The Prose Edda

by Snorri Sturluson

  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.

  be dwarves. 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.’2

  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.

  NOTES

  1. Snorre Sturlusons Edda: Uppsala-Handskriften DG 11, vol. II, transcribed by Anders Grape, Gotfried Kallstenius and Olof Thorell (Uppsala, 1977), p. 1.

  2. Kormáks Saga in Vatnsdæ la Saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson. Íslenzk fornrit VIII (Reykjavik, 1939), chapter 22. For an English translation of Kormak’s Saga, see Sagas of Warrior-Poets, ed. Diana Whaley (London and New York, 2002).

  Further Reading

  STUDIES

  Ciklamini, Marlene, Snorri Sturluson (Boston, 1978).

  Clunies Ross, Margaret, Skáldskaparmál (Odense, 1987).

  Davidson, H. R. Ellis, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (London and New York, 1981).

  De Vries, Jan, The Problem of Loki (Helsinki, 1933).

  Dubois, Thomas A., Nordic Religions in the Viking Ages (Philadelphia, 1999).

  Dumézil, Georges, Gods of the Ancient Northmen (Berkeley, 1973).

  Edda: A Collection of Essays, ed. R. Glendinning and H. Bessason (Manitoba, 1983).

  Faulkes, Anthony, ‘Descent from the Gods’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 11g (1978–9), pp. 92–125.

  —, ‘The Sources of Skáldskaparmál’, in Snorri Sturluson, ed.

  A. Wolf, Script Oralia 51(Tübingen, 1993), pp. 59–76.

  Gade, Kari E., The Structure of Old Norse dróttkvætt Poetry (Ithaca, NY, 1995).

  Harris, Joseph, ‘The Masterbuilder Tale in Snorri’s Edda and Two Sagas’, Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 91 (1976), pp. 66–101.

  Lindow, John, Norse Mythology (Oxford, 2002).

  McTurk, Rory, ‘Fooling Gylfi’, Alvíssmál 3 (1994), pp. 3–18.

  Nordal, Gudrun, Tools of Literacy (Toronto, 2001).

  Poole, Russell, Viking Poems on War and Peace (Toronto, 1991).

  Quinn, Judy, ‘Eddu list’, Alvíssmál 4 (1995), pp. 69–92.

  See, Klaus von, ‘Snorri Sturluson and the Creation of a Norse Cultural Ideology’, Saga-Book 25, 4 (2001), pp. 367–93.

  Snorrastefna, ed. Úlfar Bragason (Reykjavik, 1992).

  Specvlvm Norroenvm, ed. U. Dronke et al. (Odense, 1981).

  Turville-Petre, E. O. G., Myth and Religion of the North (London, 1964).

  Uspenskij, Fjodor, ‘Towards Further Interpretation of the Primordial Cow Auðhumla’, Scripta Islandica 51 (2000), pp. 119–32.

  PRIMARY TEXTS FOR NORSE MYTH AND LEGEND

  The Poetic Edda, tr. C. Larrington (Oxford, 1996).

  The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, tr. J. L. Byock (London and New York, 1998).

  The Saga of the Volsungs, tr. J. L. Byock (London and New York, 1999).

  The Saga of the Ynglings, in Heimskringla, tr. L. M. Hollander (Austin, Tex., 1999), pp. 6–50.

  Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes, I–IX, ed. H. E. Davidson, tr. P. Fisher (Cambridge, 1996).

  Seven Viking Romances, tr. H. Pálsson and P. Edwards (London and New York, 1985).

  Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, The Agricola and The Germania, tr. H. Mattingly, revised S. A. Handford (London and New York, 1970).

  THE ICELANDIC AND OLD NORSE BACKGROUND

  Byock, Jesse L., Viking Age Iceland (London and New York, 2001).

  Foote, Peter G., and David M. Wilson, The Viking Achievement (London, 1970).

  Haywood, John, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings (London and New York, 1995).

  Kristjánsson, Jónas, Eddas and Sagas (Reykjavik, 1997).

  REFERENCE WORKS

  Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. P. Pulsiano et al. (New York, 1993).

  Orchard, Andy, Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend (London, 2002).

  Simek, Rudolf, Dictionary of Northern Mythology (Cambridge, 1993).

  EDITIONS OF THE PROSE AND POETIC EDDAS

  Faulkes, Anthony, Edda by Snorri Sturluson: Prologue and Gylfaginning (Oxford, 1982) and Edda by Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál, 2 vols. (London, 1998).

