Edda, Norse Mythology

I Digress

5 Mar

Today we digress from Eisrisenwelt to discover more about Norse mythology, specifically in the form of the Edda.

What is the Edda?

So the Edda in its most basic form is a book of poems. It’s actually two books that hold a whole heap of ancient Icelandic literature. The books are separated into the Prose, or Younger Edda and the Poetic or Elder Edda. I think from the names we can figure out that one is written in a prose or narrative style, and the other is full of poems.

Now these two books are chock full of detailed stories from where our modern knowledge of Norse and even Germanic mythology comes from. They’re actually the best written sources for these old myths that we have. Basically any pre-Christian beliefs are believed to be represented in these two books that are thought to have been written down or compiled in the 13th century. So not really that long ago if we’re looking at when these myths would have been the main belief system.

We know that these kind of myths would have been passed on through word of mouth, hence why they would be in the form of poems. It’s easier to remember a poem then it is a narrative story. So people would have known these myths as odes or sagas or epic poems.

Meaning that the Eddas would have been written down quite late. The stories recorded in the Eddas would have been known to people for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years before the books were compiled as the spoken word. And it’s interesting that we only get the written text after the introduction of Christianity to the Norse people. It makes you wonder if perhaps this committing to paper of the old stories was in an effort to prevent them from being lost.

For us modern people, the Eddas are really our only source of knowledge of Scandinavian mythology. So what are the Edda all about?

The Prose Edda is believed to have been written by an Icelandic chieftain, who supposedly fancied himself a poet and historian. This bloke, Snorri Sturluson, is thought to have compiled the book in the early 1220s, and there’s even some thought that his intention for the Prose Edda is more as a guide for the Norse Poetry. Kind of like a textbook, or an instruction manual, so that young poets can understand the meaning behind the stories and then pass that on through their own work.

If you want to read the Prose Edda, don’t worry, it’s not boring like textbooks seem to be these days. It’s actually extremely readable. At only about 100 pages, its incredibly concise and gives you a great overview of Norse lore, with the stories being

told with dramatic artistry, humour, and charm.

Basically what Snorri did, is he added prose explanations to the difficult parts of verse and described the symbolism that was going on. The verse portions of the Prose Edda are in the older court poetry style that was seen as a high standard for poets.

We can now understand why it’s called the ‘Prose Edda’ but why the ‘Younger Edda’, well that will become a little more clear once we get stuck into the Poetic Edda, but basically its because the Prose Edda was written more recently than the stories in the Poetic Edda, making the content of the book younger.

And some of you may be thinking but what does ‘Edda’ itself mean? Why that word? Well that seems to still be quite the mystery. No one really knows where the word came from or why the books are called that. Snorri himself certainly didn’t title the book ‘Edda’. Although a different book from the 14th century, the Codex Upsaliensis does call the work ‘Edda’. The codex contained a copy of Snorri’s work within it and this is what it says:

This Book is called Edda, which Snorri Sturluson put together according to the order set down here.

Seems pretty simple, except that still doesn’t explain where the ‘Edda’ word came from. The first written use of the word, that can be found so far, is from a poem, also written by Snorri, titled the Lay of Righ. In this poem, the word ‘Edda’ is used for ‘great-grandmother’. I guess you could kind of describe Snorri’s Edda manuscript as like a great-grandmother, because of the knowledge and wisdom it held. But it does feel a bit like a stretch. Stanger things have happened though.

Alright, let’s now discover what we can about the Poetic Edda, otherwise known as the Elder Edda. This part of the Edda is believed to have been written down around 1270, although the author is unknown. Right about now you might be thinking that I’ve made a mistake. Because how can this Edda be known as the Elder Edda when it’s written like 60 years after the Younger Edda. Wouldn’t they then be the other way around? And while I often do make mistakes in these episodes, this is not one of them. Yes, the Poetic Edda was written after the Prose Edda. But the stories that make up the Poetic Edda have been known and shared for thousands of years before they were written down, like the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, maybe even earlier. So technically the content of the Elder Edda is older than the content of the Younger Edda, despite the Elder Edda being committed to paper more recently than the Younger Edda. It's all very confusing. But hopefully that has cleared it up a little bit.

Anyway, back to the Poetic Edda. So this book is basically made up of stories and tales of the Old Norse Gods. These stories have become a source for the myths surrounding the Norse Gods, like Odin, Thor and Loki. More recently seen in Marvel comic books and films. Basically we’ve got a collection of mythological and heroic poems depicting Viking heroes and their many adventures.

Discovery of the Edda

Throughout the 15th century, the Prose Edda was well known, especially to Icelandic scholars. But there were whispers of another Edda, an Elder Edda, which contained the stories that Snorri referred to. And what do you know in 1643, an Icelandic collector of Norse literature, who they tell me was pretty respected in this field, a bloke that went by Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson, came across a copy of this older piece of work, the Elder Edda.

A fair bit of mystery surrounds the origins of this Elder Edda though, no one really knows where it came from or what it was called before being referred to as the Poetic or Elder Edda. Now the Bishop had his suspicions that it was the Icelandic priest and author, Saemundur Sigfússon who, in the 12th century, had put together the Elder Edda, so the Bishop started referring to it as Saemundur’s Edda. Except that modern scholars all kinda agree there really isn’t any evidence that Saemundur is the author, so we’re back to the unknown author.

