Excerpt from The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as S�mund's Edda, Vol. 1: The Mythological Poems

Saemund's Edda bears a title under which its first editor would have failed to recognise it. Saemund, a well-known Icelandic scholar of the twelfth century, had no part in its composition, although, according to popular tradition, he was the author of a work on mythology. Nor was the name of Edda given to it before the seven teenth century we find this word attached to a collection of mythical stories made by the great Icelandic historian, Snorri Sturluson (1181 Its earliest meaning was great-grandmother, and it is thus used in Rigsbula; what were the intermediate steps in sense develop ment we little know, but great-grandmother's stories like old wives' tales was deemed by some sceptic a fitting title for Snorri's account of the Old Norse gods and goddesses of Asgarth; and it was deemed equally suitable by Bishop Brynjolf Sveinsson (1643) for the more venerable work which from that time was called Saemund's or the Poetic Eddafi It exists in several mss., none of which were brought to light before the Icelandic Renaissance of the seventeenth century. The finding of the first and most complete ms. Was somewhat dramatic, and resembled the long awaited discovery of the planet Neptune. Magnus Olafsson had suggested the former existence of a more ancient Edda, and we soon find this hypothetical work regarded in the light of a hidden treasure of wisdom and ancient lore, of which all existing fragments were but the bare shadow and the footprint. We know nothing of how it was tracked and at last discovered, but by 1643 the Codex Regius was in the hands of Bishop Brynjolf. This most important ms., known as R, is in the Copenhagen library: it is an octavo volume consisting of five parchment sheets belonging to the thirteenth century, and containing nearly all the poems given below. The others are found in mss. Of the fourteenth century, which were brought to light by the same scholars. The Codex Arnamagnaeanus (a) supplied Baldrs Draumar; the Codex Wormianus includes Rigs pula with Snorri's Edda; Hyndluljop is found in one of the great Saga books, the Flateyjarbok; Grogaldr ok Fjolsvinnismal are only known in paper mss. Of the seventeenth century.

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