Snorri Sturluson qua Fulcrum: Perspectives on the Cultural Activity of Myth, Mythological Poetry and Narrative in Medieval Iceland

MIRATOR 12/2011 

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collection,  dated  to  the  beginning  of  the  14

th

  century,  was  compiled  in  a  

manuscript with the Skáldskaparmál section of Edda.

15

 This now fragmentary 

collection (AM 748a I 4

to

) contains copies of mythological poems belonging 

to the same manuscript stemma as those in the Codex Regius  as well as the 

only early copy of the poem Baldrs draumar (‘Baldr’s Dreams’), addressed 

below (§3). Snorri quotes from perhaps twenty eddic poems in his Edda, of 

which half are not preserved elsewhere, while additional ‘complete’ eddic 

poems became attached to Edda in manuscript transmission.

16

  Edda and 

eddic poems were clearly connected in the manuscript tradition. The dating 

of the composition of individual eddic poems in these manuscripts is highly 

problematic when external points of reference are lacking.

17

  They 

nonetheless remain clearly distinguishable from the language and poetics of 

versification a few centuries later (cf. §3). Eddic poetry was verbally very 

stable in oral transmission, but not invariable: the textual entities of poems 

could be and were ‘revised’ or adapted and synthesized with other material 

(cf.  §6–7),  and  could  even  be  brought  together  in  a  new  composition  (cf.  

§8).

18

  

 

Gustav Lindblad demonstrates through orthographic archaeology 

that the Codex Regius  and  AM  748a  I  4

to

 are the outcome of the stratified 

copying of eddic poetry in the 13

th

 century, arguing that Snorri stimulated 

rather than initiated (e.g. transcribing or collecting poems for use in writing 

Edda) this process.

19

 Lindblad presents strong evidence of a radical increase 

in the manuscript activity of eddic poetry subsequent to the writing of 

Snorri’s  Edda paralleling the abrupt increase in mythological references in 

                                                

15

 These are conventionally distinguished as Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, 

AM 748a I 4

to

 and AM 748b I 4

to

, respectively. According to Elias Wessén (‘Introduction’, in Fragments 

of the Elder and the Younger Edda: AM 748 I and II 4o. Copenhagen 1945, 11–23, at 14), “it seems 

preponderantly probable” that this collection of eddic poems and Skáldskaparmál formed a coherent 

collection (cf. Frog 2009, 274–276). 

16

 On eddic quotation in Edda, see Frog 2009, 274–276; on material attached to Edda, see Nordal 2001. 

17

 See Fidjestøl 1999; for a survey and discussion of later eddic versifying, see Haukur Þorgeirsson, 

‘Gullkársljóð og Hrafnagaldur: Framlag til sögu fornyrðislags’, Gripla 21 (2010), 229–334. 

18

 On stability, variation and recomposition, see e.g. Lars Lönnroth, ‘Hjalmar’s Death-Song and the 

Delivery of Eddic Poetry’, Speculum 46 (1971), 1–20; Joseph Harris, ‘Eddic Poetry as Oral Poetry: The 

Evidence of Parallel Passages in the Helgi Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance’, in R. 

J. Glendinning & Haraldur Bessason (eds), Edda: A Collection of Essays, University of Manitoba Press: 

Manitoba 1983, 210–242; Judy Quinn, ‘V luspá and the Composition of Eddic Verse’, in Poetry in the 

Scandinavian Middle Ages: Atti del 12° Congresso Internazionale di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo Spoleto 4–

10 Settembre 1988, Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo: Spoleto 1990, 303–320; on 

‘textual entities’, see Frog, ‘Distinguishing Continuities: Textual Entities, Extra-Textual Entities and 

Conceptual Schemas’, RMN Newsletter 2 (2011), 7–15. 

19

 Lindblad 1954, 250–251; Gustav Lindblad, ‘Snorre Sturlasson och eddadiktningen’, Saga och Sed 

(1978), 17–34; cf. Elias Wessén, ‘Den isländska eddadiktningen: Dess uppteckning och redigering’, Saga 

och Sed (1946), 1–31, who proposed Snorri’s work incited the documentation of eddic poems. 

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MIRATOR 12/2011 

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kennings.  This  finds  support  in  eddic  poetry  being  documented  in  or  

compiled with Edda and evidence of narratives from Edda being copied and 

adapted to accompany eddic poems (§5). Considering that “the natural state 

of oral poetry is to remain oral and [...] such poetry is rarely written down 

without a real incitement,”

20

  Edda has become widely viewed as “the 

necessary condition” and catalyst for the manuscript activity that resulted in 

the preservation of so many mythological (and heroic) poems in a Christian 

cultural milieu.

21

  

 

Evidence of change in the general cultural activity of vernacular 

mythology in Old Norse poetry is different for skaldic verse and for eddic 

poems. Skaldic verse primarily offers a diachronic perspective in the sense 

that changes can be mapped according to a chronology, and the production 

and circulation of Edda can be situated as a factor within that chronology. 

Eddic poems primarily offer a synchronic perspective in the sense that we 

are presented with the outcomes of diachronic processes, and those 

outcomes clearly connect the documentation and circulation of eddic poems 

with  Edda in the manuscript tradition although the earliest phases of this 

process remain obscure. The insights offered by each broad class of poetry is 

complementary, offering different perspectives on a common process, and 

generating a general frame in which more specific impacts of and reactions 

to Snorri’s work can be considered. 

 

                                                

20

 Bengt R. Jonsson, ‘Oral Literature, Written Literature: The Ballad and Old Norse Genres’, in J. Harris 

(ed), The Ballad and Oral Literature, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA 1991, 139–170, at 145.  

21

 Joseph Harris, ‘Eddic Poetry’, in C. J. Clover & J. Lindow (eds), Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, 68–

156, at 75–76. It is noteworthy that evidence of a parallel practice of documenting and compiling skaldic 

poems outside of broader narrative contexts is lacking. This suggests a relationship of the documentation 

of eddic poems to a use which was different from that of skaldic poems. The mythological eddic poems 

generally considered to have been documented earliest present monologic or dialogic indices of 

mythological information within a simple narrative frame rather than describing the narrative situations of 

the participating mythic figures. This is directly comparable to the dialogic frames employed by Snorri in 

his surveys of mythological information in Edda (cf. §5 and §7 below). Snorri quotes stanzas of three of 

these poems extensively as resources for the mythological information surveyed in Gylfaginning 

(V luspá, Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál; see further Frog 2009, 274–276). It is noteworthy that Snorri 

never refers to the myths of the narrative frames of these poems in his mythography, yet the stanzas of 

which they are comprised are clearly presented as central pedagogical resources. Snorri’s heavy use of 

precisely these poems is unlikely to be coincidental, suggesting that either Snorri’s Edda was a response 

to social interests expressed in the documentation of these particular poems, or (perhaps more likely) 

Edda reflected a social interest in a new medium and mode of expression which incited the transfer of 

otherwise oral resources to the written medium for the same or parallel (pedagogical) uses. Although 

heroic poetry was probably already being documented in conjunction with saga (i.e. historical) writing, 

these observations present a marked probability that documenting mythological poems with a narrative 

emphasis emerged as a secondary reflex in this process, potentially as a consequence of associating 

initially pedagogical materials with entertainment. 

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