The Younger Edda; Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda

Vilmeide. The ancestor of all wizards.

Vimer. A river that Thor crosses.

Vin. A river that flows from Hvergelmer.

Vina. A river that flows from Hvergelmer.

Vindalf. A dwarf.

Vindlong. One of the names of the father of winter.

Vindsval. One of the names of the father of winter.

Vingner. A name of Thor.

Vingolf. The palace of the asynjes.

Vingthor. A name of Thor.

Virfir. A dwarf.

Vit. A dwarf.

Volsungs. The descendants of Volsung.

Von. A river formed by the saliva running from the mouth of the chained Fenris-wolf.

Vor. One of the asynjes.

Wodan. A name of Odin.

Ydaler. Uller’s dwelling.

Yg. A name of Odin.

Ygdrasil. The world-embracing ash-tree.

Ylg. One of the streams flowing from Hvergelmer.

Ymer. The huge giant out of whose body the world was created.

1

The third volume of this work has not yet appeared.

2

Keyser.

3

White Skald.

4

Black Skald.

5

Dasent translates “hövuðtungur” (chief or head tongues) with “lords,” which is certainly an error.

6

Near Upsala.

7

A heroic poem, giving the pedigree (tal) of Norse kings.

8

Heimskringla: Ynglinga Saga, ch. v.

9

Heimskringla: Harald Harfager’s Saga, ch. xix.

10

The walker.

11

Elder Edda: Havamal.

12

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 6.

13

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 56.

14

Elder Edda: Hyndla’a Lay, 34.

15

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 30.

16

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 31.

17

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 35.

18

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 8. In Old Norse the sun is feminine, and the moon masculine. See below, sections 11 and 12.

19

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 40, 41. Comp. Vafthrudner’s Lay, 21.

20

That wolves follow the sun and moon, is a wide-spread popular superstition. In Sweden, a parhelion is called Solvarg (sun-wolf).

21

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 43, 44.

22

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 12, 14-16, 18, 19.

23

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 24.

24

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 29.

25

Elder Edda: Fafner’s Lay, 13.

26

The Icelandic barr. See Vigfusson, sub voce.

27

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 35, 34.

28

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 22.

29

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 70.

30

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 37.

31

Elder Edda. Loke’s Quarrel, 29, 47.

32

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 46-50.

33

Oku is derived from the Finnish thunder-god, Ukko.

34

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 24.

35

The author of the Younger Edda is here mistaken. Oku is derived from the Finnish thunder-god, Ukko.

36

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 12.

37

Compare Vainamoinen, the son of Ukko, in the Finnish epic Kalevala.

38

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 11.

39

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 14.

40

Icel. frú (Ger. frau; Dan. frue), pl. frúr, means a lady. It is used of the wives of men of rank or title. It is derived from Freyja.

41

This etymology is, however, erroneous, for the word is derived from oln or öln, and the true form of the word is ölnliðr = the ell-joint (wrist); thus we have ölnboge—the elbow; öln = alin (Gr. ὠδίνη; Lat. ulna; cp. A.-S. el-boga; Eng. elbow) is the arm from the elbow to the end of the middle finger, hence an ell in long measure.

42

Compare the Anglo-Saxon brego = princeps, chief.

43

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 13.

44

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 15.

45

Possibly this ought to read the ninth world, which would correspond with what we read on page 72, and in the Vala’s Prophecy. See also notes. It may be a mistake of the transcriber.

46

Both these words mean sloth.

47

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 36

48

See page 66.

49

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 36.

50

This is the Niblung story in a nut-shell.

51

Elder Edda: Skirner’s Journey, 42.

52

The Fenris-wolf in Ragnarok.

53

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 18.

54

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 19.

55

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 20.

56

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 23.

57

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 41.

58

Elder Edda: Grimner’s Lay, 44.

59

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 29, 30.

60

Bonde = peasant.

61

Called Ymer in the Younger Edda, but the Elder Edda calls him Hymer.

62

Commit adultery.

63

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 48, 49.

64

Fenris-wolf.

65

Loke.

66

Frey.

67

The Fenris-wolf.

68

Thor.

