Snorri Sturlson - The Prose Edda.pdf - Heathen - m_sawicki

The Prose Edda

of Snorri Sturlson

Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur [1916]

The Prose Edda is a text on Old Norse Poetics, written about 1200 by the Norwegian poet

and politican Snorri Sturlson, who also wrote the Heimskringla. The Prose Edda contains

a wide variety of lore which a Skald (poet) of the time would need to know. The text is of

interest to modern readers because it contains consistent narratives of many of the plot

lines of Norse mythology. Although Snorri was a Christian, he treated the ancient Pagan

mythology with great respect. To this end, Snorri created a quasi-historical backstory for

the Norse Gods. Hence the Prose Edda is of interest because it contains one of the first

attempts to devise a rational explanation for mythological and legendary events. It is also

notable because it contains fragments of a number of manusripts which Snorri had access

to, but which are now lost.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

GYLFAGINNING

SKÁLDSKAPARMAL

INDEX

243

{p. ix}

INTRODUCTION

THE life of Snorri Sturluson fell in a great but contradictory age, when all that was noble

and spiritual in men seemed to promise social regeneration, and when bloody crimes and

sordid ambitions gave this hope the lie. Not less than the rest of Europe, Scandinavia

shared in the bitter conflict between the law of the spirit and the law of the members. The

North, like England and the Continent, felt the religious fervor of the Crusades, passed

from potential anarchy into union and national consciousness, experienced a literary and

spiritual revival, and suffered the fury of persecution and of fratricidal war. No greater

error could be committed than to think of the Northern lands as cut off by barriers of

distance, tongue, and custom from the heart of the Continent, and in consequence as

countries where men's thoughts and deeds were more unrestrained and uncivilized. Even

as England, France, and Germany acted and reacted upon one another in politics, in

social growth, in art, and in literature, so all three acted upon Scandinavia, and felt the

reaction of her influence.

Nearly thirty years before Snorri's birth, the Danish kingdom had been the plaything of a

German prince, Henry the Lion, who set up or pulled down her rulers as he saw fit; and

during Snorri's boyhood, one of these rulers, Valdamarr I, contributed to Henry's political

destruction. In Norway, Sverrir Sigurdarson had swept away the old social order, and

replaced it with one more highly centralized; had challenged the power of Rome without,

and that of his own nobles within, like Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa.

After Sverrir's death, an interregnum followed; but at last there came to the throne a

monarch

{p. x}

both powerful and enlightened, who extended the reforms of Sverrir, and having brought

about unity and peace, quickened the intellectual life of Norway with the fructifying

influence of French and English literary models. Under the patronage of this ruler, Hákon

Hákonarson, the great romances, notably those of Chrétien de Troyes, were translated

into Norse, some of them passing over into Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. Somewhat

later, Matthew Paris, the great scholar and author, who represented the culture both of

England and of France, spent eighteen months in Norway, though not until after Snorri's

death.

Iceland itself, in part through Norway, in part directly, drew from the life of the

Continent: Sæmundr the Learned, who had studied in Paris, founded a school at Oddi;

Sturla Sigvatsson, Snorri's nephew, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and visited Germany;

and Snorri himself shows, in the opening pages of his Heimskringla, or History of the

Kings of Norway, the influence of that great romantic cycle, the Matter of Troy.

Snorri Sturluson was in the fullest sense a product of his time. The son of a turbulent and

ambitious chieftain, Sturla Thórdsson, of Hvamm in western Iceland, he was born to a

heritage of strife and avarice. The history of the Sturlung house, like that of Douglas in

Scotland, is a long and perplexed chronicle of intrigue, treachery, and assassination, in all

of which Snorri played an active part. But even as among the Douglases there was one

who, however deep in treason and intrigue, yet loved learning and poetry, and was

distinguished in each, so Snorri, involved by sordid political chicanery, found time not

only to compose original verse which was admired by his contemporaries, but also to

record the myths and legends, the history

{p. xi}

and poetry, of his race, in a prose that is one of the glories of the age.

