Books like The Poetic Edda

This book is essentially an anthology of some of the best stories ever told.

It includes sagas as well as several tales, shorter anecdotes the Icelanders told. I love the Icelandic landscape, and it comes startlingly alive in the pages of this book.

One of the best is Egil’s Saga. In terms of fantastic events, it exceeds most fantasy written today. Others are realistic and give a feel for what life was like for ordinary people in early medieval Iceland. 

I love literature that is elaborate, strange, and profound. I love books that don’t give their secrets away right on the surface. This taste has been nurtured by the stories in this book. I try to understand what the Icelanders for whom these stories were written thought of them: these were the themes of their quotidian existence.

The sagas were being written at the same time as Chaucer and Dante… show more.

I loved this book when I was young.

It weaves the whole Norse mythic pantheon into one long, coherent saga. I wanted to live in that world, which I recognized as being far more beautiful than the world in which I lived. Also, the illustrations by Pogany are masterpieces that I would just sit and admire.

When I returned to this book as an adult, I felt all of its charm was still there. The prose is simple but poetic. I was particularly taken by the retelling of the Sigurd legend. The fierce love of Brynhild the Valkyrie and the force of the doom that overtook Sigurd left a lasting impression on me.  

This book taught me the history of the Viking Age.

It was written in the thirteenth century to tell the story of the kings of Norway from the beginning till that time. It was well worth the read. I was swept into the stream of Viking history and lived vicariously the lives of the Norse kings and warriors. The descriptions of Norse battlefields, naval combats, and courtly intrigue are vivid and compelling.

By the way, Snorri was quite a controversial figure in his time, so much so that the Norwegian king had him murdered. But his writing has survived.

When I was a schoolboy in Oxford in the 1960s, I wrote a letter to Tolkien, and he answered.

I knew even at that time that I shared his preoccupation with the Norse myths. It is a preoccupation that has been with me ever since.

In this book, Tolkien attempts to write his own Eddaic poem. It is dramatic and intense. Those who know only Tolkien’s Middle-earth writings may have trouble adjusting to a tale deliberately told in an antique verse form.  

What I especially loved in this poem was the Valkyrie Brynhild. Tolkien has something of a reputation for being sexless. The confusion of identity, thwarted passion, and bitterness that lead to Brynhild’s suicide make the sort of story that few people associate with this author. And Christopher Tolkien’s notes are lucid and unobtrusive.

The most compelling original source material for the Norse myths is a collection of anonymous poems known as the Poetic Edda. Based on a 13th-century Icelandic transcription of ancient oral legends, the Poetic Edda includes the creation myths of the Ash Tree and the Frost Giants, the adventures of Thor and Loki, and many other lesser-known Norse tales. Jackson Crawford’s translation manages the difficult task of making the stories understandable while capturing the rhythm and beauty of the original poems.

The closest thing to a "novel" from medieval Scandinavia, The Saga of the Volsungs was written down in the 1200s in Iceland by an author who knew the poems about the Volsungs in the Poetic Edda, but also knew a vast wealth of additional poems about them that are otherwise lost to us. Rather than transmit the poems directly, this unknown author chose to attempt to put together a cohesive story of the sprawling generations of this family, beginning with the fathering of their first ancestor by the god Odin and continuing through all the events that lead Odin himself to engineer the death of its last generations. Here we have dwarves forging magic swords, dragon-slayers, Valkyries laboring under the weight of ill-considered oaths, and star-crossed lovers seeking bloody revenge. This volume also includes the medieval "fanfic" sequel, The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrók, written shortly after The Saga of the… show more.

When it comes to learning about Norse mythology, you can’t beat the original source material. If you are a bit of a history nerd like me, it’s fascinating to read a translation of the original Old Norse poems. These poems can be found in a text called the Poetic Edda, which has several different translations. I like the Henry Adams Bellows translation, as well as Dr. Jackson Crawford’s. Crawford has YouTube videos that taught me a lot while I was writing my book, so that’s worth checking out, if you’re interested.

This book I love purely for the photographs of archeological treasures and historical paintings. It’s in the format often referred to as a “coffee table book.” However, even though you may be tempted to page through it only to look at its impressive graphics and illustrations, the content is very much researched and informative. I especially like the sections on magical creatures and how Norse mythology has influenced our modern world and more current fiction.

Snorri did not write his Edda in a vacuum, and the mythological and heroic poems collected in the thirteenth century Codex Regius (and a handful of other manuscripts) provide a snapshot of the sort of raw material from which his book was constructed. The apparent antiquity of these poems (quite how old remains a matter of debate) led to them being labelled the ‘Elder’ Edda and, although in their preserved form they are products of the Middle Ages, they powerfully evoke the strange and esoteric world of northern antiquity. In content the mythological poems encompass, amongst much else, Völuspá (the prophetic vision of a sorceress revealing the breaking and rebirth of the world at Ragnarök and the events that will precipitate it), Hávamál (the gnomic wisdom of Odin, including an account of his self-mortifying pursuit of occult knowledge) and Lokasenna (in which the god Loki provides a definitive example of… show more.

This Old Norse poem was part of the collection of works included in the Poetic Edda, written around 1300 CE and collected by Snorri Sturlusson. It centers around the god Odin and includes advice for life and love, the story of Odin’s self-sacrifice on the World Tree of Yggdrasil, and eighteen spells Odin claims to know. The book provides revealing details about life in Viking times, but my favorite part is the section on spells, which include healing, manipulating metal so weapons do less damage, escape artistry, redirecting curses, calming winds, and even resurrection. Hávamál isn’t as popular as some of the other poems, but it’s worth a read for the insights into the god Odin and what makes him tick.