Now, though, following its return to Iceland in 1971, the codex is officially Gammel kongelig Samling (GkS) 2365 4 to of the Árni Magnússson Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík. It is traditionally called the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, this ‘Royal Codex’ having long been kept in Copenhagen’s Royal Library. The surviving manuscript, which probably comes from the country’s west or north, was, in 1643, in the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson, bishop of Skálholt, who, in 1662, sent it as a gift to the king of Denmark. It is a copy of an earlier, lost original. Most of the poems in this edition survive in a single, fragmentary manuscript-it is missing one gathering of sixteen leaves-dated c. 5 These works, the Poetic Edda and many prose sagas are enduring testaments to the flowering of Icelandic literature in the thirteenth century. The notes in this edition refer frequently to SnEGylf and SnESkáld, because, as prime sources for our understanding of Norse mythology, they offer valuable insights into the meanings of many of the poems of the Poetic Edda. 4 Snorri’s euhemeristic work has three main parts, the first two of which, Gylfaginning ‘The Beguiling of Gylfi’ ( SnEGylf) and Skáldskaparmál ‘The Language of Poetry’ ( SnESkáld), draw on versions of poems of the Poetic Edda. 1220–30) 3 of the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, to which the term edda was first applied by the end of the thirteenth century. This collection is closely connected with, but distinct from, the Prose Edda or Younger Edda ( c. 2Ĭollectively, these anonymous works have come to be known as the Poetic Edda or the Elder Edda. These texts treat north-western European mythological and heroic subjects, including the creation, destruction and rebirth of the world, the deeds of Norse deities such as Óðinn, Þórr and Loki (the first two now more familiar to English speakers as Odin and Thor), and the tragedy surrounding legendary humans such as Sigurðr, Brynhildr and Guðrún. This book is an edition of medieval Nordic poems, interspersed with short passages of prose, in their original Old Norse-Icelandic language, 1 together with facing-page translations into modern English.
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