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The Prose Edda

Snorri Sturluson

Book Overview: 

Also known as the Younger Edda or Snorri's Edda, the Prose Edda is a three-part work composed or at least compiled by thirteenth-century Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson. Along with the Elder or Poetic Edda written by an unknown poet a half-century earlier, the Prose Edda is a major source of much older Norse mythology as it had evolved through the generations. The two Eddas have had a profound effect on European literature in both style and content, not least on J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth fantasies. The first part of the Prose Edda is the Gylfaginning (The Tricking of Gylfi), dealing with the creation of the world and the major elements of Norse mythology. The second part, Skáldskaparmál, presented as a dialogue between Ægir, the God of the Sea and Bragi, the God of Poetry, is a fascinating textbook on skaldic poetry, including the uses of alliteration and kennings. The third part, Háttatal, is a trilogy of heroic poetry demonstrating the techniques of Skáldskaparmál (it is not included in this translation because of the translator's conviction that its highly technical nature "forbids" its effective translation into English). Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, translator of Beowulf as well as the Prose Edda, was an intriguing person in his own right, writing pulp fiction along with his masterful scholarly translations and advocating radical political notions during the dangerous McCarthy era.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .Thjasse. She wished to live where her father had dwelt, that is, on the mountains in Thrymheim; Njord, on the other hand, preferred to be near the sea. They therefore agreed to pass nine 85 nights in Thrymheim and three in Noatun. But when Njord came back from the mountains to Noatun he sang this:

Weary am I of the mountains,
Not long was I there,
Only nine nights.
The howl of the wolves
Methought sounded ill
To the song of the swans.

Skade then sang this:

Sleep I could not
On my sea-strand couch,
For the scream of the sea-fowl.
There wakes me,
As he comes from the sea,
Every morning the mew.

Then went Skade up on the mountain, and dwelt in Thrymheim. She often goes on skees (snow-shoes), with her bow, and shoots wild beasts. She is called skee-goddess or skee-dis. Thus it is said:

Thrymheim it is called
Where Thjasse dwel. . . Read More

Community Reviews

Snorri Sturluson rédigea cette Edda (ces vieilles légendes norroises) au début du XIIIe siècle, alors que son pays, l’Islande, était depuis longtemps convertie au christianisme. Snorri aborde donc de biais ce panorama du polythéisme scandinave. En effet, son livre est avant tout un traité de poétiqu

Odin gave Suttung’s mead to the Æsir and to those men who know how to make poetry. For this reason we call poetry Odin’s catch, find, drink or gift, as well as the drink of the Æsir.

More personal edification than anything. I knew next to nothing about Norse mythos and I sought a remedy. Such a cosmo

Written in the early 1200s by the Icelandic scholar, poet and civic leader Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), and one of the major works of Icelandic and general medieval literature, The Prose Edda is one of the two key original sources for the study of the mythology of the proto-Germanic peoples of nort

So after diving headlong into ancient Norse mythology and history, by way of the Heimskringla, The Poetic Edda, and Sagas of Icelanders in turn, I've become ever more interested in the subject (and medieval literature generally). There simply isn't enough extant, well-preserved material to satisfy t

Viking mitolojisine meraklıysanız mutlaka okumanız gereken kitap budur.

It’s sort of strange to give a review of a book like this – as if I can sit here and complain that Thor’s character feels underdeveloped, or that I didn’t understand Odin’s motivation for acting as he did. It is, after all, from the 13th century, written by someone we might characterize as an Icelan

The Edda is a collection of Norse myths, written in the 13th century by a dude named Snorri. It's where we got most of our knowledge of Norse mythology today, and it's wicked awesome. I learned, for instance, that your legs may hump each other and produce a child while you're asleep, which is someth

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