The Prose Edda is Scandinavia’s best-known work of literature and the most extensive source for Norse mythology. In straight-forward prose interspersed with ancient verse, the Edda recounts the Norse creation epic and the subsequent struggles of the gods, giants, dwarves and elves in that universe. Woven throughout is the gods’ tragic realization that the future holds one final cataclysmic battle, Ragnarok, when the world will be destroyed. The Edda also tells heroic stories about legendary warriors and their kin, stories which incorporate shards of ancient memory. The powerful supernatural tales and heroic lore captured in the Edda have influenced modern culture, inspiring most notably Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The Edda also influenced poets W. H. Auden and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, and a host of writers and artists in other genres, including fantasy, comic books and film.
Over the centuries the Prose Edda has been known as the Younger Edda, Snorri’s Edda, and simply the Edda. Many of the stories contained in the Prose Edda have counterparts in ancient verse known as eddic poetry – anonymous poems collected and written down in a separate work called the Poetic Edda around the same time that the Prose Edda was compiled in the thirteenth century. In many instances the Prose Edda incorporates stanzas of eddic poems directly into its prose, citing these verses as sources.
The Prose Edda also adopts stanzas and references from another group of poems, called skaldic poetry. The two forms of poetry, eddic and skaldic, are closely related, and most skalds, as Old Norse poets were called, could work in either form. The major differences between the two are that skaldic poetry employs more intricate word choices and metres than does eddic poetry, and that skaldic poems, unlike eddic poems, are frequently attributed to individual skalds who composed them.
Both the Eddas – poetry and prose – were written in Iceland during the thirteenth century, and they are based in large part on the oral tradition that stemmed from the earlier Viking Age. This era, from roughly 800 to 1100, was a time when Scandinavian seafarers explored, raided and settled distant lands, including the previously uninhabited Iceland. Old Norse was the language spoken throughout Scandinavia during the Viking period, and the two Eddas were written in Old Icelandic, a branch of Old Norse that had changed little from the time Iceland was settled in the late 800s. The Eddas, like Iceland’s sagas, were written in the native language and they were meant to be read aloud, enabling a single manuscript to speak to many, literate and non-literate alike. The content of the Eddas did not go through an intermediate stage of being written and transmitted in Latin, the language of the Church, as did most other non-Icelandic writings from the Middle Ages that give information about Norse myth and legend. For example, the Prose Edda differs from the Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes), which was written in Latin around the year 1200 by the Danish cleric Saxo Grammaticus for Denmark’s archbishop and was strongly influenced by his classical learning.
Geographical and political circumstances help to explain why the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda were written in the form they were in medieval Iceland. This was an immigrant society formed by colonists from many parts of the Viking world, but especially from Norway and from Norse colonies in the British Isles. In a frontier setting on the far northern edge of the habitable world, the Icelanders held fast to the cultural memories brought by the early settlers, which provided them with a sense of common origin and helped bind them into a cohesive cultural group. Additionally, the Icelanders made the transition from their traditional religious beliefs to Christianity in a manner distinctly different from the contemporaneous conversion in the Norwegian mother culture. There, Christian missionary kings forcefully uprooted the belief in the old gods. The Icelanders, rather than shedding blood among themselves as did the Norwegians, peacefully accepted the new religion through a political compromise in the year 1000 at their annual national assembly, the Althing. This collective decision sanctioned a gradual transition to the new belief system. The old forms of worship faded within a few decades of the conversion, but the Icelanders continued long afterwards to value stories from the pagan times as a cultural heritage rather than a creed.
Despite the Icelanders’ attachment to the Old Scandinavian past, thirteenth-century Icelanders often followed mainland Scandinavia in adopting elements of continental European culture. Many new tastes reached Iceland, especially via Norway, and among the imports came new forms of poetic expression including rhymed verse, sung dances (precursors of the ballad), French romances and Christian religious narratives, which competed with traditional eddic and skaldic poetry. In response to the new trends, the Edda was written as a handbook for those aspiring Icelandic skalds who wanted to master the traditional forms of verse and the older stories essential to the imagery of Old Norse poetry. Rather than reconstructing cultic practices of the old religion, which had ceased two centuries earlier, the Edda concentrates on what was still known at the time of its composition: myths, legends and the use of traditional poetic diction. It is evident that the one or more authors who compiled the Edda wanted to continue knowledge of Old Scandinavian poetry and the culture that surrounded it.
