Has anyone here read the Norse or Icelandic Edda?

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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
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I read David Drake's Northworld Trilogy which was a SF retelling of it, pretty well done.

I think I've read a few fantasy books that borrowed from it (Poul Anderson for one).

Not the real version though.
 
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glen

Lifer
Apr 28, 2000
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Originally posted by: Czar
the edda?
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Yeah, I am trying to figure out which ENGLISH translation of the Edda I should read and which translation of the Kalvala I should read. The Kalvala is Finish. I believe the Edda is as Norwegian as it is Icelandic, as it is Danish, isn?t it?
 
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joinT

Lifer
Jan 19, 2001
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Yep. I've read I believe the version was called "the Prose Edda"
I'm not 100% because the book itself is at the cottage.
 
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glen

Lifer
Apr 28, 2000
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Originally posted by: joinT
Yep. I've read I believe the version was called "the Prose Edda"
I'm not 100% because the book itself is at the cottage.
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Well, I think it is a lyric or ballad poem, so any translation would likely be prose.
 
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Lifer
Apr 28, 2000
15,995
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Originally posted by: Muzzan
There are Norwegian and Danish Eddas?
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Well, I think they were all one Kingdom/domain so of course they had one Eddas, maybe with slight regional variations. Just because we now recognize Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland as separate countries NOW, does not mean they were during ancient times when the Edda was formed.

Czar - where are you.
You are the one to field this question I bet.
 
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glen

Lifer
Apr 28, 2000
15,995
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Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
PS - you can download the first book of Drake's Northworld trilogy for free at www.Baen.com the author's note at the end discusses his sources.
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Ah ha!
Here is what he says about his story:

Author's Note
The poems of the Poetic Edda (sometimes called the Elder Edda) cover various aspects of Norse myth, mythic history, and folklore. They aren't in any sense a structured belief system, though their odds and ends comprise almost everything known about ancient Norse beliefs. They were written over a period of centuries and across the sweep of the Norse world (including Greenland). Though the subjects are pagan, most of the verses were put in their final form by Christians.

The disparate pieces were then hammered to fit by an anonymous Icelandic redactor who was not only Christian but also remarkably limited both as an editor and as a poet. In addition, the redactor was missing pieces of some of his poems, and there is also a large gap in the sole text of his compilation.

Put in short terms, the Poetic Edda is a confusing hodgepodge which hadn't particularly interested me when I read it twenty years ago. Anyway, my training was in classical languages and history, not those of the Norse/Germanic world.

Then in 1986 I took my family to Iceland for a three-week vacation. While I was there, I picked up a copy of Hollander's excellent translation of the Poetic Edda and read the verses among the geography in which they had been compiled and (in part) written. I found them stunningly evocative.

Iceland's contrasts would probably have had a considerable effect on me anyway. For example, one day I stood on the largest glacier in Europe; the next day I was on an active volcano. Similar stark dichotomies pervade all the physical features of the country.

Iceland was the right place?the right places?to appreciate the Edda.

I returned with the certainty that I was going to use the Edda as the basis for my own fiction, though I was damned if I knew just how I was going to do that. I read some secondary materials (particularly Dumezil and H. R. Ellis Davidson) regarding the structure and themes of the Norse myths, but that course wasn't productive; not because the authors were wrong, but because their truth wasn't my truth.

So I did what I'd been taught to do by the best teacher I've ever had, Professor Jonathan Goldstein, when I was an undergraduate at Iowa: I went back to the primary sources. I paraphrased the complete Poetic Edda, and took notes on the Prose Edda (or Snorri Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson, Iceland's greatest literary figure, in the thirteenth century) and the Volsung Saga (which covers the material in the missing portion of the Poetic Edda).

Finally I went over the resulting 15,000 words of notes and chose elements which I thought would work in a science fiction novel. Initially I tried to include too much for a single volume, but I kept whittling away at the material until the length seemed satisfactory.

The myths which became major facets of Northworld are:

a) the Death and Avenging of Baldr;

b) the Peace of Frothi;

c) the Theft of the Mead of Skaldship; and

d) the relations of Gefjon and Heimdall referred to in the Lokasenna.

The above themes are not part of a single episode or cycle within the Eddas. For the sake of my classically-trained soul, I've woven them together in a logical progression; but that progression doesn't exist in the original.

In the present context, I'm a storyteller, not a scholar writing an exegesis on Norse myth; but I have tried to reflect the worldview I briefly shared while staring across the smoking basalt wastes of Iceland.

The world of the Eddas was harsh and unforgiving; but it wasn't without nobility. I hope both aspects come through in Northworld and the later novels I've planned for the setting.

Dave Drake

Chatham County, N.C.
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glen

Lifer
Apr 28, 2000
15,995
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Originally posted by: sward666
Czar - where are you.
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Czar lives in one of those Icelandic igloos.
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No, Inuits live in Igloos and kill seals, and send their old people off to die in the snow.

Icelanders, drink beer, wrestle, build ships, throw spears at each other, and send their dead people, dressed in their armour, off in boats.
 
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Czar

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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dont remember if I read it, but I read Hávamál which is a part from Snorra Edda

Just about everything written by the vikings were written by Icelanders, thats why some of "our" books on the Kings of Denmark, Sweeden and Norway are still there in museums, though we have been getting them slowly back throughout the last few decades

Hávamál in english
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/havamal.html

edt.
think all the books were written by icelanders since I cant remember a single book that wasnt :p
 
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