Edda

• The prose Edda is a treatise on versification together with a collection of Scandinavian myths, legends, and poems compiled by Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), the Icelandic historian and poet.

• Names -The Prose Edda,Younger Edda,Snorri's Edda, Edda

• Author-Snorri Sturluson• Country-Iceland• Language-Old Icelandic• Year-1220• It survives in 7 main

manuscripts, written down from about 1300 to about 1600.

• The Prologue is the first section of four books of the Prose Edda, and consists of an euhemerized (euhemerism-the theory that gods arose out of the deification of historical heroes) Christian explanation of the origins of Nordic mythology: the Nordic gods are described as human Trojan warriors who left Troy after the fall of that city.

• According to the Edda, these warriors settled in northern Europe, where they were accepted as divine kings because of their superior culture and technology.

The Prologue

Gylfaginning or the Tricking of Gylfi

• Consist of around 20,000 words• It is the first

part of The Prose Edda after Prologue.

• In Gylfaginning, Snorri Sturluson enumerates 12 gods and 13 goddesses who, together with Óðin and his wife Frigg, make up the Norse pantheon

• The Gylfaginning deals with the creation and destruction of the world of the Norse gods, and many other aspects of Norse mythology.

• The Gylfaginning tells the story of Gylfi, a king of "the land that men now call Sweden", who after being tricked by one of the goddesses of the Æsir, wonders if all Æsir use magic and tricks for their will to be done. This is why he journeys to Asgard, but on the way he is tricked by the gods and arrives in some other place, where he finds a great palace.

• Inside the palace he encounters a man who asks Gylfi's name and so king Gylfi introduces himself as Gangleri. Gangleri then is taken to the king of the palace and encounters 3 men; High, Just-As-High, and Third.

• Gangleri is then challenged to show his wisdom by asking questions. Each question made to High, Just-As-High, and Third is about an aspect of the Norse mythology or its gods, and also about the creation and destruction of the world.

•In the end all the palace and its people just vanish and Gylfi is left standing on empty ground. •It is then implied that as Gylfi returns to his nation, he retells the tales he was told.

Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" • Consist of

around 50,000 words

• It is a second part of the Porse Edda and is effectively a dialogue between Ægir (The Norse god of the sea) and Bragi(The god of poetry and music, son of Odin)

BragiÆgir

• In this part is given the origin of a number of kennings and Bragi then delivers a systematic list of kennings for various people, places and things.

Kenning is a conventional metaphoric name for something, esp. in Old Norse and Old English poetry, such as Old English bānhūs (bone house) for "body"

• Bragi then goes on to discuss poetic language in some detail, in particular heiti (the concept of poetical words which are non-periphrastic) e.g. steed for horse, and again systematizes these. This in a way forms an early form of poetic thesaurus (dictionary of synonyms and antonyms).

Háttatal

• Consist of around 20,000 words.

• It is a demonstration of verse forms used in Norse mythology.

•In this part he gives some examples of the types of verse forms used in Old Norse poetry. •Snorri took a prescriptive as well as descriptive approach; he has systematized the material, and often notes that "the older poets didn't always" follow his rules.•Most of the forms depend on number of syllables per line, as well as assonance, consonance, and alliteration. Although end rhyme is represented, it does not function in the ways most modern English speakers expect (forms include AAAAAAAA, and AAAABBBB), and plays a very minor role.

Prepared by

Aytekin Aliyeva