Even though the Edda relies heavily on native traditions, a good argument can be made that it also shows awareness of two Latin literary genres of the Middle Ages: writings about mythology and about language and poetics. Some scholars propose that Latin treatises may have influenced those parts of the text that treat technical poetic terminology and systems of poetic classification. Further, almost everyone agrees that the writer of the Edda knew at least something of the ideas current in the general Latin learning of the Middle Ages, whether or not he himself knew Latin.
The Title Edda and the Question of Authorship
The origin of the use of the word edda as a title is elusive. In thirteenth-century Icelandic, the term edda meant ‘great-grandmother’, which would have been a fitting title for a compilation of traditional stories, but we will never know for sure how the name came to be applied. The original thirteenth-century manuscript is long lost, and it is not known whether the word edda was even its title. The name edda first appears in the surviving fourteenth-century manuscripts as a subtitle, referring to only a part of the compilation. Two related terms, edduregla and eddulist, referring to the rules and the art of poetry, also appear in fourteenth-century manuscripts. From these terms and their usage, we infer that the word edda had become associated with traditional verse, and by late medieval times the Edda was regarded in Iceland as the authoritative handbook for training poets in traditional verse forms.
It has long been assumed that the learned and quarrelsome Icelandic chieftain Snorri Sturluson is the author of the Edda. The main evidence for Snorri’s authorship is the following short passage from the Codex Upsaliensis, an early fourteenth-century Icelandic manuscript containing the Edda:
This book is called Edda. Snorri Sturluson compiled [literally, assembled] it in the way that it is arranged here. First it tells about the Æsir [the gods] and Ymir [the primordial giant], then comes the poetic diction section with the poetic names of many things and lastly a poem called the List of Meters which Snorri composed about King Hakon and Duke Skuli.
This passage outlines the main contents of the Edda, and although Snorri is named as the compiler of the work, it is not clear from the passage whether Snorri is the author of more than the List of Metres. The other main manuscripts of the Edda are also ambiguous about Snorri’s connection to the work; nevertheless, the mentions of Snorri in the manuscripts have greatly influenced Snorri’s acceptance as the author of the entire work.
But who was Snorri? He was the son of Sturla, an upstart chieftain from western Iceland, whose sons and grandchildren lent the family name of Sturlung (the descendants of Sturla) to the Sturlung Age, a turbulent time in the history of Iceland in the first half of the thirteenth century. Born in 1178 or 1179, Snorri was two years old when his life took an unexpected turn. Jon Loptsson, Iceland’s most powerful and cultured leader, offered to raise Snorri in order to settle a feud. It was unusual for a child to be fostered in this way by a man of a higher social status than his father, so Snorri’s father saw this offer as a sign of respect. Snorri spent the next sixteen years at Oddi, Jon Loptsson’s estate and an important centre of learning in medieval Iceland. When he left Oddi, Snorri married one of the wealthiest women in Iceland and soon became a prominent chieftain. In 1215, and again in 1222, Snorri was elected the Althing’s law-speaker, the highest official position in the Old Icelandic Free State. As a sign of his status, Snorri built at the site of the Althing an unusually large turf building, where he and his men lived during the two-week period of the assembly, and it is instructive that this thirteenth-century Christian chieftain named this residence Valhalla, after the hall of the chief Norse god Odin.
Snorri was extremely ambitious and his life was full of disputes and enemies. To increase his prestige and power at home, he sailed to Norway two times, where he made ill-advised alliances with conflicting factions within the Norwegian royal family. In the 1230s the number and reach of Snorri’s enemies in Iceland and Norway grew dangerously. He had married his daughters to rising Icelandic chieftains, but the marriages ended and the alliances failed. In the year 1241, two of Snorri’s former sons-in-law, recruited by the Norwegian king, who was extending his power to Iceland, attacked and surprised Snorri at his estate at Reykjaholt in western Iceland. They found him hiding in his cellar and killed him.
Snorri is mentioned in many thirteenth-century Icelandic writings, and they allow us to know more about him than about most other individuals in medieval Europe. Still, we can only guess at some aspects of Snorri’s life, including the extent of his writings. The books that tradition attributes to him, the History of the Kings of Norway (Heimskringla) and the Prose Edda, indicate that he spent time gathering information for his future writings during his travels in Scandinavia. The opening section of Heimskringla, which covers the earliest mythic and legendary period, is called the Saga of the Ynglings. Like the Edda, this work tells ancient stories, and intersperses its prose with eddic and skaldic verses. However, the stories of the two works are often distinguished by differences of fact and detail.
