This volume is also available in electronic form as a free Open-Access book, offering a new edition and translation of the Poetic Edda, a compilation of 36 poems on Old Norse mythological and legendary themes, primarily from the MS Codex Regius (Gammel Kongelig Samling 2365 4TO), housed in the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík. It was copied in the 1270s from a lost exemplar, that earlier collection apparently inspired by the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241). Snorri’s text is a colorful handbook of Old Norse myth and poetics composed in the 1220s, in which the Icelandic chieftain quotes extensively from earlier oral versions of many of these Eddic poems that were subsequently preserved in written form under unknown circumstances. Snorri was a kind of proto-Humanist polymath who in the Prologue to his Edda was inspired by the first chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans to attempt a synthesis of biblical, classical and pre-Christian Scandinavian traditions. Here he suggests that the Æsir or Norse gods were really just human migrants from Asia, that is, ancient Troy. In his first main section Gylfaginning “The Beguiling of Gylfi [a legendary Swedish king],” Snorri contrives a whimsical framing device through which Gylfi visits and interrogates these mysterious newcomers. They regale the king with an account of the gods’ creation of the world from the corpse of a murdered titan, their own maternal great-grandfather, up to the end of time at Ragnarǫk “Doom of the Ruling Powers,” followed by the emergence of a new heaven and a new earth. In this way, Snorri seeks to summarize, rationalize and perhaps even to extrapolate on a biblical model what he takes to be the backstories of the Eddic poems’ mystic visions, proverbial wisdom, and dramatic dialogues. Along the way, he notes the use of kennings or “abstruse periphrases involving two or more nouns” (4), the referents of which are usually dependent on a detailed knowledge of the archaic myths he retells in both Gylfaginning and in his following section, Skáldskaparmál “Poetic Diction.” Snorri’s final section,Háttatal “List of Meters,” illustrates a large variety of traditional verse forms, though most of the Eddic poems themselves are composed in just two: fornirðislag “old story meter,” used for narrative and ljóðaháttr “meter of songs,” used for dialogue and gnomic verse (3). The learned chieftain thus offers a kind of abbreviated Nordic Bible or compendium of Old Norse religion, epitomizing the worldview, value system, and vision of history of his ancestors as these were remembered and reconstrued two centuries after the conversion of Iceland to Christianity in 999.
The editor and translator has provided an introduction to each poem with a bibliography, as well as textual and explanatory notes. In his translations Pettit has rendered the literal meaning of the verses as precisely as possible, but also tried to capture “at least something of the poetic spirit of the Old Norse originals in simple, unarchaistic English verse,” which he has crafted with “a lightly alliterative” resonance in order to echo, if only distantly, the much heavier alliteration of the Icelandic poems. Pettit notes, however, that an exact rendering “is itself often undermined by the inherent ambiguity of poetry and by cases in which modern English simply has no equivalent for an Old Norse term” (13). Indeed, even in Old Icelandic, many of the verses are quite cryptic, sometimes even opaque, so that the translator can be applauded for preserving, where necessary, the obscurity of his source texts, saving his own and others’ best guesses as to their purport for the notes. This linguistic “precisionism” does sometimes sacrifice the stylistic power of the original poems--their laconic stoicism in acknowledging the trials and hazards of daily life, the comic hyperbole of Thor’s and Loki’s zany antics and narrow escapes, and the gods’ grim fortitude in facing their cosmic enemies on the last day. Poetry is what is lost in translation, as Robert Frost once quipped. But the renderings here are scholarly and exact, a perfect guide for both new and old students of these poems, with detailed and clearly sourced suggestions for their interpretation in the notes. This volume is a fine, thorough, and very welcome effort.
The Eddic poems are clustered into groups according to their approximate position in a hierarchy of inherited cultural value, beginning with Vǫluspá “The Prophecy of the Seeress,” which opens the collection as a whole. This is the single most significant Eddic poem, surviving in two different versions, included in this volume, and quoted extensively in Snorri’s Edda. The poem encompasses the entire trajectory of Norse sacred history from the beginning to the end of time, but presented as something of a halting and reluctant monologue, spoken by an ancient witch--the vǫlva of its title. She has apparently been conjured against her will by a voiceless but persistent interlocutor, the ever-inquisitive All-Father Odin, who wants to know his fate and that of the precarious world he has created in the midst of a vast and hostile universe. The next ten poems offer a further dramatization of the words and deeds of the Norse gods Odin, Thor, Frey, Freyja and Loki, as well as those of various other inhabitants of the Old Norse world: giants, elves, dwarfs and monsters like Fenrir the cosmic wolf and the Midgard-serpent encircling Odin’s island-fortress with its tail in its mouth.