We already know that the Elder Edda is completely written in verse, which makes it easy to distinguish from Snorri’s Prose Edda. The poems recorded in the Poetic Edda are like most early poetry in that they are typically minstrel poems, passed from one singer or poet to another for as long as people remember their tune and lyrics.

Because of this way of sharing stories, the original authors of these particular poems are long lost to us, and most likely the original poem themselves, as each singer or poet would have put their own spin on the story or even the tune that accompanied it.

About 20 years later in 1662, the Bishop decided to gift part of his literary collection to the King of Denmark, who was Frederick III at the time. This donation would then make up part of the new Royal Library. Included in these works was the Poetic Edda.

Stored for centuries in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, it wasn’t until 1971, that the work was returned to Iceland. By this time it had become a part of a collection that was known as the Codex Regius, or the King’s or Royal book.

Now this Codex Regius can get pretty confusing, because there are several collection of works that go by this name. But basically the one we’re interested in contains ancient myths and stories and adventures of heroes. And once the Poetic Edda was singled out and studied on its own, other poems were added to the Poetic Edda collection, making it different again from the Codex Regius collection. Which means that if you were to go out to a bookshop today and buy your very own copy of the Poetic Edda, the collections of stories in one edition could be different to the collection of stories in another. It seems there are no strict rules around which stories belong to the Poetic Edda and which don’t. It’s all at the editor’s discretion.

The dating of the origin of the poems included in the Poetic Edda has been a fun source of scholarly argument. Similar poems written by known authors sometimes have a similar line or two, but everything appears to be fairly subjective. There’s no way to know if that author borrowed from the Edda, or the author of the Edda borrowed from them.

Another way to determine the time and possible author is to look at the historical characters mentioned to determine a terminus post quem or earliest possible date. Individual poems can have clues in them, there’s one poem that suggests it could have been written in Greenland. And we know that the Scandinavians didn’t arrive in Greenland until about 985, so that would be a possibility for the earliest time the poem could have been written. But what makes things really difficult is that in some cases, old poems have been merged with younger ones, which really just throws everything off.

What we can be sure of is how lucky modern scholars are that the Codex Regius, and therefore the Poetic Edda, have been preserved. It was pretty common throughout 18thcentury Europe for pagan manuscripts to be burned. And the Edda even survived the Great Fire of Copenhagen in 1728 which took about a third of the city and an estimated 35 000 works of literature, including a large collection from the University of Copenhagen Library. So luck really does seem to be on the Edda’s side.

For modern scholars, the Eddas today represent a key into the ancient world of Germanic history. More than that, through the stories we can see the relationships between nature and humans and the gods, and how these beliefs represented their world.

Both the Eddas are literary treasures that have captured history and are a testament to Icelanders who are determined to preserve their heritage.

What does the Edda say?

So we know what the Eddas are about, but what exactly do they say?

As we’ve already learnt the Prose Edda is like an instruction book for young and aspiring poets. Its split into a prologue and three parts. The prologue talks about the language and nature of poetry and explains the traditional skaldic poetry. It’s here that Snorri also reveals his Christian leanings when he talks about the stories of creation.

I’m not going to say the names of the three parts because there’s no way I can pronounce them, so here are the translated names of the three parts: ‘The Language of Poetry’ explains the mythological stories of the Norse Gods, weaving in educational explanations of the skaldic poetry, naturally in prose. ‘A Catalogue of Metres’ includes three songs that celebrate King Hákon and his powerful father-in-law. It’s here that Snorri adds comments between the stanzas to enable the reader’s interpretation. ‘The Beguiling of Glyfi’ also tells mythological stories explaining the origin of the Norse cosmos and the chaos that came. In the form of dialogue, Glyfi, King of the Swedes, visits Asgard, the citadel of the gods. It’s in answering Glyfi’s questions that the gods tell of the Norse myths about the beginning of the world, the adventures of the gods and the myth of Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods.

The Poetic Edda, as we know, is a record of the mythological heroic poems, it’s thought to consist of all the stories, myths, heroic poems and legends. And these poems can fall into two categories, the poems of the gods and the poems of heroes. The myths are introduced with ‘Sibyl’s Prophecy’, a myth that shows flashing scenes of the history of gods, men and dwarfs, starting with the birth of the world and ending with the death of the gods. ‘Sayings of the High One’ follows with a couple of disconnected poems that summarize the wisdom of Odin. And the ‘Lay of Thrym’, one of the finest mythological poems tells how Thrym, a giant, steals Thor’s hammer and demands marrying the goddess Freyja for its return. The second half of the Poetic Edda is all about the Germanic heroes. It’s these that are the oldest surviving poems of Germanic legends. It’s these poems that are some of the best collections of Norse mythology, depicting the creation of the world, Ragnarok, the battle of the Aesir and Vanir, Thor’s fishing for the Midgard Serpent and so many more. And let’s not forget the heroic poems with human, elf and dwarf heroes.

We do have to remember that the parts of the Edda that survive to us do have their limitations. It seems as though there may be a fair bit missing. The Edda specifically mentions more than 12 gods and goddesses, but the stories in the Edda seem to only surround about 10, with only 3 or 4 of them being strong protagonists.

Unfortunately it’s really difficult to figure out how much of the lore hasn’t been passed on to us, and it would appear that we only have a small percentage of what once was a full and complete world.

We know that Norse literature is just the written down version of Norse oral tradition. And while we’re extremely lucky that these stories have survived and still exist and has been able to influence so many art forms, we do have to remember that they are meant to be heard not read, so give the Norse myths a listen, you might just enjoy yourself.

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