Prose Edda
Snorri Sturluson's c. 1220 Icelandic prose handbook for poets — a systematic exposition of Norse cosmology and myth (Gylfaginning) and poetic technique (Skáldskaparmál). Preserves myths whose Eddic-poem sources are lost. Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur's 1916 translation.
Source context· Western European stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
- Stream
- Western European
- Cultural age
- Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
- Composed
- c. 1220 CE
- Soul-faculty
- Sentient Soul — the mythographic imagination operating in picture-consciousness rather than conceptual abstraction, reflecting the mode of soul-life dominant in the epoch from which the oral sources descend.
What this work carries
The Prose Edda preserves pre-Christian Norse cosmological myth — including accounts of the world-tree Yggdrasil, the creation and destruction of worlds, and the pantheon of Aesir and Vanir gods — that descended from ancient Germanic oral tradition. These myths encode an earlier clairvoyant perception of spiritual realities that persisted in northern European folk memory long after the conditions that produced them had faded. Snorri's systematization c. 1220 CE represents a late literary crystallization of wisdom-streams whose oral roots reach into the pre-Migration period.
Language frame
Written in Old Norse prose by the Icelandic scholar-chieftain Snorri Sturluson, the work serves simultaneously as a mythographic compendium (Gylfaginning) and a technical handbook for skaldic poetry (Skáldskaparmál). The prose medium frames mythological content that had previously circulated in verse, introducing a rationalizing, scholastic layer over older imagistic content.
Steiner’s engagement
- GA 51, 1904-10-25Steiner cites both the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda as repositories of the songs and sagas through which the spiritual and cultural achievements of the Germanic-Norse race were preserved, treating them alongside Tacitus as sources for understanding the inner character of that people.
Cross-tradition congruence
- Vedic cosmogony (Rigveda, Puranas)The Eddic account of cosmic cycles — world-formation, divine conflict, and the Ragnarök dissolution — shows structural congruence with Vedic descriptions of kalpas and the periodic dissolution and re-emanation of worlds, suggesting parallel imaginations of cyclic cosmic time across northern European and Indo-Aryan traditions.
- Kabbalistic Sephirothic treeYggdrasil as a vertical axis connecting nine worlds — from roots in the underworld to crown touching the divine realm — displays structural congruence with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as an ordered vertical schema of cosmological levels.
- 1Introduction — Brodeur's Introduction
Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur's 1916 introduction to his English translation of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. The composition of the Edda in the 1220s as a poetics-manual for skaldic apprentices; Snorri's sources in the older oral and written tradition; the work's preservation of mythological material lost elsewhere.
3,866 words - 2Prologue — Prologue — the Christian-classical frame
Snorri's prologue placing the Norse gods within the frame of medieval euhemerist-Christian historiography. The Æsir descended from Trojan refugees; the gods are deified ancestors. The frame allowed Snorri to preserve the pagan mythology under a Christian apologetic cover.
2,136 words - 3Gylfaginning — Gylfaginning — the Beguiling of Gylfi — the mythological encyclopedia
The first and most influential book. King Gylfi visits the hall of the Æsir; questions three figures (High, Just-As-High, Third) on the cosmos and the gods. Their answers form a structured encyclopedia of Norse mythology: creation, the gods, Asgard, Valhalla, the death of Baldr, Ragnarök. The single best surviving source for Norse mythological narrative.
21,567 words - 4Skáldskaparmal — Skáldskaparmál — the Language of Poetry
Manual of skaldic poetic technique. Bragi the god of poetry instructs the seafarer Ægir on the heiti (poetic synonyms) and kennings (metaphorical compounds) by which the various gods, beings, weapons, ships, ravens, swords, gold, etc. are named in skaldic verse. The technical core of the Prose Edda.
30,124 words - 5Index — Brodeur's Index
Brodeur's index of proper names and technical terms with brief identifying notes. A useful reference apparatus for the dense Norse onomastic and the skaldic vocabulary of the Skáldskaparmál.
6,363 words
JSON: /api/sources/edda/prose-edda/index.json · Back to Sources.