The Parts of the Edda
The Edda is divided into four parts. It begins with a short Prologue, a self-standing unit that differs significantly from the rest of the Edda in sentence structure, subject matter and the kind of genealogical information it gives. In a Norse culture that was in the process of absorbing elements of classical learning, the Prologue attempts to elevate the status of the Edda by equating Norse stories with those from the Graeco-Roman tradition. It also tries to make the Edda’s stories more palatable to medieval Christians by harmonizing Norse beliefs with Christian concepts. The Prologue may have been part of the original text, or some or all of it may have been added later.
The second and main section is known as Gylfaginning and is the core of the Edda. No one can learn about Scandinavian mythology without it, since it is our best source for the story of the creation, the struggles of the gods, and the events leading to the destruction of the universe. The text of Gylfaginning is remarkably similar in all the important manuscripts of the Edda. Gylfaginning means the ‘deluding [ginning] of Gylfi’, a reference not to the stories that King Gylfi of Sweden learns from the Æsir, but to Gylfi’s realization that he was the victim of an elaborate optical illusion.
Gylfaginning is written entirely as a dialogue between Gylfi and three formidable god-like figures who are at the centre of the deception. Gylfi disguises himself as a traveller named Gangleri, a name meaning ‘strider’, ‘walker’, or ‘wanderer’, and journeys to visit the Æsir. This mysterious people is said to be newly arrived in the North, and Gangleri seeks to discover the source of their power. In the Æsir’s majestic but illusory hall, Gangleri/Gylfi meets three manifestations of Odin: High, Just-as-High and Third. These strange, lordly individuals sit on thrones one above the other. Gangleri questions them and, story by story, they reveal what they know.
Gangleri’s dialogue with Odin’s three manifestations resembles contests of wisdom found in eddic poems such as The Lay of Vafthrudnir (Vafprúðnismál), where Odin pits his mastery of mythic knowledge against the giant Vafthrudnir. Norse wisdom contests were adversarial, and Gangleri is told at the start that he will not escape unharmed unless he grows wiser. Gangleri’s method is to probe the Æsir with questions such as ‘Who is the highest or the oldest of all the gods?’ ‘How were the earth and the sky made?’ The richly detailed answers often touch on troubling topics, many anticipating the destruction of the world.
The third section is called Skaldskaparmal (Skáldskaparmál), and, unlike Gylfaginning, it varies considerably from manuscript to manuscript. The name Skaldskaparmal is telling. Skáld, as mentioned earlier, is the Old Norse word for ‘poet’. Skapr means ‘creation’ or ‘craft’, while mál is ‘language’ or ‘diction’, hence Skáldskaparmál means the ‘language of poetry’ or ‘poetic diction’. The stories in Skaldskaparmal give background for references and allusions found in Old Norse verse, and these explanations are a priceless repository of Scandinavian lore. (See Appendix 2 for a discussion of the poetic devices, kennings and heiti.)
There is little doubt that Gylfaginning and Skaldskaparmal were written at different times and in somewhat different styles. Whereas Gylfaginning is entirely in dialogue, Skaldskaparmal is written in a combination of dialogue and third-person storytelling. It would seem that these two sections of the Edda were gathered into one book only after they were written separately. Still, the two fit remarkably well together, containing almost no repetition. Both Skaldskaparmal and Gylfaginning tell myths, but Skaldskaparmal also recounts tales of legendary heroes. Some of these heroic legends can be dated to a time before the Viking Age known as the Migration Period, from the fifth to the seventh centuries, when warrior bands and tribes invaded the collapsing Roman Empire. Stories that originated during this era became the basis for epic cycles that were popular during the Viking Age, and continued to be told in the thirteenth century when the Edda was written. Among the stories gathered into Skaldskaparmal are those of kings and warriors whose fame springs from a mixture of history and myth. One of these is the legendary King Jormunrek, also known as Ermanaric in late Roman and Old English sources. This tragic figure ruled over a vast East Gothic kingdom of horsemen on the Ukrainian steppes until suddenly attacked by the Huns in the year 376. Skaldskaparmal also tells the story of the ancient Danish warrior King Hrolf Kraki, who, much like King Arthur in the Celtic lore or Charlemagne in the Frankish legends, surrounded himself with twelve champions. Hrolf’s warriors and berserkers are treated more fully in The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, an episodic collection of Old Scandinavian tales that has similarities to the Old English epic Beowulf.
