Alfaleith.org - The Prose Edda

The Prose Edda is undoubtedly by Snorri. It is preserved in three primary manuscripts: Codex Regius, early fourteenth century; Codex Wormianus, fourteenth century, named from Ole Worm, from whose hands it passed, in 1706, into the hands of Arni Magnússon; and Codex Upsaliensis, about 1300, perhaps a direct copy of Snorri's own text. This last manuscript, and also the Arnamagnæan vellum No. 748, which preserves a portion of the text, testify unmistakably to Snorri's authorship; the Codex even gives, in detail, the subjects of the three divisions of the book.

These three divisions, but for the evidence of the manuscripts, might seem to afford ground for assuming plural authorship. The first part, the Gylfaginning or Beguiling of Gylfi, is an epitome of Odinic mythology, cast in the form of a dialogue between Gylfi, a legendary Swedish king, and the triune Odin. Snorri, though a Christian, tells the old pagan tales with obvious relish, and often, in the enthusiasm of the true antiquary, rises to magnificent heights. Ever and again he fortifies his narrative with citations from the Poetic Edda, the great treasure-house of Scandinavian mythological and heroic poetry.

One passes from Gylfaginning to Skáldskaparmál with [xvi] very little shock, in spite of the great difference in subject and treatment, which the author has attempted, rather skillfully, to modulate through a second dialogue. The questioner this time is one Ægir; and replies are made by the god Bragi, famed for eloquence and the gift of poetic expression. This intermediate dialogue, called Bragarædur, or Bragi's Discourses, strikes the keynote of the entire book, and really reconciles the first section to the second and third, whose dissimilarity to Gylfaginning have led some scholars to believe that one or the other is not Snorri's work. The god relates several adventures of the Æsir of the same character as those recounted in Gylfaginning, and concludes with a myth concerning the origin of the poetic art. From this point on, barely maintaining the fiction of the dialogue, Snorri makes his work a treatise on the conventional vocabulary and phraseology of skaldship, for the guidance of young skalds.

The third section of the Edda is the Háttatal, or Enumeration of Metres, and combines three separate songs of praise: one on King Hákon, a second on Skúli Bárdsson, the King's father-in-law and most powerful vassal, and a third celebrating both. Each of the hundred and two stanzas of the work belongs to a distinct metric type or subtype, and between stanzas Snorri has inserted definitions, occasionally longer notes, or comments.

We are now in a position to see the purpose and the artistic unity of the Prose Edda: the entire work is a textbook for apprentice poets. Gylfaginning, conceived in the true antiquarian spirit, supplies the mythological and legendary background which, in the Christian age that had superseded the vivid old heathen days, a young man might not know or might avoid. “Do not lose sight of these [xvi] splendid tales of the fathers,” Snorri, by implication, says to the youthful bard; “but remember always that these old legends are to be used to point a moral or adorn a tale, and not to be believed, or to be altered without authority of ancient skalds who knew them. Belief is sin; tampering with tradition is a crime against scholarship.”

The second and third sections, Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal, offer the rules of composition, and drive them home by means of models drawn, in the one case, from acknowledged masters of the craft, in the other, by the example of a complete skaldic trilogy, the work of a man who was accepted by his own time as a worthy successor of Bragi, Kormákr, and Einarr. A needed transition from the literary to the technical portion of the book is supplied by Bragarædur, which narrates, in the same spirit as Gylfaginning, further useful tales, and concludes with a mythological account of the skaldic art.

Even the Prologue, which many scholars consider spurious, is an integral part of the work—a fact established by Snorri's single address, in the character of the author, to beginners. In this apostrophe he refers to the Prologue: “Remember, these tales are to be used only as Chief Skalds have used them, and must be revered as ancient tradition, but are neither to be believed nor to be tampered with. Regard them as I have indicated at the beginning of this book.” The beginning of the book is a summary of the Biblical story of the Creation and Deluge, followed by a rationalized account of the rise of the ancient pagan faith, according to which the old gods appear, not as deities, but as men.

The word “Edda,” as applied to the whole work, has long furnished scholars with material for disputation. The [xviii] different theories regarding it need not be restated here. It is the translator's personal opinion that Magnússon's etymology, if not established, is at least the most satisfactory one likely to be offered. Magnússon¹ points out that Snorri passed the interval between his third and nineteenth years at Oddi, under the fostering of the grandson of Sæmundr the Learned; that Sæmundr, who had studied at Paris, had founded a school at Oddi; that Snorri became the author of a book which was called Edda; and that this book contains, in its first section, a prose paraphrase of many of the songs from the Elder or Poetic Edda, together with a number of quotations from that work. Now the Poetic Edda was ascribed by its earliest recorded possessor, Bishop Brynjólf Sveinsson, to Sæmundr; and while it is improbable that Sæmundr composed the poem, it is highly probable that it once formed part of his library at Oddi. There Snorri may have learned to know it; and we may assume that he gave the prose edition the name of its poetical original. That original, “the mother MS.,” he thinks would naturally have been called “the book of, or at Oddi,” which would be expressed, in Icelandic, either as “Oddabók,” or as “Edda,” following, in the latter case, accepted linguistic laws.

1. Magnússon's theory, with a summary of all others in the field, was presented in a paper read before the Viking Club on November 15, 1895, published in the Saga Book of that society, and separately printed at London in 1896.