By Jackson Crawford, University of Colorado, Boulder
Around AD 1200, an unknown editor wrote down some of the traditional mythic poems, and this compilation was called the Poetic Edda. In the Poetic Edda, old poems about the gods and mythical heroes are preserved directly, and independently of one another. This raw content was adapted into a cohesive whole by Snorri Sturluson in his Prose Edda.
The Poetic Edda
The anonymous editor of the Poetic Edda arranged the poems in a meaningful order. First, we have the story of the cosmic beginning and end, which affects all the beings—this is the poem called Voluspa.
Then there are three poems in which Odin shares his proverbial and mythic wisdom, beginning with Hávamál. Then there is a poem centered on a god named Frey, followed by four poems in which the god Thor is a central character, and then a poem each about a dwarf and an elf.
The final half of the manuscript is taken up with about twenty poems of the human heroes of the Volsungs family.
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The Prose Edda
Some of the same stories, plus others not gathered in the Poetic Edda, were assembled by Snorri Sturluson, a leading Icelandic legal figure and scholar in the 1220s AD. Snorri was interested to pass some of the traditional style of Norse poetry and lore on, during the time when its popularity was beginning to wane.
Snorri titled his book simply Edda. Edda means ‘great-grandmother’, so perhaps the simplest explanation for the book’s title is just that it conveys old lore, such as one might learn from one’s great-grandmother.
To distinguish his prose work from the poems collected in the Poetic Edda, modern scholars call it the Prose Edda, or Snorri’s Edda.
In fact, the untitled compilation of poems was only given the title ‘the Poetic Edda’ much, much later, long after its rediscovery by scholars in the 1600s, to link those Old Norse poems to Snorri’s clearly related work.
A Source for Norse Mythology
Snorri’s Prose Edda remains the most approachable written source for Norse myth because it is pretty coherent and organized roughly chronologically, with Snorri starting his narrative at the world’s beginning, and ending with its fiery destruction at Ragnarok.
However, the Prose Edda is not a perfect source, and not exactly a primary source—Snorri is largely quoting and trying to explain older poems about the gods and heroes that survived into his age. These poems do not always originate in the same place or time and may contradict one another. Snorri does not know how to deal with such contradictions, and sometimes jumbles different versions of one story.
However, we do not have to rely solely on Snorri, as we do have direct access to those 30-some poems anonymously compiled in the Poetic Edda, many of which Snorri does quote.
These poems must have been part of a much more numerous body of poetic tales that had once circulated in oral transmission. After all, Snorri also knew and quoted other poems that are lost to us.
Linguistic Clues
We must always keep in mind that the poems we do have did not originate as a unified coherent body of work. Instead, think of them as a random playlist of music by many different artists from different periods.
In some cases, the characteristics of the language in one poem would suggest to modern scholars that the poem was originally composed in the 900s AD or even the late 800s AD. We can also tell that some must have been composed in Norway, based on certain dialect features.
Thus, some of these poems were composed orally long before Iceland was converted to Christianity in the year 1000, even if they weren’t written down for a long time after.
For a sense of how poetry offers such linguistic clues, consider that someone reciting a sonnet by Shakespeare might stumble over a couplet where the word love is meant to rhyme with the word prove, as these two words did when William Shakespeare wrote his 116th sonnet 400 years ago:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
The very fact that these words are intended to rhyme here suggests that this poem was not written in 21st-century America, even if it is reprinted and recited here today. We can tell that ultimately this poem was composed in an earlier time, when those words rhymed in English.
Old Norse
Many of the poems in the Poetic Edda have exactly such phenomena, but in Old Norse, which existed as a meaningful language community for several centuries. This means that there is older Old Norse and younger Old Norse, just as there is older and younger modern English.
So, because so many of these poems do contain verifiably older language than we would expect if they had been composed when they were written down in the 1200s, modern scholarship accepts the Poetic Edda as essentially an authentic transmission of genuine pre-Christian stories about the Norse gods and heroes.
Then Snorri’s Prose Edda stands at the beginning of a long tradition of teachers of this lore of gods and heroes, arranging and making sense of more ancient materials like those collected in the Poetic Edda.
Snorri’s work is, in a real sense, the direct ancestor of books or courses in Norse mythology today. Like today’s scholar and teacher, but 800 years closer than we are to the original poets, Snorri does not generate the myths himself, but aims to pass on the stories from those old poems faithfully and clearly.
Common Questions about the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda
The final half of the manuscript of the Poetic Edda is taken up with about twenty poems of the human heroes of the Volsungs family.
Snorri Sturluson was a leading Icelandic legal figure and scholar in the 1220s AD. He assembled Norse stories, some of which were not gathered in the Poetic Edda.
Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda remains the most approachable written source for Norse mythology because it is pretty coherent and organized roughly chronologically.
