Talk:Poetic Edda

Help with fix?
Hmmm. It seems in adding a single sentence I somehow screwed the whole thing up. Sorry. Can someone help me fix this? -R. fiend


 * Fixed. Any idea how that happened? Is it a problem with your browser? &#8212;No-One Jones 15:45, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No idea. Whenever anything out of the ordinary happens i tend to blame the fact that i use a mac and the rest of the world seems to use PC's. Could be the browser too, I really can't say. I just didn't want anyone to think it was vandalism. Thanx for fixing it though. -R. fiend

Coordination
I coordinated the spelling of the poems' titles. I don't think I've broken any links, but if so I apologise. Io 21:52, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Rearrangement
Rearranged, expanded and cleared up a bit. Io 17:44, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Added a few sentences. Since I seem to keep coming back to this page, I won't bother with recording every edit on the talk page. See the history page for those. Io 12:28, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Changes
I changed

Reginsmál (also known as the list of Rig)

to

Reginsmál (also known as the "Treachery of Reginn").

The word "list" seems to originate in a Scandinavian language, not English. Io 14:18, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Article move
I moved the article from Elder Edda to Poetic Edda because Poetic Edda appears to be far more common in English today than Elder Edda. Google provides 15,600 hits for Poetic Edda but only 8,130 for "Elder Edda" which confirms what I have observed in print. (I would personally prefer Eddic poems as the article title, as yet farther removed from the erroneous titles Elder Edda and Poetic Edda and would not be surprised if in the future Eddic poems became the normal term. But it is not Wikipedia's place to lead in such matters.)

The normalization of the titles of the poems may be controversial. They are the forms used in the two most commonly available current secondary English sources on Norse mythology, both of which are excellent secondary sources. They provide, I think, a reasonable compromise in English between the totally anglicized forms which appear as the titles for some Wikipedia articles and the full Norse forms used for other articles.

I intend gradually, unless there is opposition, to replace the titles of articles with these forms where they currently differ. Some current forms are even internally inconsistant, such as Grimnismál rather than fully anglicized Grimnismal or Lindow-Orchard (and genuine Old Norse) Grímnismál. Of course each article, where this is not the case at the moment, should also be the target of a redirects from both fully anglicized forms (with no diacritics) and from full Old Norse forms.

I have provided up to three translations for each poem title as a compromise between 1) selecting one single translation and 2) attempting to provide every English translation ever used. Jallan 14:54, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * If I may please inquire, when was it first translated into another language (Danish, English, or German, for example)? --Anglius 04:53, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * The first English translation of a substantial portion is: Cottle, A. S. (Trans.). (1797). Icelandic Poetry or the Edda of Saemund. Bristol: N. Biggs. (http://www.northvegr.org/lore/poetic3/index.php) It, I think, was made from a previous Latin translation. Haukurth 18:17, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I thank you for your information, sir. --Anglius 18:31, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Tolkien
Just curious: do we really need to have the Tolkien bit in the references? I believe that I added it simply because of the paragraph I put in about the dwarves' names, so (in my eyes) there's not really a reason to keep it in the references. Nyttend 03:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
 * A formerly unpublished translation by Tolkien of the Legend of Sigur&eth; and Gudrun has just been released. It includes an introduction based on a lecture he did on Norse literature. - Parsa (talk) 03:58, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It is not a translation but a reworking in English (but using the eddic meter and format) of the stories of Sigurd and Gudrun, apparently an attempt to make a single coherent narrative out of the various sources. 129.42.208.186 (talk) 23:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikiquote
Need a link to a good wikiquote page. --Mathiastck 19:36, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * There is none. --Gwern (contribs) 21:40 15 December 2006 (GMT)

Lay
The word "lay", frequently used in this article, is used here in a sense that does not appear in the lay disambiguation page. Can it be added there? Michael Hardy 14:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * ...unless it's the same as lai, in which case it should link there. Michael Hardy 14:52, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Numbering scheme
what is the scheme used by Grimm when he cites "Sæm. 169ª 209ª" rather than poem and verse? Page numbers of some specific edition? --dab (𒁳) 12:32, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have been wondering the same but I am afraid I don't have an answer for you. If anyone knows, do post. In addition, if anyone is interested, I've been working on an extended table of contents for the 4th edition English translation that will make navigating the work easier. I'll post it to the talk page of Talk:Deutsche_Mythologie so that we can all use it. bloodofox: (talk) 12:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments to 'lay' and 'list':

'Lay' is a translation of the ON word 'kviða', still used in modern Danish as 'kvad', meaning 'song'. However, it carries a connotation of being 'chanted' rather than 'sung'.

'List' is a common Danish word as well. It means 'clever measures', but not necessarily used in a treacherous fashion, that would be an added meaning not inherent in the word itself. Interestingly, it is also used as a verb, 'at liste' means to move on one's feet very quietly, again not necessarily exactly the same as 'sneak'. It could for instance be done to not wake up a sleeping person, out of kindness.

Ivalde (talk) 01:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Mixup on translator Henry Adams Bellows?
I just put a note on the talk page for Henry_Adams_Bellows, but there may be more relevant expertise here. The Wiki page describes Henry Adams Bellows, a Vermont lawyer and legislator who died in 1873, as the translator of the Poetic Edda. This doesn't fit well with the 1923 publication date. Were there two Henry Adams Bellows? Anyone know? CouldOughta (talk) 21:34, 30 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The obvious explanation is that the '23 date is a reprint or further edition. Did you check for that? --Gwern (contribs) 14:34 14 September 2009 (GMT)

There was fuller discussion at Talk:Henry Adams Bellows. The translation was by a different person, whom I have written up at Henry Adams Bellows (businessman), and I'm moving the links that were intended for him and previously went to the judge/politician. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:12, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Sólarljóð
I've removed the section about Sólarljóð. I find it misguiding to suggest any other connetion between Sólarljóð and Poetic Edda than the metric and the language. The section said
 * This poem, also not in Codex Regius, is sometimes included in editions of the Poetic Edda'' even though it is Christian and belongs, properly speaking, to the visionary literature of the Middle Ages. It is, however, written in ljóðaháttr and uses some heathen imagery.

It is right that it is not included in Codex Regius; and neither in any other medieval manuscript. The oldest sources of the poem are from the 17th century. Making a connetion between Sólarljóð and Poetic Edda because the poem is "sometimes included in editions of the Poetic Edda" would be a over-interpretation of the intentions of modern editions. The so-called "use of heathen imagery" is rhetoric, and within a clearly christian intention, see the (norwegian) quotation from Paasche added to the article.

In my opinion, the link between Edda and Sólarljóð should also be removed from Template:Poetic Edda. Bw --Orland (talk) 20:44, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The section 'Date'
The section entitled 'Date' has detailed information about how we can tell the relative age of the different poems and yet absolutely no information about what the relative age of the different poems is believed to be. If anything, the second is what I would expect to find in such a section first and foremost. In the meantime, a new potential source has been published: 'Dating the Old Norse Poetic Edda. A multifactorial analysis of linguistic features' by C. D. Sapp. If someone has access to it, it could be used for that section. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 11:10, 14 December 2023 (UTC)