Sæmund, son of Sigfus, the reputed collector of the poems bearing his
name, which is sometimes also called the Elder, and the Poetic, Edda,
was of a highly distinguished family, being descended in a direct line
from King Harald Hildetonn. He was born at Oddi, his paternal dwelling
in the south of Iceland, between the years 1054 and 1057, or about 50
years after the establishment by law of the Christian religion in that
island; hence it is easy to imagine that many heathens, or baptized
favourers of the old mythic songs of heathenism, may have lived in his
days and imparted to him the lays of the times of old, which his
unfettered mind induced him to hand down to posterity.
The youth of Sæmund was passed in travel and study, in Germany and
France, and, according to some accounts, in Italy. His cousin John
Ogmundson, who later became first bishop of Holum, and after his death
was received among the number of saints, when on his way to Rome, fell
in with his youthful kinsman, and took him back with him to Iceland,
in the year 1076. Sæmund afterwards became a priest at Oddi, where he
instructed many young men in useful learning; but the effects of which
were not improbably such as to the common people might appear as
witchcraft or magic: and, indeed, Sæmund's predilection for the sagas
and songs of the old heathen times (even for the magical ones) was so
well known, that among his countrymen there were some who regarded him
as a great sorcerer, though chiefly in what is called white or
innocuous and defensive sorcery, a repute which still clings to his
memory among the common people of Iceland, and will long adhere to it
through the numerous and popular stories regarding him (some of them
highly entertaining) that are orally transmitted from generation to
generation.[1] Sæmund died at the age of 77, leaving behind him a work
on the history of Norway and Iceland, which is now almost entirely
lost.
The first who ascribed to Sæmund the collection of poems known as the
Poetic Edda,[2] was Brynjolf Svensson, bishop of Skalholt. This
prelate, who was a zealous collector of ancient manuscripts, found in
the year 1643, the old vellum codex, which is the most complete of
all the known manuscripts of the Edda; of this he caused a transcript
to be made, which he entitled _Edda Saemundi Multiscii_. The
transcript came into the possession of the royal historiographer
Torfæus; the original, together with other MSS., was presented to the
King of Denmark, Frederick. III., and placed in the royal library at
Copenhagen, where it now is.[3] As many of the Eddaic poems appear to
have been orally transmitted in an imperfect state, the collector has
supplied the deficiencies by prose insertions, whereby the integrity
of the subject is to a certain degree restored.
The collection called Sæmund's Edda consists of two parts, viz., the
Mythological and the Heroic. It is the former of those which is now
offered to the public in an English version. In the year 1797, a
translation of this first part, by A.S. Cottle, was published at
Bristol. This work I have never met with; nor have I seen any English
version of any part of the Edda, with the exception of Gray's spirited
but free translation of the Vegtamskvida.
The Lay of Volund (Volundarkvida) celebrates the story of Volund's
doings and sufferings during his sojourn in the territory of the
Swedish king Nidud. Volund (_Ger_. Wieland, _Fr_. Veland and Galans)
is the Scandinavian and Germanic Vulcan (Hephaistos) and Dædalus. In
England his story, as a skillful smith, is traceable to a very early
period. In the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf we find that hero desiring,
in the event of his falling in conflict with Grendel, that his
corslets may be sent to Hygelac, being, as he says, the work of
Weland; and king Ælfred, in his translation of Boethius de
Consolatione, renders the words _fidelis ossa Fabricii, etc_. by Hwæt
(hwær) Welondes? (Where are now the bones of the famous and wise
goldsmith Weland?), evidently taking the proper name of Fabricius for
an appellative equivalent to faber. In the Exeter Book, too, there is
a poem in substance closely resembling the Eddaic lay. In his novel of
Kenilworth, Walter Scott has been guilty of a woeful perversion of the
old tradition, travestied from the Berkshire legend of Wayland Smith.
As a land-boundary we find Weland's smithy in a Charter of king Eadred
A.D. 955.
On the Lay of Helgi Hiorvard's Son there is nothing to remark beyond
what appears in the poem itself.
The Lays of Helgi Hundingcide form the first of the series of stories
relating to the Volsung race, and the Giukungs, or Niflungs.
The connection of the several personages celebrated in these poems
will appear plain from the following tables:
Sigi, king of Hunaland, said to be a son of Odin
|
Rerir
|
Volsung = a daughter of the giant Hrimnir
__________________|
|
Sigmund = Signi = Borghild = Hiordis
| | | |
Hamund. Sinfiotli. Helgi = Sigrun Sigurd = Gudrun
__|____________
| |
Sigmund, Svanhild.
m Jornmnrek.
Giuki = Grimhild.
_______________________|
|
Gunnar=Glaumvor. Hogni=Kostbera. Guthorm. Gudrun,=1 Sigurd.
| 2 Atli.
Solar. Giuki. Snævar. 3 Jonakr.
Budli.
|
Atli = Gudrun: Brynhild = Gunnar. Oddrun. Beckhild = Heimir.
| |
Erp. Eitil Alsvid.
Jonakr = Gudrun
_____| |__________
| |
Erp Hamdir. Sorli.
The Eddaic series of the Volsung and Niflung lays terminates with the
Lay of Hamdir; the one entitled Gunnar's Melody is no doubt a
comparatively late composition; yet being written in the true ancient
spirit of the North is well deserving of a place among the Eddaic
poems. Nor, indeed, is the claim of the Lay of Grotti to rank among
the poems collected by Sæmund, by any means clear, we know it only
from its existence in the Skalda; yet on account of its antiquity, its
intrinsic worth, and its reception in other editions of the Edda, both
in original and translation, the present work would seem, and justly
so, incomplete without it.
The Prose, or Younger Edda, is generally ascribed to the celebrated
Snorre Sturleson, who was born of a distinguished Icelandic family, in
the year 1178, and after leading a turbulent and ambitious life, and
being twice the supreme magistrate of the Republic, was killed A.D.
1241,[4] by three of his sons-in-law and a stepson. When Snorre was
three years old, John Loptson of Oddi, the grandson of Sæmund the
Wise, took him into fosterage. Snorre resided at Oddi until his
twentieth year, and appears to have received an excellent education
from his foster father, who was one of the most learned men of that
period. How far he may have made use of the manuscripts of Sæmund and
Ari, which were preserved at Oddi, it is impossible to say, neither do
we know the precise contents of these manuscripts; but it is highly
probable that the most important parts of the work, now known under
the title of "The Prose Edda," formed a part of them, and that
Snorre--who may be regarded as the Scandinavian Euhemerus--merely
added a few chapters, in order to render the mythology more
conformable to the erroneous notions he appears to have entertained
respecting its signification. Be this as it may, the Prose Edda, in
its present form, dates from the thirteenth century, and consists
of--1. _Formali_ (Fore discourse); or the prologue. 2. _Gylfa-ginning_
(The deluding of Gylfi). 3. _Braga-roedur_ (Conversations of Bragi).
4. _Eptirmali_ (After discourse); or Epilogue. The Prologue and
Epilogue were probably written by Snorre himself, and are nothing more
than an absurd syncretism of Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Scandinavian
myths and legends, in which Noah, Priam, Odin, Hector, Thor, Æneas,
&c, are jumbled together much in the same manner as in the romances of
the Middle Ages. These dissertations, utterly worthless in themselves,
have obviously nothing in common with the so-called "Prose Edda," the
first part of which, containing fifty-three chapters, forms a complete
synopsis of Scandinavian mythology, derived principally from the
Poetical Edda.