Old Icelandic Poetry: Eddic Lay and Skaldic Verse

Translated with a foreword by Paul Schach and Sonja Lindgrenson. The heroic and mythological poems of the Edda and skaldic verse are our chief source of knowledge of Germanic mythology and an important source for Germanic heroic legend. This introductory study, designed for the lay reader as well as students in a variety of disciplines — Scandinavian languages and literature, Germanic philology, medieval and comparative literature — treats the poems primarily as creative works, although problems of sources, authorship, and time and place of composition are also considered. Chapter 1, "Snorri Sturluson's Poetics," discusses the criteria for Old Icelandic poetry set forth in the thirteenth-century "Prose Edda," which laid the foundation for the analysis and characterization of verse forms and figurative language and codified the terminology in the field. In chapter 2 the author delineates the general characteristics, meter, and style of Eddic lay and skaldic verse, while chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to fuller considerations of individual works in the two genres. Chapter 5 is an examination of Christian poetry that was composed in Eddic and, especially, skaldic meters; and the final chapter considers "rimur," the native epic poetry that is thought to have developed from the ballad stanza in accordance with the Icelanders' strict metrical standards. "Old Icelandic Poetry" has been translated from the second revised edition of "Den fornisländska poesien" (1964); the notes and bibliography have been updated and augmented for English readers.