I. Study in the Original.
(1) Poetic Edda.—The classic edition, and on the whole the best, is Professor Bugge's (Christiania, 1867); the smaller editions of Hildebrand (Die Lieder der Aelteren Edda, Paderborn, 1876), and Finnur Jónsson (Eddalieder, Halle, 1888–90) are also good; the latter is in two parts, Göttersage and Heldensage. The poems may also be found in the first volume of Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford, 1883), accompanied by translations; but in many cases they are cut up and rearranged, and they suffer metrically from the system adopted of printing two short lines as one long one, with no dividing point. There is an excellent palaeographic edition of the Codex Regius of the Elder Edda, by Wimmer and Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen, 1891), with photographic reproductions interleaved with a literal transcription.
(2) Snorra Edda.—The most recent edition of the whole is Dr. Finnur Jónsson's (Copenhagen, 1875). There is a useful edition of the mythological portions (i.e., Gylfaginning, Bragaraedur, and the narrative parts of Skaldskaparmal) by Ernst Wilken (Die Prosäische Edda, Paderborn, 1878).
(3) Dictionaries and Grammars.—For the study of the Poetic Edda, Gering's Glossar zu den Liedern der Edda (Paderborn, 1896) will be found most useful; it is complete Page 47and trustworthy, and in small compass. A similar service has been performed for Snorra Edda in Wilken's Glossar (Paderborn, 1883), which forms a second volume to his edition, mentioned above. Both are, of course, in German. The only English dictionary is the lexicon of Cleasby and Vigfusson (Oxford).
Of Grammars, the best are German; those of Noreen (Altnordische Grammatik, Halle, 1892), of which there is an abbreviated edition, and Kahle (Altisländisches Elementarbuch, Heidelberg, 1896) being better suited for advanced students; the English grammars included in Vigfusson and Powell's Icelandic Reader (Oxford) and Sweet's Icelandic Primer (Oxford) are more elementary, and therefore hardly adequate for the study of the verse literature.