Book: Edda by Snorri Sturluson

Snorri Sturluson wrote his Edda, also known as the "Prose Edda", around 1220.  Sturluson's work contains his versions of numerous Norse/Icelandic myths as well as a fair catalogue of tropes, motifs and "kennings" of skaldic poetry.  This work derives from a really fascinating liminal period in European history between pagan and Christian culture and oral and written culture.  It is a written work that seeks to preserve an oral tradition.  Additionally, it was written by a Christian author about the not-so-distant pagan past of his people.  These tensions between the written and the oral and the Christian and the pagan wind their way throughout the book.  I find particularly interesting Sturluson's relatively sympathetic treatment of the pagan beliefs of his own culture.  Medieval Christianity has scarcely been noted for its patient toleration of diverse beliefs, but Sturluson strikes an expository tone that is without condescension.  In fact, he practically offers an apology and asks indulgence for the Norse people's pagan past by portraying these beliefs as rather misinterpreted versions of true Christian (and latinized) beliefs.  For instance, he equates the Aesir (the stock of the Norse pantheon) with the inhabitants of ancient Troy and hypothesizes that these migrating kings from Asia simply, if mistakenly, came to be revered as gods by the Norse people.  Sturluson's entire work ranges from interesting to extremely entertaining, but the sleight of hand he continually exercises in blending Norse pagan myth with latinized Christian tradition is what really stood out to me about this book.  Having read a good many primary sources from the Middle Ages, I found Sturluson's Edda particularly sensitive and clever.  The latter portions of the book, which focus so exclusively on skaldic poetry and its language are, perhaps, of greatest interest to specialists who wouldn't be reading the Edda in translation anyway.  However, I still found delightful kernels of myth and story interlaced into these more didactic chapters.  The entire thing is really worth a read and especially for those, like myself, who delight in the historian's sensibility wherever it is found.  Sturlson may have been explicating poetry, but he did so with the attention and perspective of an historian.  And, of course, only fairly recently have these two disciplines been separated from each other as though unrelated.  Sturluson's Edda provides a beautiful example of poetry as history and history as poetry.

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