  Helgason, Jon and Anne Holtsmark, Edda: Prosafortellingene av Gylfaginning og Skáldskaparmál (Copenhagen, 1968).

  Jónsson, Finnur, Edda Snorra Sturlusonar (Copenhagen, 1931).

  Neckel, Gustav, Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius, Vol. I, Text (Heidelberg, 1927).

  Note on the Translation

  All modern editions of the Prose Edda rely on the largely intact vellum Codex Regius manuscript (Gks 2367 quarto) from the first half of the fourteenth century. This manuscript, however, has gaps, and three other key manuscripts provide the majority of the missing passages and variant readings. They are the vellum Codex Upsaliensis from the early fourteenth century, the mid-fourteenth-century vellum Codex Wormianus and a paper book, Codex Trajectinus, a copy from around 1600 of an earlier vellum manuscript now lost. This translation from the Old Icelandic draws its text from the modern editions of the Edda cited in the Further Reading.

  The Prose Edda, all or parts of it, was translated into English three times during the last century, by Arthur Brodeur (New York, 1916), Jean Young (Cambridge, 1954) and Anthony Faulkes (London, 1987). Only the Faulkes’ translation includes Hattatal. The chapter and section headings in this translation are my own, and I believe that they will facilitate the reading of the Edda and its use as a source. Also, where Gylfaginning incorporates stanzas from eddic poems into its prose, the names of the poems and the corresponding stanzas are given.

  This book contains three appendices designed for those readers who want more information on the World Tree and cosmos, the devices of Old Norse verse, and which eddic poems were used as sources for Gylfaginning. At the end of the book there is also an extensive Glossary of Names. I compiled this index to provide the reader with a tool for locating the characters (both supernatural and human), groups, places, animals and objects that appear in the text. Also at the end of the volume the reader will find genealogies and notes. In the Glossary, Notes and Further Reading I include Old Icelandic spellings; elsewhere accents are dropped and the spelling of proper names and special terms are anglicized, usually by omitting the Old Norse endings and replacing non-English letters with their closest equivalents. I do not strive for complete consistency, especially when a name is familiar to English speakers in another form; thus, I use Valhalla rather than Valhöll. My goal throughout is to produce an accurate translation in a clear modern idiom that best reproduces the nature of the original prose.

  THE PROSE EDDA

  PROLOGUE

  1. IN THE BEGINNING

  In the beginning, almighty God created heaven and earth and all that pertains to them. Lastly he created two people, Adam and Eve, and from them came clans, whose descendants multiplied and spread across the whole world. But as time passed, people became dissimilar from one another. Some were good and held to the right beliefs, but the large majority turned to the desires of this world and neglected God’s commandments. For this rea
son God drowned the world and all its living things in a flood, except for those who were on the ark with Noah. After Noah’s flood, eight people remained alive, and they inhabited the world and from them are descended the families of man.

  Again, as before, when their numbers had grown and they had settled throughout the world, the majority of mankind loved worldly desires and ambition. They abandoned their obedience to God, going so far that they no longer desired to name God. Who then was able to tell their sons about God’s wondrous deeds? Thus they lost God’s name, and nobody could be found anywhere in the world who knew his maker. Nevertheless, God granted men the earthly gifts of wealth and happiness to enable them to enjoy the world. He also gave them the wisdom to understand all earthly things and all the separate parts that could be seen of the sky and the earth.

  People thought about these things, wondering what it could mean that the earth and animals and birds were in some ways similar, even though their natures were not alike. One of the earth’s features is that, when the high mountains are dug into, water springs up, and even in deep valleys it is not necessary to dig down any further for water. The same is true in animals and birds, whose blood is equally close to the surface on the head and feet. A second characteristic of the earth is that grass and flowers bloom every year, but in the same year everything withers and drops off. So it is with the animals and the birds: hair and feathers grow on them, but each year these fall away. The third characteristic of the earth is that when it is opened or dug into, grass grows over the soil that is closest to the surface. People think of rocks and stones as comparable to the teeth and bones of living creatures. Thus they understand that the earth is alive and has a life of its own. They also know that, in terms of years, the earth is wondrously old and powerful in its own nature. It gives birth to all living things and claims ownership over all that dies. For this reason, they gave it a name and traced their origins to it.