Snorri Edda
Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241)
His work has a unique importance for the study of the old norse religion. Other sources include: Tacitus: writes about Nerthus, a god carried on a wagon—Nerthus is a cognate for Njört—father of Frey and Freyja.
Adam of Bremen (1070) a monk wrote a history of the area and described sacrifices at Uppsala. Saxo Grammaticus (a Danish contemporary of Snorri’s) (1190-1220) wrote Gesta Danorum (history of the danes) 16 sections—ist 9 abt pre-history—Conversion occurs in book 8. Euhemerizes the gods. Has a different version of the death of Baldr—wrote in latin.
Came from a powerful family from northern Iceland, at the age of 2 he was fostered to Jon Loptsson (1124-97), the most powerful chieftain of his age.mSnorri received an extensive education under Loptsson’s charge. There was a large library kept at Loptsson’s home at Oddi. But Snorri did not use written sources exclusively, he also made use of the oral tradition. ( Skaldic poetry had lived orally since the 10th ctry) Snorri’s stated intention in writing the Edda was to explicate the kennings of Skaldic poetry. Kenning: Kvasir’s blood for poetry, or Odin’s mead. As EOG Turville Petre writes: “Since the Scaldic kennings were based to a great extent on myths, it was necessary to give a description of the norse Olympus.” (23, Myth and religion of the North)
Snorri was a layman, but received his training from clerics. Consequently his writings have a Christian coloring. The reliability of his work on myth has been much debated, but for our purposes it is valuble as it provides us with yet another locus where we can see the collision between Christianity and the old religion. One may argue that the favoring of Odin in the Edda runs across the grain of evidence that Thor enjoyed the greatest respect and trust in Western Scandinavia, but this can be explained by the fact that Odin was the favorite god of the poets and Snorri’s sources were largely poetic. In the introduction of the UC edition of this text, Sigurdur Nordal writes:
“ In fact, behind all this is the political struggle between the old families of the aristocracy, who from the period of the conversion of Iceland had exercised complete authority over the church, and the bishops of the 12th century and later, who were endeavoring to make the church as independent and powerful as it was in the resr of Europe—a state within a state.” In fact, the clergy had a desire to obliterate every trace of paganism—even the days of the week were changed—ex. Torsdag to 4th day. Snorri also represented a conservative cultural aspect in that he wanted to preserve the formality of the older poetic forms as newer and looser poetic forms (the dance) using everyday language and rhythms was in its ascendancy.
With this in mind, let us turn to the Prose Edda.
The Structure:
Our text: The Prologue, The Deluding of Gylfi, and The Skaldskaparmal.
To understand the nature of Snorri’s Prologue, one only has to think about our last discussion on Friday. We looked at an incident described in Eirik’s Saga in which the seeress Thorbjorg is called upon to raise the spirits who had been reluctant to appear of late. To do so, she turned to Gudrid, the Christian woman who knew the warlock songs. I posited that this incident in a sense provided us with a central metaphor through which we could understand our textual sources. The pagan seeress needed the voice of the Christian woman in order to recall the spirits of her cosmological understanding. As writing was a Christian technology, we can understand the optic through which the Viking age belief systems is presented to us.
Prologue :
(23) “In the beginning…” narrative of degenerate belief and renewal : “They lost the name of God” (importance of naming in Snorri)
(24) Naming and materialism
(25) Troy
(25-26) Genealogy that contradicts what Gylfi is told—as Thor precedes Odin—can this be linked to the degenerative narrative—where the Aesir are depicted as human agents who become deified replacing the knowledge of the true god.
(27) prefiguring the meeting with Gylfi
(28) Linguistic speculation