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The Prose Edda

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Pages: 221

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About this book

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.

About the author

Snorri Sturluson

Snorri Sturluson (1179 to 1241) was an Icelandic chieftain, lawspeaker, poet, and historian, also the author of Heimskringla, the sagas of the Norwegian kings. He was among the most powerful men in Iceland and was killed in his own cellar on orders from the Norwegian crown.

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