The Poehy of the Edda 93 



Teutonic form of verse. Vigfusson, who is the greatest 

 scholar of Old Northern Literature which, perhaps, we 

 have ever had, fixes upon the earldom of the Orkneys 

 as the probable home of the class of poetry of which 

 I am speaking, and which forms the body of what is 

 generally known as Eddie Poetry. He points out how 

 different the whole spirit of this poetry is from the 

 northern prose literature which we know as Saga litera- 

 ture ; and he thinks that the difference arises from the 

 fact that the Eddie poetry has been the most deeply 

 affected by the Celtic imagination. 



The rest of this chapter and the next I will devote 

 to a description of this early Norse poetry, and the 

 mythology which it enshrines. 



The Poetry of the Edda is not historical in any sense 

 of the word ; it is purely mythological. The chief part 

 of it is concerned professedly witli the northern gods. 

 A certain number of poems deal with the achievements 

 of heroes ; but these beings too are not human, — they 

 are a kind of gods. 



It happens, unfortunately, that a writer, writing in 

 Christian days, at a comparatively late date in Icelandic 

 history, took upon himself to draw from these early 

 northern poems, and from traditions which had come 

 down to him, a system of Northern Mythology. He 

 combined in this system many classical elements, — 

 at any rate many things suggested by the mythology 

 of the Greeks and Eomans, with which he was un- 

 doubtedly familiar. The book which he compiled on 

 this principle (which was in prose) has come to be known 

 as the younger or prose Edda. Its proper name is the 

 Gylfayinning. And ever since it was written — in the 



