The poetic Edda

A PAGE FROM THE CODEX REGIUS COMPRISING VERSES 31 TO 45 OF THE VOLUSPO
TRANSLATED FROM THE ICELANDIC WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY HENRY ADAMS BELLOWS
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE
Copyright, 1923, by The American-Scandinavian Foundation
C. S. Peterson, The Regan Press, Chicago, U. S. A.
This series of Scandinavian Classics is published by The American-Scandinavian Foundation in the belief that greater familiarity with the chief literary monuments of the North will help Americans to a better understanding of Scandinavians, and thus serve to stimulate their sympathetic coöperation to good ends.
To George Lyman Kittredge
SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS VOLUMES XXI AND XXII
THE POETIC EDDA
ESTABLISHED BY NIELS POULSON
Even if the poems of the so-called Edda were not so significant and intrinsically so valuable, the long series of scholarly struggles which have been going on over them for the better part of three centuries would in itself give them a peculiar interest. Their history is strangely mysterious. We do not know who composed them, or when or where they were composed; we are by no means sure who collected them or when he did so; finally, we are not absolutely certain as to what an “Edda” is, and the best guess at the meaning of the word renders its application to this collection of poems more or less misleading.
Icelandic tradition, however, persisted in ascribing either this Edda or one resembling it to Snorri’s much earlier compatriot, Sæmund the Wise (1056–1133). When, early in the seventeenth century, the learned Arngrimur Jonsson proved to everyone’s satisfaction that Snorri and nobody else must have been responsible for the work in question, the next thing to determine was what, if anything, Sæmund had done of the same kind. The nature of Snorri’s book gave a clue. In the mythological stories related a number of poems were quoted, and as these and other poems were to all appearances Snorri’s chief sources of information, it was assumed that Sæmund must have written or compiled a verse Edda —whatever an “Edda” might be—on which Snorri’s work was largely based.