Eddas

Eddas

EDDAS. The Icelandic works known as the Eddas form our most important sources for Scandinavian mythology. The Poetic Edda is a collection of alliterative poems. First in the Danish Royal Library (hence the collection's name, Codex Regius), this manuscript was transferred to Iceland in 1971. Sixteen pages were lost from the middle between 1641 and 1643; the remaining ninety pages contain eleven poems about the gods and eighteen about Germanic heroes. A few poems in a similar style are found in other medieval manuscripts. The work known as the Prose Edda or Snorri's Edda is a handbook of poetry written by Snorri Sturluson between around 1225 and 1230. To explain circumlocutions such as "Freyja's tears" for "gold," Snorri relates myths about the gods. In one manuscript the work is given the title Edda. The derivation of this word is obscure, although several explanations have been proposed.

The authorship, date, and place of origin of the eddic poems are unknown. The Codex Regius was written about 1270, but its poems were copied from several manuscripts that are now lost. The poems quoted in Snorri's Edda must be from before 1230, and close echoes of them are found in court verse from the tenth and eleventh centuries.

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