is also omitted, whether it appears as _-r_ or is assimilated to a
preceding consonant (as in Odinn, Eysteinn, Heindall, Egill) in the
Norse form, with the single exception of the name Tyr, where I use
the form which has become conventional in English.

Manchester,
December 1901.




The Edda: I. The Divine Mythology of the North


The Icelandic Eddas are the only vernacular record of Germanic
heathendom as it developed during the four centuries which in England
saw the destruction of nearly all traces of the heathen system. The
so-called Elder Edda is a collection of some thirty poems, mythic and
heroic in substance, interspersed with short pieces of prose, which
survives in a thirteenth-century MS., known as the Codex Regius,
discovered in Iceland in 1642; to these are added other poems of
similar character from other sources. The Younger Edda is a prose
paraphrase of, and commentary on, these poems and others which are
lost, together with a treatise on metre, written by the historian
Snorri Sturluson about 1220.

This use of the word Edda is incorrect and unhistorical, though
convenient and sanctioned by the use of several centuries. It was early
used as a general term for the rules and materials for versemaking,
and applied in this sense to Snorri's work. When the poems on which