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. 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. This edition also includes some very useful appendices, genealogical tables, notes and recommendations for further reading. Although it omits some of the more dry and technical passages of the original text, it includes a substantial introduction that places Snorri in the context of his time and explores how and why his book is organized in the way it has been passed down.

This translation, by distinguished Old Norse scholar Jesse Byock, reliably renders the original into readable modern English. and his account of their dwellings and doings in Ásgard (‘god-home’) and Jötunheim (‘giant-land’) established the dominant (and in some cases only) images of the northern myth-world. Written primarily as a handbook for the poets of his own time, Snorri’s portraits of Thor, Odin, Loki, Freyr et al. His Edda, written in Old Norse in around 1220, was the first systematic attempt to explain the pre-Christian mythology of Scandinavia and northern Europe in a way that would make sense to medieval contemporaries.

Without the efforts of the thirteenth-century Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson, our knowledge and understanding of Norse mythology would be greatly impoverished. For those who want to venture further up the river of Old Norse mythlore, the best advice I can give is to first travel to the source.

Book on norse mythology