Sigurd the dragon slayer, whose lineage is traced to Odin, is the best-known hero in Skaldskaparmal. He and his Volsung family serve as the basis of a series of epic stories, including those about Attila the Hun and the Burgundian tribesmen who covet Sigurd’s treasure, the Rhine Gold. Sigurd becomes entangled in a tragic love triangle with a Burgundian princess, who later marries Attila, and a Valkyrie, who disobeys Odin. Extensive versions of the Sigurd story also survive in The Saga of the Volsungs, the Poetic Edda, Thidrek’s Saga and the South German epic poem The Nibelungenlied, where Sigurd is known as Siegfried. Richard Wagner made Siegfried the hero of his Ring cycle, but most closely followed the storyline of what happened to Sigurd and his Volsung ancestors found in the Eddas and The Saga of the Volsungs.
The fourth and final section of the Edda is the poem List of Metres, called Hattatal (Háttatal) in Old Icelandic. There is no doubt about Hattatal’s authorship: it was composed by Snorri Sturluson, probably early in his career, as an attempt to curry favour with the Norwegian King Hakon Hakonarson and his father-in-law Skuli, a jarl (earl), who was given the title of duke. Hattatal is an ambitious, somewhat pedantic work, whose 102 stanzas demonstrate often small differences in poetic metres and obscure usages of poetic devices. Prose commentary offering technical explanations is interspersed among the verses of this long poem. The poem is a treasure for those with a knowledge of Old Icelandic and interested in the intricacies of Norse poetry. Because of the technical and obscure nature of Hattatal, it is not included in this nor in most translations. (Appendix 2 contains a sample stanza from Hattatal, followed by an example of the prose commentary.)
The Mythology of the Edda
In the period before the conversion to Christianity, Viking Age Scandinavians had no single, organized religion; instead they shared a common view of the universe and a belief in the same pantheon of Norse gods and other supernatural creatures. Two groups of gods, the Æsir and the Vanir, war with each other, eventually making a lasting truce. Thereafter they live together in harmony, fusing so effectively into a single group that all gods become known as Æsir, even though the Vanir retain their identity as a small, separate family. The home of the gods is at Asgard, a compound name whose first part As -refers to the Æsir and whose second part gard (related to the English word ‘yard’) means an ‘enclosure’. Hence Asgard is the ‘enclosed region where the Æsir live’.
The gods have special attributes, but many pay for their powers with a related loss. Odin, the god who sees all, loses an eye; Tyr, a god of war and council, breaks his pledge and loses his right hand (crucial for making oaths and wielding weapons); Freyja, the goddess of household prosperity, leaves her hearth to search for a husband who has wandered off. Unlike the gods of Greek and Roman mythology, the Æsir rarely quarrel among themselves over control of human or semi-divine heroes, nor do they enjoy the complacency of immortality. Their universe is constantly in danger, and their actions frequently have unanticipated consequences, as in the creation story, when Odin and his brothers slay the giant Ymir and use his body to fill Ginnungagap, the primeval void. While this act gives rise to the world of the Edda, the slaying also unleashes the power of the giants, the gods’ enemies.
Throughout the mythology of the Edda, three figures serve as catalysts for much of the action. Two are gods, Odin and Thor, while the third, Loki, is a trickster-like figure. Odin is an old god who figures in the mythologies of other northern peoples, where he was known as Woden, Wodan, Wotan and Wuotan, but we know him best in the context of Scandinavian mythology, where he serves as patron of aristocrats, warriors and poets. The Edda is an especially important source about Odin and refers to him by many names, including All-Father, the High One and Val-Father, which means ‘Father of the Slain’. Odin has both priestly and martial roles: as the god of death, who decides the fates of warriors, Odin travels between the worlds of the living and the dead on his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir; and as the god of sovereignty, he leads the Æsir with his skills in magic, prophecy and governance. Odin knows that all will be lost at Ragnarok and constantly seeks the knowledge to forestall the coming doom. Two ravens, whose names Hugin and Munin refer to the mind’s divided ability for thought and memory, sit on his shoulders. Every morning they fly over the world, gathering information that they pass on to Odin, who remembers everything. In a sense, Odin is the repository of the world’s knowledge. He is also a dangerous and fickle god, who is known to withdraw his favour from formerly victorious warriors.
Norse mythology hints at Odinic cults, with Odin being worshipped through a combination of ecstatic and seemingly shamanistic rituals. From the eddic poem The Sayings of the High One (Hávamál), he is said to have hanged himself in a sacrificial ritual on a tree. Barely surviving this ordeal, Odin gains arcane knowledge, including the use of runes, the ancient Scandinavian alphabet sometimes used for magical purposes. In the poem, Odin chants:
I know that I hung on the wind-swept tree all nine nights with spear was I wounded and given to Odin, myself to me, on that tree which no one knows from which roots it grows.
