We have reserved to the last to speak of the religious books of the
early Norsemen,—the Elder and the Younger Edda.
The Elder Edda, it has been often said, is the Old Testament of the
Norseman’s faith. This is not because of its surpassing age, for the
Younger Edda was compiled perhaps as early. The name was suggested
because, in the first place, it is composed mostly in verse. It also
tells the story of man’s creation, and the limit of his existence on
the earth; it prophesies the final destruction of the universe and the
genesis of a new heaven and a new earth. It is not a religious history
of mankind in early ages; it is rather a biography of the gods, a
register of their exploits and wisdom. In its present form it dates
probably from the middle of the thirteenth century, but no one knows
when its different parts were first composed. It consists of various
distinct treatises, which were never united or considered together,
until they had almost perished from the memory of the race. After the
Scandinavians ceased to be idolaters, the old stories about Thor and
Odin lost their charm, and were at length forgotten; only in the far
off and dreary Iceland they were still told to enliven the winter
evenings, and keep up the memory of life in the old Fatherland of
Scandinavia. Even here they began to drop out of mind, when some quaint
clerk put what he could remember of them together under the name of
Edda (or “great-grandmother”). Some of the chapters are imperfect and
fragmentary, showing they were caught and fixed in writing in the nick
of time. There are many difficulties in the interpretation, and hints
abound that the compiler took liberties with his materials and somewhat
idealized his version. It was a Christian hand which copied out the
legends, and here and there it wrote Christian sentiments and thought.
The oldest and most important chapter of the Elder Edda is the Völuspá,
or Sibyl’s Prophecy. It is addressed to Odin, describing the meeting
of the Æsir (or Northern deities), the origin of the human race, and
the destruction of men and gods at Ragnarök.[C] We will here transcribe
a couple of stanzas as specimens of the form of the old Norse or
Icelandic original, and add a close translation: