The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes (Hackett Classics)

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Each poem is provided with an introduction, synopsis and suggestions for further reading. The Old Norse texts are furnished with a textual apparatus recording the manuscript readings behind this edition’s emendations, as well as select variant readings. The accompanying translations, informed by the latest scholarship, are concisely annotated to make them as accessible as possible.

Helgakviða Hundingsbana II or Völsungakviða in forna ( The Second Lay of Helgi Hundingsbane, The Second Lay of Helgi the Hunding-Slayer, A Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani) Be silent, Idunn! of all women I declare thee most fond of men, since thou thy arms, carefully washed, didst twine round thy brother's murderer." Late in the first century CE, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote a book on the Germanic tribes who dwelt north of the Empire. This work, De origine et situ Germanorum, “The Origin and Situation of the Germanic Peoples,” commonly referred to simply as Germania, contains many vivid descriptions of the religious views and practices of the tribes.

Included are thirty-six texts, which are mostly preserved in medieval manuscripts, especially the thirteenth-century Icelandic codex traditionally known as the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. The poems cover diverse subjects, including the creation, destruction and rebirth of the world, the dealings of gods such as Óðinn, Þórr and Loki with giants and each other, and the more intimate, personal tragedies of the hero Sigurðr, his wife Guðrún and the valkyrie Brynhildr. Lee M. Hollander, in his introduction to his translation of the poem, claims that it was in no sense a popular lay and suggests we should not necessarily believe that the accusations of the "sly god" were an accepted part of the lore. The Edda has been criticized for imposing Snorri Sturluson’s own Christian views on Norse mythology. In particular the clean-cut explanation of what happens to a soul after death as understood in the Edda contradicts other sources on death in Norse mythology. [1] Etymology [ edit ] a b Larrington, Carolyne (2007), Clark, David; Phelpstead, Carl (eds.), "Translating the Poetic Edda into English" (PDF), Old Norse Made New, Viking Society for Northern Research, pp.21–42

Hail, Æsir! Hail, Asyniur! And ye, all-holy gods! all, save that one man, who sits within there, Bragi, on yonder bench." The Codex Regius was written 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. The continental Germans have also bequeathed to us accounts of their heathen traditions such as those found in the so-called Merseburg Charms, which are medieval prayers or spells composed in Old High German, and the Middle High German epic poem Nibelungenlied.

Atlakviða ( The Lay of Atli). The full manuscript title is Atlakviða hin grœnlenzka, that is, The Greenland Lay of Atli, but editors and translators generally omit the Greenland reference as a probable error from confusion with the following poem. Svipdagsmál ( The Ballad of Svipdag, The Lay of Svipdag) – This title, originally suggested by Bugge, actually covers two separate poems. These poems are late works and not included in most editions after 1950:

Auden, W. H.; Taylor, Paul B., eds. (1969), The Elder Edda: A Selection, London: Faber., ISBN 0571090664 The most significant category among these sources is without a doubt the literature concerning mythological and historical subjects written in the Old Norse language from about 800 to 1400 CE, a span that includes the epochs we now refer to as the Viking Age and the Medieval Period. The Scandinavians and Icelanders held onto their traditional religion far longer than the more southerly Germanic peoples, and the Icelanders in particular did a remarkable job of preserving their heathen lore long after Christianity became the island’s official religion in 1000 CE. Were it not for the body of poems, treatises, and sagas that they’ve handed down to us, the pre-Christian worldview of the Germanic peoples would now be almost entirely lost. Valiant on thy seat art thou, Bragi! but so thou shouldst not be, Bragi, the bench's pride! Go and fight, if thou art angry; a brave man sits not considering." It is followed by Hávamál (“Sayings of the High One”), a group of disconnected, fragmentary, didactic poems that sum up the wisdom of the wizard-warrior god, Odin. The precepts are cynical and generally amoral, evidently dating from an age of lawlessness and treachery. The latter part contains the strange myth of how Odin acquired the magical power of the runes (alphabetical characters) by hanging himself from a tree and suffering hunger and thirst for nine nights. The poem ends with a list of magic charms. Scholars have attempted to localize individual poems by studying the geography, flora, and fauna to which they refer. This approach usually does not yield firm results. For example, there are no wolves in Iceland, but we can be sure that Icelandic poets were familiar with the species. Similarly, the apocalyptic descriptions of Völuspá have been taken as evidence that the poet who composed it had seen a volcanic eruption in Iceland – but this is hardly certain.

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Nine worlds: the worlds of the gods (Asgarth), of the Wanes (Vanaheim, cf. stanza 21 and note), of the elves (Alfheim), of men (Mithgarth), of the giants (Jotunheim), of fire (Muspellsheim, cf. stanza 47 and note), of the dark elves (Svartalfaheim), of the dead (Niflheim), and presumably of the dwarfs (perhaps Nithavellir, cf. stanza 37 and note, but the ninth world is uncertain). The tree: the world-ash Yggdrasil, [fp. 4] symbolizing the universe; cf. Grimnismol, 29-35 and notes, wherein Yggdrasil is described at length.] In Grimnismal, Odin is a prisoner and chained between two fires. Only receiving help from a young boy named Agnar Odin tells many things about the gods and Asgard.