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2008-05-12 04:49:17
The art of skaldic poetry dates back into ancient times among the Norwegians and possibly other Nordic peoples.while the oldest preserved fragments are considered to date from the 9th century, towards the end of the 10th Icelanders appear to hold a monopoly as court poets, or skáld, a profession they would continue to pursue right up to snorri´s day.As a youngster, he himself appears to have intended to gain fame and fortune as a court poet and sent laudatory poems to Norwegian leaders,all of which have,however,been lost.Apparently snorri must have realised, no later than upon his first visit to the Norwegian court 1218-20,that the skaldic art was in jeopardy-both due to the fact that people had difficulty understanding the complex metaphors of the verse,which are based on references to pagan mythology,and due to a lack of appreciation of the complicated metres.In additon, writing prose histories was a far more influential means of preserving and interpreting the kings’ historythan the condensed skaldic verses could be.whatever Snorri’s motivation,it is clear what action he took upon returning to Iceland.He undertook to write histories of the Norwegian kings,more comprehensive and impressive than anyone had previously done,and compiled what we now call Snorra Edda (snorri’s Edda),a work celebrating and explaining the ancient skaldic poetry and the ideological cosmos it was based upon.
Snorra Edda as preserved today has not come down to us exactly as Snorri left it.The oldest manuscript, written in the first quarter of the 14th century, is preserved in the University of Uppsala library(U). It commences by stating that Snorri compiled the work and what comprises its principal parts, but the copyist has clearly altered the arrangement of the work,abridging some parts of it and adding to others. There are two other vellum manuscripts dating from the 14th century,codex Regius(R),which is now preserved in the Árni Magnússon Manuscript Institute in Iceland,and Codex Wormianus(w),which remained in Det Arnamagneanske Institut in copenhagen, Denmark,after the repatriation of most major Icelandic manuscripts. These manuscripts acquired their names from their former owners: Codex Regis was owned by the Danish monarch and Codex Wormianus by the Danish scholar Ole Worm.
The original work has been supplemented by a variety of material,especially in the W manuscript,and most scholars are of the opinion that R preserves the best version of Snorris text,which is not much younger than U. In Utrecht, Holland,there is a paper manuscript dating from around 1600 which is a copy of a 13 th-century vellum,in addition to which parts of Snorra Edda are preserved in several 14th-century manuscripts.These texts or text fragments, each in their own way,are remarkable evidence of Icelandic learned traditons from the 12th to the 14th century,but we must credit the words of the Uppsala manuscript that the core of the wok is by Snorri Sturluson,despite the fact that we cannot know for certain how he arranged some of the materical nor how the wording may have changed in teh treatment of copyists.All scholars agree that the ghree main sections of the Edda,Gylfaginning,skáldskaparmál and Háttatal,are Snorri´s work.Most of them are of the opinion that he also wrote thprologus,as an introduction to Gylfaginning.
The authou appears to us in various guises in his work. Fffirstly,snorri the scholar and teacher speaks to his readers or listeners in the Prologus, in many places in skáldskaparmál and in the explanations in háttatal.Here he is communicating historical lore,which he deems to be reliable,and explaining the nature of the phenomena which he discusses.In the beginning and at the close of Gylfaginning, the quthor appears to us in a completely different guise:the narrator tells of the visit by Gylfi to Asian nobles in Sweden,while at the beginning of skáldskaparmál he then tells of a feast held by the Æsir and attended by Ægir,a chieftain of Hléseyja.This narrator conceals himself behind his tale, indicating indirectly that here we are dealing with legendary or fictitious tales and not history of the type recorded in the Prologus. Within this external narrative frame have a dramatic text,conversations between Gylfi and Hárr,Jafnhárr and þriðji in gylfaginning and a dialogue between Bragi and Ægir in Skáldskaparmál.In these conversations the gods Óðinn and Bragi tell stories in prose studded with frequent quotes in verse form. The material of Skáldskaparmál, however,is too vast and varied for the author to attempt to convey all of it in this manner. The teacher soon relieves the narrator and characters of their task,and eventually disappears completely from the scene. In Háttatal the poet and courtier snorri addresses King hákon and Earl Skúli, praising them in the traditional manner of skaldic poets.
Gylfaginning is the best known part of Snorra Edda and, together with the section of skáldspaparmál which uses the same narrative form,the most accessible,while the Prologus is an important key to understanding the work.It is these three parts of the work which are presented here.
To any young poets, either eager to learn the language of poetry and acquire a stock of words rich in ancient terms, or eager to be able to understand what lies under the quise of metaphorical verse, may this book provide instruction and entertainment.May they neither forget nor reject these reports and take away from poetry these ancient kennings which were the delight of the leading poets. Christian men shall not, however, believe in heathen gods, nor in the truth of these stories in and other way than is explained at the beginning of this book....skáldsparmál.p.254
Here Snorri the teacher takes over from the narrator when Bragi has concluded telling Ægir of the mead of poetry. This passage states the purpose of the work and its justification,together with a warning that the heathen myths must not be regarded as true stories.Yet they should not be forgotten.