69

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 50-52, 54-57, 59, 60, 62, 63.

70

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 18.

71

Elder Edda: The Vala’s Prophecy, 40, 41.

72

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 51.

73

Holt = grove.

74

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 45.

75

Elder Edda: Vafthrudner’s Lay, 47.

76

This part of the Younger Edda corresponds to the Latin Ars Poetica, and contains the rules and laws of ancient poetry.

77

Thor’s.

78

Thor.

79

Jord’s (= earth’s) son = Thor.

80

Thor.

81

Odin’s.

82

The earth.

83

Thor.

84

Thor.

85

The giant Hrungner.

86

Thor.

87

Thor’s.

88

Icelandic proverb.

89

Icelandic proverb.

90

A river in Jotunheim.

91

Thor’s kinsmen = the asas.

92

Thruda was a daughter of Thor and Sif.

93

A troll-woman.

94

Shield.

95

Elder Edda: the Lay of Fafner, 32, 33.

96

The drink of the Volsungs = venom; the tortuous venom-serpent = the Midgard-serpent.

97

Thor.

98

These words are spoken by the maidens while they put the mill together.

99

Frode.

100

The mill.

101

Quoted from memory.

102

Njorvasound, the Straits of Gibraltar; so called from the first Norseman who sailed through them. His name was Njorve. See Ann. for nordisk Oldkyndighed, Vol. I, p. 58.

103

See note, page 221.

104

Svithjod the Great, or the Cold, is the ancient Sarmatia and Scythia Magna, and formed the great part of the present European Russia. In the mythological sagas it is also called Godheim; that is, the home of Odin and the other gods. Svithjod the Less is Sweden proper, and is called Mannheim; that is, the home of the kings, the descendants of the gods.

105

The Saracens’ land (Serkland) means North Africa and Spain, and the Saracen countries in Asia; that is, Persia, Assyria, etc.

106

Blueland, the country of the blacks in Africa, the country south of Serkland, the modern Ethiopia.

107

Tartareans.

108

Kalmuks.

109

Mongolians.

110

The Tanais is the present Don river, which empties into the Sea of Asov.

111

Asgard is supposed, by those who look for historical fact in mythological tales, to be the present Assor; others, that it is Chasgar in the Caucasian ridge, called by Strabo Aspargum the Asburg, or castle of the asas. We still have in the Norse tongue the word Aas, meaning a ridge of high land. The word asas is not derived from Asia, as Snorre supposed. It is the O.H. Ger. ans; Anglo-Sax. os = a hero. The word also means a pillar; and in this latter sense the gods are the pillars of the universe. Connected with the word is undoubtedly Aas, a mountain-ridge, as supporter of the skies; and this reminds us of Atlas, as bearer of the world.

112

The temple-priests performed the functions of priest and judge, and their office continued hereditary throughout the heathen period of Norse history.

113

See Norse Mythology, page 174.

114

See Brage’s Talk, p. 160; and Norse Mythology, pp. 247 and 342.

115

In the Vala’s Prophecy of the Elder Edda it is said that Odin talks with the head of Mimer before the coming of Ragnarok. See Norse Mythology, p. 421.

116

This shows that the vans must have belonged to the mythological system of some older race that, like the ancient Romans (Liber and Libera), recognized the propriety of marriage between brothers and sisters, at least among their gods. Such marriages were not allowed among our Odinic ancestors. Hence we see that when Njord, Frey and Freyja were admitted to Asgard, they entered into new marriage relations. Njord married Skade, Frey married Gerd, and Freyja married Oder. Our ancestors were never savages!

117

Turkland was usually supposed to mean Moldau and Wallachia. Some, who regard the great mountain barrier as being the Ural Mountains, think Turkland is Turkistan in Asia. Asia Minor is also frequently styled Turkland.

