The Prose Edda

Iceland had been Christian for two centuries when Snorri Sturluson sat down around 1220 to write a handbook for poets who no longer knew the gods their craft depended on. To explain a kenning he had to retell the myth behind it, and so a textbook became the fullest account of Norse mythology that survives. Gylfaginning stages a question-and-answer contest in which a disguised king learns how the world was made from a giant’s body, how Thor wrestled old age, how Baldr died, and how it all ends at Ragnarok. Skaldskaparmal catalogues poetic diction, and Hattatal demonstrates a hundred verse forms. Nearly everything popular culture knows about Odin and Loki traces back through these pages. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available to download.