The Poetic Edda. Volume III: Mythological Poems II (review)

This is the third published volume of Ursula Dronke’s long-running edition of the Old Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poems in the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, most of them unique to this late thirteenth-century manuscript, GKS 2365 4to, now in Reykjavík, but formerly in the Royal Library, Copenhagen. One of the poems in the present volume, Grottasǫngr ‘The Song of Grotti’, a magical hand-mill, is not in the Codex Regius manuscript, while two of the poems edited here, Grímnismál ‘The Speech of Grímnir <= Óðinn>’ and Hymiskviða ‘Poem about Hymir <a giant>’, are also found in another Icelandic manuscript, AM 748 I a 4to. Some stanzas from Grímnismál are also cited in the Gylfaginning section of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, though Dronke’s edition does not include variant readings from Snorra Edda manuscripts.

Volume I of this edition appeared in 1969 and included four heroic poems from the Poetic Edda collection. Volume II, published in 1997, presented editions of five mythological poems, Vǫluspá ‘Prophecy of the Sybil’, Rígsþula ‘Rígr’s Rigmarole’, Vǫlundarkviða ‘Poem about Vǫlundr’, Lokasenna ‘Loki’s Flyting’, and Skírnismál ‘The Speech of Skírnir’. The 2011 volume presents what Dronke considers “the four most complex—and in my view most outstanding” (p. vii) of the remaining mythological poems, leaving four from the Codex Regius yet to be edited (Vafþrúðnismál ‘The Speech of Vafþrúðnir <a giant>’, Hárbarðsljóð ‘The Song of Hárbarðr <=Óðinn>’, Þrymskviða ‘Poem about Þrymr <a giant>’, and Alvíssmál ‘The Speech of Alvíss <a dwarf>’), and two others, Baldrs Draumar ‘Baldr’s Dreams’ and Hyndluljóð ‘The Song of Hyndla <a giantess>’, preserved in other manuscripts but conventionally included in editions of the Poetic Edda collection.

In this volume’s front matter there is a very short, and somewhat unsatisfactory, section of less than a page (p. xi) on the manuscripts and Dronke’s editorial methodology, which will be of little assistance to anyone other than a scholar who already knows the subject well. Granted, Volume I had a fuller section on this subject, but that was published so many years ago that some kind of catch-up on changed manuscript sigla, editorial practices, other editions, and new scholarly resources, such as the Frankfurt Kommmentar zu den Liedern der Edda (von See et al. 1997–), should have been offered to the reader.

The volume then launches into its treatment of the four poems, beginning with Hávamál ‘The Speech of the High One <=Óðinn>’, which occupies the first sixty-three pages. Thereafter, the following three poems occupy decreasing numbers of pages, with the final poem, Grottasǫngr, having a bare thirteen pages devoted to it and reading somewhat like an afterthought. This rather sparse coverage may be the result of an original collaboration between Dronke and Clive Tolley, who published his own, much fuller edition of Grottasǫngr in 2008. No light is thrown on this collaboration in Dronke’s edition, though Tolley acknowledges the relationship between the two editions in his preface.

The section devoted to Hávamál comprises an Icelandic text of the poem and parallel English translation, the latter observing the lineation of the Icelandic (as do all the translations in this edition), followed by a thirteen-page introduction, in which Dronke sets out her interpretation of the poem. This is augmented by a detailed commentary of another thirteen pages on the text. The textual apparatus is minimal, and will be discussed further below. Hymiskviða follows with text and parallel translation, then a seven-page commentary, as befits a shorter poem, and a short third, interpretative section, headed “The Winning of the Giant’s Cauldron,” followed by another on “The Christian Origins of the Story of Þórr’s Killing of the World Serpent” (this section incorporating...