118

Ancient Norse writers connect this event with Mithridates and Pompey the Great. They tell how Odin was a heroic prince who, with his twelve peers or apostles, dwelt in the Black Sea region. He became straightened for room, and so led the asas out of Asia into eastern Europe. Then they go on to tell how the Roman empire had arrived at its highest point of power, and saw all the then known world—the orbis terrarum—subject to its laws, when an unforeseen event raised up enemies against it from the very heart of the forests of Scythia, and on the banks of the Don river. The leader was Mithridates the Great, against whom the Romans waged three wars, and the Romans looked upon him as the most formidable enemy the empire had ever had to contend with. Cicero delivered his famous oration, Pro lege Manilia, and succeeded in getting Pompey appointed commander of the third war against Mithridates. The latter, by flying, had drawn Pompey after him into the wilds of Scythia. Here the king of Pontus sought refuge and new means of vengeance. He hoped to arm against the ambition of Rome all his neighboring nations whose liberties she threatened. He was successful at first, but all those Scythian peoples, ill-united as allies, ill-armed as soldiers, and still worse disciplined, were at length forced to yield to the genius of the great general Pompey. And here traditions tell us that Odin and the other asas were among the allies of Mithridates. Odin had been one of the gallant defenders of Troy, and at the same time, with Æneas and Anchises, he had taken flight out of the burning and falling city. Now he was obliged to withdraw a second time by flight, but this time it was not from the Greeks, but from the Romans, whom he had offended by assisting Mithridates. He was now compelled to go and seek, in lands unknown to his enemies, that safety which he could no longer find in the Scythian forests. He then proceeded to the north of Europe, and laid the foundations of the Teutonic nations. As fast as he subdued the countries in the west and north of Europe he gave them to one or another of his sons to govern. Thus it comes to pass that so many sovereign families throughout Teutondom are said to be descended from Odin. Hengist and Horsa, the chiefs of those Saxons who conquered Britain in the fifth century, counted Odin in the number of their ancestors. The traditions go on to tell how he conquered Denmark, founded Odinse (Odinsve = Odin’s Sanctuary; comp. ve with the German Wei in Weinacht), and gave the kingdom to his son Skjold (shield); how he conquered Sweden, founded the Sigtuna temple, and gave the country to his son Yngve; how finally Norway had to submit to him, and be ruled by a third son of Odin, Saming.

It has been seriously contended,—and it would form an important element in an epic based on the historical Odin,—that a desire of being revenged on the Romans was one of the ruling principles of Odin’s whole conduct. Driven by those foes of universal liberty from his former home in the east, his resentment was the more violent, since the Teutons thought it a sacred duty to revenge all injuries, especially those offered to kinsmen or country. Odin had no other view in traversing so many distant lands, and in establishing with so much zeal his doctrines of valor, than to arouse all Teutonic nations, and unite them against so formidable and odious a race as the Romans. And we, who live in the light of the nineteenth century, and with the records before us, can read the history of the convulsions of Europe during the decline of the Roman empire; we can understand how that leaven, which Odin left in the bosoms of the believers in the asa-faith, first fermented a long time in secret; but we can also see how in the fullness of time, the signal given, the descendants of Odin fell like a swarm of locusts upon this unhappy empire, and, after giving it many terrible shocks, eventually overturned it, thus completely avenging the insult offered so many centuries before by Pompey to their founder Odin. We can understand how it became possible for “those vast multitudes, which the populous north poured from her frozen loins, to pass the Rhine and the Danube, and come like a deluge on the south, and spread beneath Gibraltar and the Libyan sands;” how it were possible, we say, for them so largely to remodel and invigorate a considerable part of Europe, nay, how they could succeed in overrunning and overturning “the rich but rotten, the mighty but marrowless, the disciplined but diseased, Roman empire; that gigantic and heartless and merciless usurpation of soulless materialism and abject superstition of universal despotism, of systemized and relentless plunder, and of depravity deep as hell.” In connection with this subject we would refer our readers to Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, pp. 79-83, where substantially the same account is given; to Norse Mythology, pp. 232-236; to George Stephen’s Runic Monuments, Vol. I; and to Charles Kingsley’s The Roman and the Teuton.

119

Compare this version of the myth with the one given in the first chapter of The Fooling of Gylfe. Many explain the myth to mean the breaking through of the Baltic between Sweden and Denmark.

120

Leidre or Leire, at the end of Isefjord, in the county of Lithraborg, is considered the oldest royal seat in Denmark.

