poems. They were written by different poets, possibly hundreds of years apart as well as from different parts of Scandinavia and Iceland. The poem appears in the Codex Wormanius, a manuscript of Snorri’s Prose Edda, but the end of the poem is missing due to the manuscript’s incompleteness. We are left with Rig taking a special interest in one of the children and his son is later called Kon-ungr (Konung, King). Hyndluljóð – The Poem of Hyndla Müllenhoff takes the original Ljóðatal to have ended with stanza 161, with the final three songs (16th to 18th) taken as late and obscure additions.

Navigation menu

The translation selected for this edition is the authoritative and highly readable text by Oxford scholar and founder of the Eddic Research Network Carolyne Larrington, first published by Oxford University Press in 1996. Her addition of seven further poems not found in the Codex Regius completes this comprehensive presentation of the verse Eddic corpus. Formerly a student of the late, great authority on the Poetic Edda, Ursula Dronke, Carolyne Larrington has recently turned her attention to the novels of George R. R. Martin; her book Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones(2016) analyses one of the most phenomenally successful modern responses to medieval storytelling traditions. ‘The poems … a millennium later speak individually to us in comic, tragic, grandiose, crude, witty, profound, and common-sense tones.’