Hi, I'm Old Norse specialist Dr. Jackson Crawford. I teach at the University of Colorado Boulder previously, UC Berkeley and UCLA.
Several manuscripts include the poems about the Norse gods that are included in modern editions and translations of the poetic Edda.
By far the most important and comprehensive is the manuscript called the Codex Regius or Konungsbók.
Those are its Latin and Icelandic names which mean the same thing : book of the king.
because the manuscript was presented to the Danish king in the 1600s by its finder Brynjólfur Sveinsson
the
Poetic Edda when we speak of it today is based around the contents of the Codex Regius.
That does not mean that all of the poems
that contain material about the Norse gods are in it but
most of the poems that are in the Codex Regius are not found anywhere else. Such as Hávamál : the words of Oðinn.
There are
Poems about both gods and heroes in the
Codex Regius and this presentation
I just want to focus on the poems about the gods since those are the ones that people are typically most interested in.
There are
11 poems that concern subjects that are not focused on human heroes in the Codex Regius.
Two of those of Vǫlundarkviða and Alvíssmál are focused on an elf and a dwarf
respectively so people disagree in whether to include those and poems about the Gods or poems about the heroes.
I prefer to consider them with poems about the gods since they focus on creatures that are not human.
Of those poems there are also several that are quoted in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (a separate book).
These include Vǫluspá, Hávamál, Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, Fǫr Skírnis
Lokasenna, Alvíssmál, Vǫluspá en skamma and Gróttasǫngr
those last two are not included in the Codex Regius.
Now there's a separate Old Icelandic manuscript
AM 748 1 4to. AM stands for the collection of Árni Magnússon.
This manuscript has
at least parts of Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, Fǫr Skírnis, Hárbarðsljóð, Hymiskviða
which are also in the Codex Regius.
And then this manuscript is our sole source for the poem called Baldrs draumar or Vegtamskviða.
There is also the manuscript called Hauksbók
This is actually reserved in several fragments.
So there isn't a single catalog number and that manuscript includes an important variant of the poem Vǫluspá
which has a somewhat different
flair to it. It's actually a little bit shorter than the one in the Codex Regius
but it includes a famous stanza that seems to allude to the coming of Christ after Ragnarok.
Making many people think that it has been
influenced to a a much greater degree by later Christian tradition
in Iceland. There's also the Codex Wormianus or Ormsbók.
That is a AM 242
folio. That manuscript includes the poem Rígsþula which is a story about
the God Heimdallr fathering the classes of human beings.
That is actually a manuscript of the Prose Edda
but that poem is not included in the Prose Edda is presented as a somewhat separate work much as the grammatical treatises are.
Then there's also the Flateyrbók Codex Flateyensis.
This is GKS 1005 folio that includes the entirety of the poem called Vǫluspá en skamma or
Hyndluljóð
As to the ages of these I've gone at roughly chronological order : Konungsbók (Codex Regius) is written about 1270
but we can tell from copying errors that it's copied from an original written about
1200 . Interestingly Hávamál was probably copied from a different manuscript than the rest of the poems in the Codex Regius.
Snorri's Prose Edda
which quotes many of his poems was probably written originally in the 1220s.
Earliest manuscript evidence is from about a hundred years later. Probably about the 1320s is our earliest preserved manuscript of the Prose Edda
Am 78 1 4to about thirteen hundred. Hauksbók about 1350.
Ormsbók about 1350 and then Flateyjarbók about
1400 . So
these
six
manuscript sources (roughly). Of course
calling the Prose Edda one manuscript source is fudging it a little bit. There's 4 good alternate manuscripts of the Prose Edda.
Our
physical links to the poetry of the Viking Age .
But as I've discussed elsewhere there are many reasons for believing that at least the majority of these poems were composed
originally in the late Viking Age including Hávamál and Vǫluspá
the two probably most important poems for an understanding of Norse mythology.
If you are interested in the Poetic Edda
I hope that you'll check out my translation
which has been available since 2015 from Hackett and in the next few years my translation of Snorri's Prose Edda will also become available.
I have a Patreon if you want to help me continue to make these videos in beautiful locations for free
And for now from beautiful New Mexico. I'm wishing you all the best
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