The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Edda, Vol. 1, by Winifred Faraday

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Edda, Vol. 1
The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology,
Romance, and Folklore, No. 12

Author: Winifred Faraday

Release Date: July 23, 2004 [EBook #13007]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EDDA, VOL. 1 ***

Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Distributed Proofreaders Team.

Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore, No. 12

The Edda

I

The Divine Mythology of the North

By

Winifred Faraday, M.A.

Published by David Nutt, at the Sign of the Phoenix, Long Acre, London
1902

Author's Note

Some explanation is needed of the form of spelling I have adopted
in transcribing Norse proper names. The spirants thorn and eth
are represented by _th_ and _d_, as being more familiar to readers
unacquainted with the original. Marks of vowel-length are in all cases
omitted. The inflexional _-r_ of the nominative singular masculine
is also omitted, whether it appears as _-r_ or is assimilated to a
preceding consonant (as in Odinn, Eysteinn, Heindall, Egill) in the
Norse form, with the single exception of the name Tyr, where I use
the form which has become conventional in English.

Manchester,
December 1901.

The Edda: I. The Divine Mythology of the North

The Icelandic Eddas are the only vernacular record of Germanic
heathendom as it developed during the four centuries which in England
saw the destruction of nearly all traces of the heathen system. The
so-called Elder Edda is a collection of some thirty poems, mythic and
heroic in substance, interspersed with short pieces of prose, which
survives in a thirteenth-century MS., known as the Codex Regius,
discovered in Iceland in 1642; to these are added other poems of
similar character from other sources. The Younger Edda is a prose
paraphrase of, and commentary on, these poems and others which are
lost, together with a treatise on metre, written by the historian
Snorri Sturluson about 1220.

This use of the word Edda is incorrect and unhistorical, though
convenient and sanctioned