Bread I was not given, no drink from the horn, downwards I glared; up I pulled the runes, screaming I took them, from there I fell back again.
The second major god is Thor, Odin’s eldest son by Earth, whom the Edda says is Odin’s daughter and wife. Thor is a god of the sky, and in the Germanic regions south of Scandinavia he was called Donar, meaning ‘Thunder’. From the sky, this good-natured god controls the storms and brings life-giving rain, the source of the earth’s abundance. Thor was widely worshipped by farmers and seamen, and his name was a prominent element in names for men, women and places, such as Thorsteinn, Thorgerd and Thorsness, names that continued to be popular even after the introduction of Christianity.
Thor is especially known for killing giants and driving a chariot pulled by two goats across the heavens. A great fighter, he undertakes most of the actual combat against the gods’ enemies, and his children are also powerful warriors. Thor’s most cherished possessions are his hammer, iron gloves and belt or girdle of power. The contrast between him and his father is great. Whereas Odin is cunning and thoughtful, Thor is generally forthright and quick to act, relying on brute strength, but at times he is depicted as foolish and gullible. In one story, a giant tricks Thor into thinking that he is in a house, when he is actually in the thumb of the giant’s glove. Even though Thor is sometimes naive, he is a shrewd fighter, and his enemies, such as the Midgard Serpent and the giant Utgarda-Loki, fear him when he raises his hammer.
Optical illusions, such as the one that fooled Thor when he thought he was in a house, occur frequently in the Edda, and are called sjónhverfing (sight altering), a visual deception that usually is the result of spells or chants. The Edda uses different terminology when describing incidents in which the actual physical appearance of things or people changes. In such instances the text often employs the word hamr, meaning ‘shape’ in the supernatural sense, and variants of the phrase at skipta hömum, ‘to shift in shape’ (hömum from hamr). The concepts involved reveal the belief that certain people and objects have special powers to bring about a metamorphosis. Loki, the third major figure in the Edda, is one of these shape-changers, as when he puts on Freyja’s falcon shape (valshamr). Loki’s ability to don a hamr and change his appearance fits well with his other trickster-like characteristics. Tricksters, found in stories from cultures as disparate as ancient Mesopotamia and the Americas, are at times cultural heroes while at other times they are antisocial individuals. Often tricksters live at the margins of society and are neither completely good nor thoroughly bad. Always on the move, they delight audiences with their adventures, mishaps and humour. As shape-changers, tricksters sometimes switch genders according to the needs of the moment.
Loki acts as an inexhaustible mischief-maker, and he often provides both the cause of the gods’ dilemmas as well as the solutions. The Edda’s description of him reveals his many sides.
Loki is pleasing, even beautiful to look at, but his nature is evil and he is undependable. More than others, he has the kind of wisdom known as cunning, and is treacherous in all matters. He constantly places the gods in difficulties and often solves their problems with guile. (p. 39)
The stories about Loki and his offspring are often conflicting. When first mentioned in the Edda, Loki is referred to as one of the Æsir, but other stories in the Edda make it clear that he is not a god. Rather, he is the son of the giant Farbauti and a woman named Laufey, characters about whom we know almost nothing. Also there is no convincing evidence of a Loki cult, and few if any place names can be connected with him, suggesting that if he was a god he was not publicly worshipped.
Loki’s position is ambiguous. He is frequently an antagonist of the gods, but he is also one of the gods’ main helpers and strangely connected to Odin. The eddic poem Loki’s Flyting (Lokasenna) says that Loki is Odin’s blood brother. At times Loki appears almost as the All-Father’s darker side, and both Odin and Loki are complex and dangerous characters. Both engage in trickery, womanizing, shape-changing and betrayal, but Loki also changes his sex, as when he becomes a mare, giving birth to Odin’s horse Sleipnir. Repeatedly, Loki wins wagers by deceiving creatures such as the dark elves, who wield creative forces and forge treasures. In this way he obtains for the gods their greatest prizes, including the ship Skidbladnir, Thor’s hammer Mjollnir, Odin’s spear Gungnir and the All-Father’s magical ring Draupnir. This last treasure drips eight gold rings of equal weight every ninth night. Loki also changes his shape to evade the gods’ anger, as when he changes into a salmon.
Like many tricksters, Loki’s appetites are prodigious. On one journey, he consumes vast quantities of food in an eating contest. In Loki’s Flyting, he boasts about bedding many of the goddesses, and his unions are especially varied, indicating the multifaceted aspects of his character. His wife Sigyn is counted among the Æsir, and he has two sons with her, but he also sires three monstrous children with the ogress Angrboda: Hel, the Midgard Serpent and the wolf Fenrir.