The second poem in this group Hávamál “The Sayings of Hávi [The High One]” is the longest in the collection at 164 stanzas, comprised primarily of practical wisdom offered by the All-Father as a guide for living in the perilous and beleaguered world depicted in Vǫluspá. Here, Odin has drunk from the well of wisdom for which he has sacrificed an eye, as well as the mead of poetry brewed from the blood of a super-wise dwarf slaughtered for his knowledge. Odin has also painfully learned the secret of runes and magic spells by hanging as a dead man on the great world-tree for nine nights, a sacrifice of himself to himself for mystic knowledge. The precise kind of insight Odin obtained from Mimir’s well is never specified, but it hurt him badly to get it, as well as leaving the All-Father permanently impaired in vision. The myth’s lesson is obvious. Pain is the great teacher in these Eddic poems and the predominant form of advice Odin shares with his human protégés is wary and self-protective--how to navigate relationships with both friends and “frenemies,” as well as with strangers and women, including cautionary tales from the god’s own life experience. Though reminiscent in gnomic form of the Book of Proverbs or the Sermon on the Mount, as well as of the medieval Latin schoolbook Distichs of Cato, these nuggets of wisdom seem quite innocent of the influence of Christian ethics and ideals. They reflect the down-to-earth, tough-minded, defensive ethos of the Poetic Edda as a whole, which offers a relentlessly reality-oriented, even stoical vision of life on earth:
“A limping man rides a horse, a one-handed man drives a flock,
a deaf man fights and wins;
it’s better to be blind than burnt;
no one has use for a corpse.” (st. 71)
The cult of the Æsir, as expressed in these poems, dramatizes disability, difficulty and sacrifice, for even the gods to whom we look for help in this world have much bigger problems of their own, including dire mutilations and other handicaps: Odin is missing an eye, Tyr his right hand; nothing Baldr decides ever comes to pass; and even the mighty Thor, while unimpaired, is cognitively challenged. In addition, these damaged gods of dubious ancestry are the only divinities (known to this reviewer) who are truly mortal. They will one day die--and stay dead. We can emulate their fortitude, but not rely upon their support. They are not our benefactors. We win their favor by the way we face death and failure, some of us earning a place by their side for the final conflict.
The All-Father himself is a forensic god, well aware of his own cognitive limitations, and thus ever the more assiduous in his search for intelligence about the dangerous forces mustering over the horizon or lurking in the cracks, caves, and interstices of Midgard. The two ravens that he sends out each dawn from his watchtower are named Hugin and Munin “Thought and Memory,” symbolizing their master’s capacity for information gathering, storage, and analysis. The All-Father imparts the fruits of his research to human followers in Hávamál, not neglecting a warning about the consequences to one’s morale of too much information:
“Every man should be moderately wise,
let him never be too wise;
for the heart of a wise man seldom becomes happy.
if he who owns it is all-wise.” (st, 56)
Several poems feature the god Thor who is easily fooled, but usually prevails in the end. He has a key concluding role in Lokasenna ‘Loki’s Flyting’ or insult-match. Loki is the least respected of the Æsir. While other gods like Thor have giantesses for mothers--Thor gets his great strength from his mother Iǫrð ‘Earth’--only Loki has a giant for a father, Fárbauti “Little Improvement.” Loki is thus from the wrong side of the cosmic tracks, superior in no single attribute, but second-best in most and extremely good-looking, sly and intelligent--an omnicompetent lady-killer and bisexual trickster. The gods blame and underestimate him constantly until he snaps and engineers the slaying of Frigg’s overprotected son Baldr by his blind brother Hǫðr, spitefully revealing this fact at a divine feast he crashes, but not before he has dished dirt on each of the divinities in turn. The poem is significant for revealing that all of the Norse gods and goddesses, despite their august powers, have embarrassing skeletons in their closets and feet of clay.
Two final mythological poems are more burlesque in treatment. In Þrymskviða “The Lay of Þrymr,” a giant has absconded with Thor’s hammer, demanding Freyja as the price of its return. The burly Thor implausibly disguises himself in the gown and veil of a new bride, while a more willing and sexually mobile Loki volunteers to act as “her” handmaiden. The giant is taken aback at the appetite and angry eyes of his betrothed and the story has a predictable ending as the new couple swear their nuptial vows upon Mjǫllnir, Thor’s hammer, whose shaft he is now able to grip and deploy against his new husband. Last of the mythological poems is Alvíssmál “The Sayings of Alvíss,” an “all-wise” but unwelcome dwarf who comes to take home a bride from the gods. The poem is a wisdom contest in which Thor demands that Alvíss first declare the names for a multitude of things in all languages of the world--those of the Æsir, Vanir, giants, dwarfs, elves and the dead. These are earth, sky, moon, sun, clouds, wind, calm, sea, fire, wood, night, seed and (last of all) ale. Thor may be a simple soul, but he has an earth-bound understanding of “human” nature when he asks Alvíss for the names of drink, tricking the now-thirsty dwarf into completing his list at the crack of dawn when, like the trolls in The Hobbit, he is returned to stone with the first rays of the sun.
A second cluster of twenty poems depict primarily human characters, some distantly recalling historical figures and events of the migration period from the fourth through seventh centuries, several of which were abstracted in prose for the thirteenth-century Vǫlsunga Saga “Saga of The Vǫlsungs,” a narrative whose early popularity is attested in carvings across the Norse world from England to Sweden.
A final cluster of five miscellaneous poems are preserved in manuscripts other than the Codex Regius, but all are clearly related in poetic form and subject matter, so that this useful, comprehensive and easily accessible volume will be a crucial part of the library of every student of Old Norse myth and poetry from now on.