Editing Edda (section)

==The ''Poetic Edda''==
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[[File:The Tree of Yggdrasil.jpg|thumb|The title page of Olive Bray's English translation of ''Codex Regius'' entitled ''Poetic Edda'' depicting the tree [[Yggdrasil]] and a number of its inhabitants (1908) by [[W. G. Collingwood]]]]

The ''Poetic Edda'', also known as ''Sæmundar Edda'' or the ''Elder Edda'', is a collection of [[Old Norse]] poems from the [[Iceland]]ic medieval [[manuscript]] [[Codex Regius]] ("Royal Book"). Along with the ''[[Prose Edda]]'', the ''Poetic Edda'' is the most expansive source on Norse mythology. The first part of the Codex Regius preserves poems that narrate the creation and foretold destruction and rebirth of the Old Norse mythological world as well as individual myths about gods concerning [[List of Germanic deities and heroes|Norse deities]]. The poems in the second part narrate legends about [[List of Germanic deities and heroes|Norse heroes and heroines]], such as [[Sigurd]], [[Brynhildr]] and [[Gunnar]].

It consists of two parts. The first part has 10 songs about gods, and the second one has 19 songs about heroes.

The Codex Regius was written in the 13th century, but nothing is known of its whereabouts until 1643, when it came into the possession of [[Brynjólfur Sveinsson]], then the [[Church of Iceland]]'s Bishop of [[Skálholt]]. At that time, versions of the ''[[Prose Edda]]'' were well known in Iceland, but scholars speculated that there once was another ''Edda''—an ''Elder Edda''—which contained the [[Norse paganism|pagan]] poems Snorri quotes in his book. When the Codex Regius was discovered, it seemed that this speculation had proven correct. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to [[Saemund|Sæmundr the Learned]], a larger-than-life 12th century Icelandic priest. While this attribution is rejected by modern scholars, the name ''Sæmundar Edda'' is still sometimes encountered.

Bishop Brynjólfur sent the ''Codex Regius'' as a present to King [[Christian IV of Denmark]], hence the name ''Codex Regius''. For centuries it was stored in the [[Royal Library, Copenhagen|Royal Library]] in [[Copenhagen]] but in 1971 it was returned to Iceland.