Loki is also creative, and in some ways he fulfils the role of a cultural hero, bringing useful tools to the world. Along with acquiring the special weapons that the gods use to defend the world, Loki is responsible for the creation of the fishing net. Humour is central to his character. At times his actions are plainly funny, and he frequently displays a wit marked by a legalistic mastery of language. In one instance, after losing a life-and-death wager with a dwarf, Loki saves himself by arguing that his opponent has a right to his head but not to his neck.
The three gods of the Vanir family, Njord, Frey and Frey’s twin sister Freyja, also figure prominently in the Edda as fertility gods. Njord is an ancient god of abundance and well being. He appears to be related to an older deity named Nerthus, a fertility or earth goddess, who, according to the first-century Roman historian Tacitus, was worshipped on an island in the Baltic. By the Viking Age, Njord is a male god whose realm is the sea. In the Edda, Njord marries Skadi, the daughter of a giant. Rather than live with her husband, Skadi chooses to return to her father’s home in the mountains, and this story of marital incompatibility has overtones of an ancient tale illuminating the difference between life on land and in the sea.
Njord’s son Frey is said to control the bounty of the earth and is devoted to pleasure. It is instructive that this god of fertility at times cannot control his desires. In one central story, he endangers the gods by trading his sword for the hand in marriage of the lovely giantess Gerd, and at Ragnarok the gods will greatly miss this weapon. From many sources we know Frey was worshipped throughout much of the northern world. In the Baltic region, he was called Yngvi Frey. Although we have no sure explanation for the meaning of Yngvi, it was a name that was widely known, and Yngvi Frey appears to be the mythical ancestor of the tribe of Ingvaeones mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania, while in Old English writings Frey is called Ing (Yngvi). Yngvi Frey was especially important in Sweden at Old Uppsala, where he was revered as the divine ancestor of the royal dynasty called the Ynglings, after him. A branch of this Swedish royal family moved to Norway and was also called the Ynglings. In Norway, they founded a Viking Age dynasty in the Vik region near modern-day Oslo. Through the conquests of the long-lived King Harald Fairhair (c. 860 –930), the Ynglings became Norway’s medieval royal house, with Ynglings remaining on the throne until the fourteenth century.
The Edda tells us that, compared to the gods, ‘The goddesses are no less sacred, nor are they less powerful’ (p. 30). They are called gydjur, a general term meaning female gods, and asynjur, meaning, more specifically, female Æsir. In Asgard, the goddesses own a beautiful sanctuary named Vingolf, and the most prominent among them have their own halls. Frigg, Odin’s wife and the chief goddess, owns the magnificent dwelling Fensalir. Little is known about Frigg’s parentage, but she is more clearly defined as the mother of Baldr, the most beautiful of the gods, whose tragic death she tries to prevent. Like her husband Odin, Frigg has considerable powers and can see into the future, but, unlike Odin, she rarely uses her talents.
Although Frigg holds the highest rank, it is Freyja who plays a larger role in the Edda. Freyja has her own hall, named Folkvangar, where she alone decides the seating. Throughout Scandinavia, women worshipped Freyja as the female deity of love and fertility and as the goddess of pleasure and household prosperity. The Edda tells that Frejya delights in love and songs and that her great sorrow is the disappearance of her husband Od. Like many gods of fertility, Freyja and her Vanir family show a tendency towards incest, and the eddic poem Loki’s Flyting hints that Freyja and Frey were the children of Njord and his sister. In the same poem Loki accuses Freyja of having incestuous relations with her brother. Contention swirls around Freyja: giants lust after her, and at times the gods and Loki covet her possessions. One of her treasures is the famous Brisingamen, the ‘Necklace of the Brisings’, made by four dwarves, and, according to the Icelandic Short Saga of Sorli, Odin has Loki steal it. The Old English poem Beowulf speaks of a similar mysterious piece of jewellery called the Brosinga mene (the necklace of the Brosings).
The Edda also mentions many lesser goddesses and other types of supernatural women. These include Idunn, who guards the apples of immortality, and Eir, who brings healing. Gefjun, whose name means ‘She Who Gives’, appears in one story as the founding mother of the main Danish island of Sjaelland. The virgin Fulla is a mysterious goddess. She serves as Frigg’s attendant and carries a box made of ash wood, but we know nothing about its contents. Supernatural women include Norns, who shape men’s lives at birth, and Valkyries, whom Odin sends into battle. On the battlefield, Valkyries choose warriors to be slain and taken to Odin’s Valhalla, where his swelling army of warriors enjoys a vibrant afterlife, feasting and fighting daily in preparation for Ragnarok. Another female figure wielding supernatural power is Hel. Gloomy and cruel, she does not appear to be a goddess but presides in the underworld over those who die of disease and old age. A fearsome creature, Hel is described as half black and half white, and even some gods, such as Baldr, the son of Odin and Frigg, cannot escape her grasp. At Ragnarok, Loki leads into battle all of the dead from the realm of his daughter Hel.
