They are possibly of
popular origin; this, together with their epic or narrative character,
would account for the striking absence from them of some of the chief
characteristics of Skaldic poetry: the obscuring of the sense by the
elaborate interlacing of sentences and the extensive use of kennings
or mythological synonyms, and the complication of the metre by such
expedients as the conjunction of end-rhyme with alliteration. Eddie
verse is governed solely by the latter, and the strophic arrangement
is simple, only two forms occurring: (1) couplets of alliterative
short lines; (2) six-line strophes, consisting of a couplet followed
by a single short line, the whole repeated.
Roughly speaking, the first two-fifths of the MS. is mythological,
the rest heroic. I propose to observe this distinction, and to
deal in this study with the stories of the Gods. In this connexion,
Snorri's Edda and the mythical Ynglinga Saga may also be considered,
but as both were compiled a couple of centuries or more after the
introduction of Christianity into Iceland, it is uncertain how much in
them is literary explanation of tradition whose meaning was forgotten;
some also, especially in Snorri, is probably pure invention, fairy
tale rather than myth.
Many attempts have been made to prove that the material of the Edda
is largely borrowed. The strength and distinction of Icelandic poetry
rest rather on the fact that it is original and national and, like
that of Greece, owes little to foreign sources; and that it began in
the heathen age, before Christian or Romantic influences had touched
Iceland.
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