The perplexing story of Snorri's life, told by his nephew, Sturla Thórdsson,[1] may well

be omitted from this brief discussion. A careful and scholarly account of it by Eiríkr

Magnússon[1] will be found in the introduction to the sixth volume of The Saga Library .

From Snorri's marriage in 1199 to his assassination at the hands of his son-in-law, Gizurr

Thórvaldsson, in 1241, there was little in his life which his biographer could relate with

satisfaction. His friends, his relatives, his very children, Snorri sacrificed to his insatiate

ambition. As chief and as lawman, he gave venal decisions and perverted justice; he

purposed at any cost to become the most powerful man in Iceland. There is even ground

for belief that he deliberately undertook to betray the republic to Hákon of Norway, and

that only his lack of courage prevented him from subverting his country's liberty. Failure

brought about his death, for Snorri, who had been a favorite at the Norwegian court,

incurred the King's suspicion after fifteen years had passed with no accomplishment; and

daring to leave Norway against Hákon's command, he fell under the royal displeasure.

Gizurr, his murderer, proved to have been acting at the express order of the King.

Eiríkr Magnússon, in the admirable biography to which I have referred, attempts to

apologize for Snorri's faults on the ground that be "really compares very favorably with

the leading contemporary godar [chieftains] of the land." It is true that he made no overt

attempt to keep his treasonable

[1. Sturlunga Saga , edited by G. Vigfússon, Oxford, 1878.

2. The Saga Library , edited by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon, vol. vi; Heimskringla , vol. iv,

London, 1905.]

{p. xii}

promise to Norway, but I think it by no means certain that repentance stayed his hand.

Indeed, familiar as he was with the hopelessly anarchical conditions of his native land, its

devastating feuds, its plethora of lawless, unscrupulous chiefs, all striving for wealth and

influence, none inspired with a genuine affection for the commonwealth, nor

understanding the fundamental principles of democracy, Snorri may well have felt that it

were far better to endure a foreign ruler who could compel union and peace. If this was

the motive underlying his self-abasement at the Norwegian court and his promises to

Hákon, then weakness alone is sufficient to account for his failure; if he had no such

purpose, he must be regarded as both weak and treacherous.

It is with relief that we turn to Snorri's works, to find in them, at least, traces of genuine

nobility of spirit. The unscrupulous politician kept sound and pure some corner of his

heart in which to enshrine his love for his people's glorious past, for the myths of their

ancient gods, half grotesque and half sublime: for the Christ-like Baldr; for Promethean

Odin and Týr, sacrificing eye and hand to save the race; for the tears of Freyja, the tragic

sorrows of Gudrún, the pitiful end of Svanhildr, the magnificent, all-devastating fire of

Ragnarök.

His interest in these wondrous things, like Scott's love for the heroes, beliefs, and

customs of the Scottish folk, was, I think, primarily antiquarian. Indefatigable in research,

with an artist's eye for the picturesque, a poet's feeling for the dramatic and the human, he

created the most vivid, vital histories that have yet been penned. Accurate beyond the

manner of his age, gifted with genius for expression, divining the human personalities,

the comic

{p. xiii}

or tragic interplay of ambitions, passions, and destinies behind the mere chronicled

events, he had almost ideal qualities as an historian.

Poet he was too, though the codified rules, the cryptic phrase, and conventional

expression, which indeed "bound" together the words of the singers of ancient

Scandinavia, must spoil his verse for us. Yet it is well to remember that in his own

lifetime, not his natural prose, but his artificial poetry was famous throughout the North.

Snorri's greatest work is undoubtedly the Heimskringla .[1] Beginning with a rationalized

account of the founding of Northern civilization by the ancient gods, he proceeds through

heroic legend to the historical period, and follows the careers of his heroes on the throne,

in Eastern courts and camps, or on forays in distant lands, from the earliest times to the

reign of Sverrir, who came to the throne in 1184, five years after the author's birth.

