The verse portions of the Prose Edda are in the older court poetry style that was seen as a high standard for poets. Told with dramatic artistry, humour, and charm.īasically what Snorri did, is he added prose explanations to the difficult parts of verse and described the symbolism that was going on. At only about 100 pages, its incredibly concise and gives you a great overview of Norse lore, with the stories being If you want to read the Prose Edda, don’t worry, it’s not boring like textbooks seem to be these days. Kind of like a textbook, or an instruction manual, so that young poets can understand the meaning behind the stories and then pass that on through their own work. This bloke, Snorri Sturluson, is thought to have compiled the book in the early 1220s, and there’s even some thought that his intention for the Prose Edda is more as a guide for the Norse Poetry. The Prose Edda is believed to have been written by an Icelandic chieftain, who supposedly fancied himself a poet and historian. It makes you wonder if perhaps this committing to paper of the old stories was in an effort to prevent them from being lost.įor us modern people, the Eddas are really our only source of knowledge of Scandinavian mythology. And it’s interesting that we only get the written text after the introduction of Christianity to the Norse people. The stories recorded in the Eddas would have been known to people for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years before the books were compiled as the spoken word. Meaning that the Eddas would have been written down quite late. So people would have known these myths as odes or sagas or epic poems. It’s easier to remember a poem then it is a narrative story. We know that these kind of myths would have been passed on through word of mouth, hence why they would be in the form of poems. So not really that long ago if we’re looking at when these myths would have been the main belief system. Basically any pre-Christian beliefs are believed to be represented in these two books that are thought to have been written down or compiled in the 13th century. They’re actually the best written sources for these old myths that we have. Now these two books are chock full of detailed stories from where our modern knowledge of Norse and even Germanic mythology comes from. I think from the names we can figure out that one is written in a prose or narrative style, and the other is full of poems. The books are separated into the Prose, or Younger Edda and the Poetic or Elder Edda.
It’s actually two books that hold a whole heap of ancient Icelandic literature.
So the Edda in its most basic form is a book of poems. Today we digress from Eisrisenwelt to discover more about Norse mythology, specifically in the form of the Edda.
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