The Poetic Edda The Poetic Edda is the older of the two Eddas and therefore sometimes called the Elder Edda. It is also sometimes referred to as Saemund's Edda after a famous Icelander. It consists of many different tales which were put together by an anonymous person probably around 1250 CE. The date of origin of the various poems has long been under discussion. Birger Nerman, in
The Poetic Edda in the Light of Archaeology, puts forward the opinion that the majority of the stories must have been written before the Viking age. This book is quite dated though (1930) and it would be interesting to see a more recent essay on this subject. The Poetic Edda can be divided into two sections, a mythical one and a heroic one. The mythical poems, which are generally considered younger, are:
The Prose Edda The Prose Edda or Younger Edda, was written by Snorri Sturluson around 1220 CE. It consists of three sections. The first part is "The Deluding of Gylfi", or
Gylfaginning. It consists of a story in which Gylfi asks three chieftains -- High One, Just-as-high, and Third -- questions about Norse mythology. The second section,
Skáldskaparmál ('Poetic Diction'), gives various kennings and the stories behind them.
Háttatal is the final part of the Prose Edda and it is about King Hakon and different meters.
What does "Edda" mean? There are many theories concerning the meaning of the word edda. One theory holds that it means "great-grandmother". Another theory holds that edda means "poetics". A third belief is that it means "the book of Oddi". Oddi is the name of a place Snorri Sturluson was educated. Whatever the meaning of the word, students of Norse mythology would be lost without the
Eddas.