"The materials at Snorri's disposal," says Magnusson,[2] "were: oral tradition; written

genealogical records; old songs or narrative lays such as Thiodolf's Tale[3] of the

Ynglings and Eyvind's Haloga Tale; poems of court poets, i.e. , historic songs, which

people knew by heart all from the days of Hairfair down to Snorri's own time. 'And most

store,' he says, 'we set by that which said in such songs as were sung before the chiefs

themselves or the sons of them; and we hold all that true which is found in these songs

concerning their wayfarings and their battles.' Of

[1. An excellent description and classification of the MSS. may be found in The Saga Library , vol. vi,

Introductory, pp. lxxiv-lxxvi. For Snorri's sources consult pp. lxxvi ff.

2. Ibid. , p. lxxxvi.

3. Tal is used here in the sense of an enumeration (of ancestors); hence, a genealogy.]

{p. xiv}

the written prose sources he drew upon he only mentions Ari the Learned's 'book,' . . .

probably, as it seems to us, because in the statements of that work he had as implicit a

faith as in the other sources he mentions, and found reason to alter nothing therein, while

the sources he does not mention he silently criticises throughout, rejecting or altering

them according as his critical faculty dictated.

"Before Snorri's time there existed only . . . separate, disjointed biographical monographs

on Norwegian kings, written on the model of the family sagas of Iceland. Snorri's was a

more ambitious task. Discerning that the course of life is determined by cause and effect,

and that in the lives of kings widely ramified interests, national and dynastic, come into

play, he conceived a new idea of saga-writing: the seed of cause sown in the preceding

must yield its crop of effect in the succeeding reign. This the writer of lives of kings must

bear in mind. And so Snorri addresses himself to writing the first pragmatic history ever

penned many Teutonic vernacular--the Heimskringla ."

The evidence for Snorri's authorship of Heimskringla is not conclusive; but Vigfússon's

demonstration is accepted by most scholars.[1] We may safely assume, apart from the

general tendency of the external evidence, that one and the same author must have

written the histories and the Prose Edda . A comparison of the names of skalds and

skaldic poems mentioned in both works will show that the author of each had a wide

acquaintance with the conventional poetic literature of Scandinavia, particularly of

Iceland, and that, if we suppose two distinct authors, both men had almost precisely the

same poetic equipment. Each

[1. See Sturlunga Saga , vol. i, Proleg., pp. lxxv ff. The limitations of an introduction do not permit an

abstract of the discussion in this place.]

{p. xv}

of the works under consideration begins with a rationalization of the Odinic myths, and

reveals an identity of attitude toward the ancient faith. Furthermore, the careful reader

will be charmed with the sinewy style of both the Heimskringla and the Edda , and will be

obliged to admit the close similarity between them in structure and in expression. Finally,

Vigfússon has shown that they exhibit occasionally a remarkable identity of phrase.[1]

The Prose Edda is undoubtedly by Snorri. It is preserved in three primary manuscripts:

Codex Regius, early fourteenth century; Codex Wormianus, fourteenth century, named

from Ole Worm, from whose hands it passed, in 1706, into the hands of Arni Magnússon;

and Codex Upsaliensis, about 1300, perhaps a direct copy of Snorri's own text. This last

manuscript, and also the Arnamagnæan vellum No. 748, which preserves a portion of the

text, testify unmistakably to Snorri's authorship; the Codex even gives, in detail, the

subjects of the three divisions of the book.

These three divisions, but for the evidence of the manuscripts, might seem to afford

ground for assuming plural authorship. The first part, the Gylfaginning , or Beguiling of

Gylfi, is an epitome of Odinic mythology, cast in the form of a dialogue between Gylfi, a

legendary Swedish king, and the triune Odin. Snorri, though a Christian, tells the old

Snorri Sturlson - The Prose Edda.pdf

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