The Poetic Edda
Anonymous Norse poets; translated by Henry Adams Bellows
The primary source of Norse mythology: the anonymous poems of the Codex Regius, including the Völuspá’s account of the world’s creation and destruction and Odin’s winning of the runes.
- Composed
- Poems 9th to 13th century CE; manuscript circa 1270
- Original language
- Old Norse
What this text is
The Poetic Edda is the collection of anonymous Old Norse poems preserved mainly in the Codex Regius, a small Icelandic manuscript written around 1270 that went unnoticed until a bishop recognized its contents in 1643. It contains nearly everything that is actually known about Norse mythology from primary sources: the Völuspá, in which a seeress narrates the creation of the world and its coming destruction at Ragnarök; the Hávamál, sayings attributed to Odin, including his self-sacrifice on the world-tree to win the runes; and the heroic cycle of Sigurd the dragon-slayer.
Why researchers read it
The Edda preserves a complete non-Mediterranean cosmology: world ages, a world-tree joining the realms, knowledge purchased through ordeal. For SOL’s comparative work on how distant cultures structure creation, cyclical time, and initiation, the Norse material is an independent witness of the first importance.
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