Giants, Dwarves, Elves and Monsters
The gods are integrally connected to other supernatural creatures, some of whom are specifically linked to the earth, and others of whom are threatening monsters. Modern mythographers use the Greek term ‘chthonic’ to describe creatures who are connected to the earth, and in the Edda, such beings fall into several categories. One type is the jötnar or thursar, Old Norse terms which roughly translate to the English word ‘giants’. Their home is in Jotunheim (Giant Land) or Utgard (Outer Enclosure), from where they threaten gods and men. The killing of the primal giant Ymir at the beginning of time is an essential feature of the Norse creation story. As part of this creation the giants face a survival test. When Ymir falls, so much blood gushes from his wounds that all the original giants except Bergelmir and his wife are killed in the resulting flood. The frost giants, the perpetual antagonists of the gods, are descended from this lone couple.
Although the jötnar and thursar often resemble our notion of giants, the equivalence is not exact. In the Edda, for example, Norse giants are not always exceptionally large, and we learn from descriptions of giantesses that some were of similar size to the gods with whom they intermarry. Giants are portrayed in the Edda as complex social beings with characteristics similar to those of the gods. Giantesses and ogresses are also memorable characters in the Edda, and their range of types is so broad that it is scarcely possible to classify such women as belonging to a single group. Sometimes they are oafish, troll-like beings, but at other times giant women are of such beauty in the eyes of the gods that they wish to marry them. Odin’s connection with the giants, male and female, is especially close. His mother, Bestla, is the daughter of a giant, and Odin frequently seeks knowledge from these creatures.
Dwarves (dvergar) appear many times in the Edda and are rarely described in a sympathetic light. The Edda recounts that the dwarves emerge first of all the creatures who live in the flesh of the primordial giant Ymir. ‘They were maggots at that time, but by a decision of the gods they acquired human understanding and assumed the likeness of men, living in the earth and the rocks’ (p. 22). We can only guess why the gods changed the nature of the dwarves, but the answer may be connected to the history of forging or smithying. The Old Icelandic sources tell us that, in the earliest times, the Æsir were master smiths who worked metal, wood, stone and especially gold. The eddic poem The Sibyl’s Prophecy (Völuspá) tells us that the period following the creation of the universe was a special age, before the era was spoiled by the arrival of mysterious women from Giant Land. For reasons that are unclear to us, the gods thereafter abandoned forging, leaving this essential art to the dwarves. Sometimes willingly but often under duress, the dwarves become the major smiths or artisans of the gods. From their underground world, these craftsmen produce precious objects and forge the implements used by the gods to prevail over the natural and social worlds. The Edda lists the names of many dwarves, including Durin, Dvalin, Dain, Gandalf, Thorin, Bifur, Bafur, Bombur, Nori, Oin, Fili, Kili, Throin, Gloin, Dori, Ori and Oakenshield, who are familiar to modern readers through J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings.
The Edda frequently mentions elves, but mostly in passing. A line in The Sibyl’s Prophecy, ‘What of the Æsir? What of the elves?’, implies that elves (alfar) were also important in Old Scandinavian mythology. The elves, it seems, lived apart from other beings and at different places, such as Alfheim and Vidblain. There were various types of elves, including light and dark ones, and the latter, who lived at Svartalfaheim, seem to
The World Tree Yggdrasil
Rising into the heavens, the World Tree Yggdrasil was a living entity, whose branches spread over the lands. This axis mundi or cosmic pillar at the centre of the world is described as a giant ash, binding together the disparate parts of the universe and serving as a symbol for a dynamic cosmos. Above the branches and foliage of the tree are the heavens, formed from the skull of the primordial giant Ymir, and held in place by four dwarves. In the heavens, Sun and Moon are pulled by chariots and chased by wolves. The giant Hraesvelg, in the shape of an eagle, beats his wings, blowing the winds. In response to the question, ‘How should one refer to the sky?’, a passage in the Edda tells us: ‘By calling it Ymir’s head and hence the giant’s skull, the burden or heavy load on the dwarves, the helmet of the dwarves West, East, South and North, the land of the sun, moon, heavenly bodies, constellations and winds, or the helmet or house of the air, of the earth and of the sun’ (p. 112). Below the tree’s branches lies Asgard, the home of the gods and the prophetic women called norns. From Asgard, the Rainbow Bridge, Bifrost, leads down to Midgard (Middle Earth), the home of men. A wall encloses Midgard, separating it from the outer region, Utgard, the land of the giants. Beyond Utgard is the outer sea, in which the encircling Midgard Serpent lies, biting its tail. Below is the underworld, containing monsters, serpents and a great hound, as well as the realm of the dead and seething rivers. For a fuller discussion of the World Tree and the Norse cosmos, see Appendix 1.
