The Eddas
Almost everything known about the Norse gods as stories comes from two Icelandic books of the thirteenth century. Both are here in full, in English translations that are now in the public domain. Every stanza and chapter has its own link, and every page on this site that quotes a passage links to it.
The Poetic Edda tr. Henry Adams Bellows, 1923
Anonymous poems, most of them preserved in the Codex Regius, an Icelandic manuscript written around 1270; a few (Baldrs draumar, Hyndluljóð, Svipdagsmál) survive in other manuscripts, and Bellows included them. The poems are older than the parchment, some perhaps by centuries, but how much older is debated poem by poem. The first group is about the gods; the second about heroes, chiefly Sigurðr and the Völsungs.
Poems of the gods
- Völuspá The Prophecy of the Seeress66 stanzas
- Hávamál The Sayings of the High One165 stanzas
- Vafþrúðnismál The Lay of Vafthrudnir55 stanzas
- Grímnismál The Lay of Grimnir54 stanzas
- Skírnismál The Lay of Skirnir43 stanzas
- Hárbarðsljóð The Poem of Harbard60 stanzas
- Hymiskviða The Lay of Hymir40 stanzas
- Lokasenna Loki's Flyting65 stanzas
- Þrymskviða The Lay of Thrym33 stanzas
- Alvíssmál The Lay of Alvis35 stanzas
- Baldrs draumar Baldr's Dreams14 stanzas
- Rígsþula The List of Rig49 stanzas
- Hyndluljóð The Poem of Hyndla51 stanzas
- Svipdagsmál The Lay of Svipdag66 stanzas
Heroic poems
- Völundarkviða The Lay of Völund43 stanzas
- Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar The Lay of Helgi Hjorvardsson43 stanzas
- Helgakviða Hundingsbana I The First Lay of Helgi Hundingsbane58 stanzas
- Helgakviða Hundingsbana II The Second Lay of Helgi Hundingsbane50 stanzas
- Frá dauða Sinfjötla Of Sinfjotli's Deathprose
- Grípisspá Gripir's Prophecy53 stanzas
- Reginsmál The Lay of Regin26 stanzas
- Fáfnismál The Lay of Fafnir44 stanzas
- Sigrdrífumál The Lay of Sigrdrifa37 stanzas
- Brot af Sigurðarkviðu Fragment of a Sigurd Lay20 stanzas
- Guðrúnarkviða I The First Lay of Gudrun25 stanzas
- Sigurðarkviða hin skamma The Short Lay of Sigurd70 stanzas
- Helreið Brynhildar Brynhild's Ride to Hel14 stanzas
- Dráp Niflunga The Slaying of the Niflungsprose
- Guðrúnarkviða II The Second (Old) Lay of Gudrun45 stanzas
- Guðrúnarkviða III The Third Lay of Gudrun10 stanzas
- Oddrúnargrátr Oddrun's Lament32 stanzas
- Atlakviða The Lay of Atli46 stanzas
- Atlamál in grœnlenzku The Greenland Ballad of Atli99 stanzas
- Guðrúnarhvöt Gudrun's Inciting22 stanzas
- Hamðismál The Lay of Hamdir31 stanzas
The Prose Edda Snorri Sturluson, tr. Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, 1916
Written around 1220 by Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic chieftain and poet, as a textbook for skalds. Gylfaginning retells the myths as a dialogue between a disguised Swedish king and three mysterious figures; Skáldskaparmál explains the poetic language with stories and hundreds of quotations from older poets. Snorri was a Christian writing two centuries after Iceland's conversion, and he frames the gods in his Prologue as deified human kings from Troy. His versions are the fullest we have, and often the only ones.
- Prologue Prologue
- Gylfaginning The Beguiling of Gylfi54 chapters
- Skáldskaparmál The Language of Poetry73 chapters
Brodeur translated the Prologue, Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál; the fourth part, Háttatal, a poem demonstrating verse-forms, is not in his book and not here.