generation.[1] Sæmund died at the age of 77, leaving behind him a work
on the history of Norway and Iceland, which is now almost entirely
lost.

The first who ascribed to Sæmund the collection of poems known as the
Poetic Edda,[2] was Brynjolf Svensson, bishop of Skalholt. This
prelate, who was a zealous collector of ancient manuscripts, found in
the year 1643, the old vellum codex, which is the most complete of
all the known manuscripts of the Edda; of this he caused a transcript
to be made, which he entitled _Edda Saemundi Multiscii_. The
transcript came into the possession of the royal historiographer
Torfæus; the original, together with other MSS., was presented to the
King of Denmark, Frederick. III., and placed in the royal library at
Copenhagen, where it now is.[3] As many of the Eddaic poems appear to
have been orally transmitted in an imperfect state, the collector has
supplied the deficiencies by prose insertions, whereby the integrity
of the subject is to a certain degree restored.

The collection called Sæmund's Edda consists of two parts, viz., the
Mythological and the Heroic. It is the former of those which is now
offered to the public in an English version. In the year 1797, a
translation of this first part, by A.S. Cottle, was published at
Bristol. This work I have never met with; nor have I seen any English
version of any part of the Edda, with the exception of Gray's spirited
but free translation of the Vegtamskvida.

The Lay of Volund (Volundarkvida) celebrates the story of Volund's
doings and sufferings during his sojourn in the territory of the
Swedish king Nidud. Volund (_Ger_. Wieland, _Fr_. Veland and Galans)
is the Scandinavian and Germanic Vulcan (Hephaistos) and Dædalus. In