Other indications of the importance of elves in the supernatural world of Old Scandinavia include place names connected with their veneration. Many folk tales and medieval sagas also speak of elves. For example, Kormak’s Saga, a rich source of folk religion and sorcery in medieval Iceland, provides insight into the role of elves. After a duel, the wounds of Kormak’s opponent are slow in healing, and he seeks the advice of a sorceress, who says: ‘Not far from here is a small hill in which elves live. Get the bull that was slaughtered by Kormak. Redden the surface of knoll with its blood and make a feast for the elves from the meat. Then you will get better.’
Among the monsters who most threaten the gods are the children of Loki. One is the wolf Fenrir, who in the final battle swallows the sun, another is the gigantic Midgard Serpent, who lies in the outer sea, encircling all lands, and the third is Hel, who oversees the realm of the dead. The gods are so fearful of Fenrir that they decide to bind the wolf while still a cub. Only mighty Tyr, a god of war and battle, calms the young wolf long enough to allow the other gods to bind it with a magic fetter, although Tyr loses his hand in the process.
The Edda in Iceland and Beyond
Written on the far northern edge of the medieval world, the Edda is an extraordinary document for its invaluable insights into the language and techniques of Viking Age skalds, and this was one of the principal reasons that Icelanders took care to preserve the Edda by repeatedly copying it. Iceland was an unusually literate society in the Middle Ages, and copying manuscripts of all kinds was a pastime that remained popular among the Icelanders down to the beginning of the twentieth century. In the medieval period, Icelandic manuscripts were made of calf skin (vellum) and were expensive to produce. In early modern times, Icelanders began to import inexpensively manufactured blank paper books, and one piece of evidence of the Edda’s continuing popularity is that over 150 paper copies of the Edda survive, many from the nineteenth century.
The Edda’s wealth of information about Old Norse mythology was another reason for the Icelanders’ continued interest in the work. It was also the major reason why, starting in early modern times, the Edda gained fame outside Iceland. The Edda’s entrance into the wider world of western culture is itself a story. In the sixteenth century, Denmark was an aggressive power in Northern Europe, seeking primacy in Scandinavia and, in common with the rulers of states elsewhere in Europe, the Danish kings strove to enhance their ambitious political agenda by documenting the antiquity and legitimacy of their history. For this purpose, the Danish state adopted as its own the mythic and heroic past of all Scandinavia.
Iceland became a possession of the Danish king in the late fourteenth century, and by the sixteenth century the Danes had discovered that Iceland’s medieval manuscripts were a treasure trove, containing information about Scandinavia’s past found nowhere else. Icelanders sent manuscripts to the king as gifts, and these and many others found their way into the archives and royal libraries in Copenhagen. The Danish king went so far as to command the Icelanders not to sell their manuscripts outside the kingdom. With the royal government as patron, Icelandic students and scholars were invited to Copenhagen to study and work on the manuscripts. Among the most important of these scholars was the humanist Arngrimur Jonsson (1568–1648), whose influential book Brevis Commentarius de Islandia (Short Commentary About Iceland), published in Copenhagen in 1593, brought Iceland’s medieval writings, including the Edda, to the attention of scholars outside Denmark. Jonsson’s popular work fuelled a growing awareness of the Edda beyond Scandinavia that eventually led to a series of translations of the Edda into modern languages. The first translation of Gylfaginning into English appeared in London in 1770, as part of a book by Bishop Percy entitled Northern Antiquities. This book soon gained a readership, and in 1809 Sir Walter Scott reprinted it in Edinburgh with his own additions. By the nineteenth century, readers of most major European languages were able to learn about the gods, giants, dwarves, elves and other creatures who populated the cosmos of Old Scandinavian belief and imagination. For allowing us to glimpse this complex universe, we owe a debt of gratitude to Snorri Sturluson and the other Icelanders who contributed to writing and preserving the Edda.