121

Laage is a general name for lakes and rivers. It here stands for Lake Malar, in Sweden.

122

The grassy isle is Seeland.

123

Sigtun. Sige, Ger. Sieg, (comp. Sigfrid,) means victory, and is one of Odin’s names; tun means an inclosure, and is the same word as our modern English town. Thus Sigtun would, in modern English, be called Odinstown; like our Johnstown, Williamstown, etc.

124

Noatun, Thrudvang, Breidablik and Himinbjorg are purely mythological names, and for their significance the reader is referred to The Fooling of Gylfe. Snorre follows the lay of Grimner in the Elder Edda.

125

Berserk. The etymology of this word has been much contested. Some, upon the authority of Snorre in the above quoted passage, derive it from berr (bare) and serkr (comp. sark, Scotch for shirt); but this etymology is inadmissible, because serkr is a substantive, not an adjective. Others derive it from berr (Germ. Bär = ursus), which is greatly to be preferred, for in olden ages athletes and champions used to wear hides of bears, wolves and reindeer (as skins of lions in the south), hence the names Bjalfe, Bjarnhedinn, Ulfhedinn (hedinn, pellis),—“pellibus aut parvis rhenonum tegimentis utuntur.” Cæsar, Bell. Gall. VI, 22. Even the old poets understood the name so, as may be seen in the poem of Hornklofi (beginning of the 10th century), a dialogue between a valkyrie and a raven, where the valkyrie says at berserkja reiðu vil ek þik spyrja, to which the raven replies, Ulfhednar heita, they are called wolf coats. In battle the berserks were subject to fits of frenzy, called berserksgangr (furor bersercicus), when they howled like wild beasts, foamed at the mouth, and gnawed the iron rim of their shields. During these fits they were, according to a popular belief, proof against steel and fire, and made great havoc in the ranks of the enemy. But when the fever abated they were weak and tame. Vigfusson Cleasby’s Icelandic-English Dictionary, sub voce.

126

In the mythology this ship belongs to Frey, having been made for him by the dwarfs.

127

Hugin and Munin.

128

The old Norse word is órlög, which is plural, (from ör = Ger. ur, and lög, laws,) and means the primal law, fate, weird, doom; the Greek μοῖρα. The idea of predestination was a salient feature in the Odinic religion. The word örlog, O.H.G. urlac, M.H.G. urlone, Dutch orlog, had special reference to a man’s fate in war. Hence Orlogschiffe in German means a naval fleet. The Danish orlog means warfare at sea.

129

Svithjod, which here means Sweden, is derived from Odin’s name, Svidr and thjod = folk, people. Svithjod thus means Odin’s people, and the country takes its name from the people.

130

Odin.

131

Norway was given to Saming by Odin.

132

He gave himself nine wounds in the form of the head of a spear, or Thor’s hammer; that is, he marked himself with the sign of the cross, an ancient heathen custom.

133

Here ends Snorre’s account of the asas in Heimskringla. The reader will, of course, compare the account here given of Odin, Njord, Frey, Freyja, etc., with the purely mythological description of them in the Younger Edda, and with that in Norse Mythology. Upon the whole, Snorre has striven to accommodate his sketch to the Eddas, while he has had to clothe mythical beings with the characteristics of human kings. Like Saxo-Grammaticus, Snorre has striven to show that the deities, which we now recognize as personified forces and phenomena of nature, were extraordinary and enterprising persons, who formerly ruled in the North, and inaugurated the customs, government and religion of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, England, and the other Teutonic lands.

134

The word fornjot can be explained in two ways: either as for-njot = the first enjoyer, possessor; or as forn-jot, the ancient giant. He would then correspond to Ymer.

135

Notice this trinity: Hler is the sea (comp. the Welsh word llyr = sea); Loge is fire (comp. the Welsh llwg), he reminds us both by his name and his nature of Loke; Kare is the wind.

136

Transcriber’s Footnote: Zalmoxis or Salmoxis was a Thracian deity. The word Ζαλμός is defined by Liddell and Scott—a dictionary available to the author—as Thracian for “a skin”.