Edda ('great-grandmother'), the name of two very different collections of old Scandinavian literature. Of these the 'Younger' or prose Edda was written by the Icelandic Snorri Sturluson (q.v.) about 1230, and was discovered by Arngrim Jonsson in 1628. It consists of three parts: (1) Gylfa-ginning ('the deceiving of Gylfi'), mythological stories told by Odin to Gylfi, a Swedish king, forming the chief source of our knowledge of the Scandinavian theogony; (2) Skáldskaparmál, or the Art of Poetry; and (3) Háttatal, a system of prosody. Prologues and epilogues are added by later hands. The work contains quotations from about seventy early poets. It is found in three great MSS.—the Codex Regius (about 1300), discovered by Brynjulf Sveinsson in 1640; the Codex Wormianus (about 1330), so called because it was sent to Ole Worm in 1628; and the Codex Upsalensis (about 1300), where the name 'Edda' first occurs. Editions of the prose Edda were published by Resenius (Copenhagen, 1665), Rask (Stockholm, 1818), Egilsson (Reykjavik, 1848), and Jonsson (Copenhagen, 1875). Of the elaborate edition of the Arne-Magnæan commission, two vols. (Copenhagen, 1848–52) are published, and part of a third (ib. 1880). There is a valuable edition of Háttatal by Möbius (Halle, 1879–81); and Bergmann's Fascination de Gylfi (2d ed. Strasburg, 1871) furnishes a French translation of Gylfa-ginning, with learned prolegomena, and an extensive critical commentary. Dasent's English translation (1842) may be noticed.
The 'Elder' Edda is a collection of lays which contain legends of Scandinavian gods and heroes, and are productions mainly of Iceland, and of different periods from the 9th to the 11th century. It was discovered about 1643 by Brynjulf Sveinsson, who applied the name 'Edda' to this collection also, which he attributed to Sæmund Sigfusson (who lived in Iceland about 1055–1132). The poems belonging to the Elder Edda are thirty-three in number, with prose passages interpolated here and there by the collector. They are on subjects partly of Scandinavian mythology, partly of heroic and legendary history. A few of the latter are derived from legends purely Scandinavian, the remainder treat of heroes common to the Teutonic races. They are written in two forms, distinguished as kvíðhúháttr (epic metre) and ljóðhúháttr (didactic metre). The first of these consists of strophes of eight lines, every two of which are connected by alliteration, each line having two (usually two-syllabled) feet, with an accent on each foot; the alliterative initial letters in the accented syllables being regularly three in number—two in the first, and one (the most emphatic of the three) in the second of each pair of lines, as in Anglo-Saxon poetry (see ALLITERATION). The peculiarity of ljóðhúháttr is that in it the strophe (Visa) has regularly only six lines, of which the first, second, fourth, and fifth are constructed exactly as in the other form (i.e. they have two accents, and are connected in pairs by alliteration). The third and sixth lines, however, have each three accents and alliteration of its own, the alliterating letters in each of these lines being two (sometimes three) in number, and different from those in the two preceding it. The collection now called the Elder Edda was unknown to Snorri, yet almost all the lays are paraphrased or quoted by him in his own work from the oral tradition of his time. The earliest complete editions were those of the Arne-Magnæan commission (3 vols. Copenhagen, 1787-1828), Rask (Stockholm, 1818), and Munch (Christiania, 1847), which were followed by those of Lünig (Zurich, 1859) and Möbius (Leip. 1860). These were superseded by Bugge's edition (Christiania, 1867), on which those of Grundtvig (2d ed. Copenhagen, 1874) and Hildebrand (Padernborn, 1876) are based. They are all now embodied in Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale (2 vols. Oxford, 1883). The most recent translations in German are by Holtzmann (Leip. 1873), Wenzel (ib. 1877), and Simrock (8th ed. Stutt. 1882); in Danish by Winkel-Horn (Copenhagen, 1869) and Möller (1871); in Swedish by Gödecke (Stockholm, 1877); in French by E. de Laveleye (Brussels, 1866); and in English by Thorpe (1866) and R. B. Anderson (Chicago, 1879).
See Bergmann, Poèmes Islandais (Paris, 1838), and Chants de Sol (Paris, 1858); Grimm, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (4th ed. 2 vols. Leip. 1880); Möbius, Verzeichniss der auf dem Gebiet der altnordischen Sprache und Litteratur erschienen Schriften (ib. 1880); and Vigfusson's Prolegomena to his edition of the Sturlunga Saga (2 vols. Oxford, 1878).