PREFACE.

Sæmund, son of Sigfus, the reputed collector of the poems bearing his
name, which is sometimes also called the Elder, and the Poetic, Edda,
was of a highly distinguished family, being descended in a direct line
from King Harald Hildetonn. He was born at Oddi, his paternal dwelling
in the south of Iceland, between the years 1054 and 1057, or about 50
years after the establishment by law of the Christian religion in that
island; hence it is easy to imagine that many heathens, or baptized
favourers of the old mythic songs of heathenism, may have lived in his
days and imparted to him the lays of the times of old, which his
unfettered mind induced him to hand down to posterity.

The youth of Sæmund was passed in travel and study, in Germany and
France, and, according to some accounts, in Italy. His cousin John
Ogmundson, who later became first bishop of Holum, and after his death
was received among the number of saints, when on his way to Rome, fell
in with his youthful kinsman, and took him back with him to Iceland,
in the year 1076. Sæmund afterwards became a priest at Oddi, where he
instructed many young men in useful learning; but the effects of which
were not improbably such as to the common people might appear as
witchcraft or magic: and, indeed, Sæmund's predilection for the sagas
and songs of the old heathen times (even for the magical ones) was so
well known, that among his countrymen there were some who regarded him
as a great sorcerer, though chiefly in what is called white or
innocuous and defensive sorcery, a repute which still clings to his
memory among the common people of Iceland, and will long adhere to it
through the numerous and popular stories regarding him (some of them
highly entertaining) that are orally transmitted from generation to