The Uppsala Edda Snorri Sturluson The Uppsala Edda DG 11 4to Edited with introduction and notes by Heimir Pálsson Translated by Anthony Faulkes VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH u NIVERSITY COllEGE lONDON 2012 © Heimir Pálsson 2012 ISBN 978-0-903521-85-7 Printed by Short Run Press limited, Exeter Contents Preface ...................................................................................................vii Introduction ...........................................................................................xi 1 Snorri Sturluson................................................................................xi 1.1 From Oddi to Reykjaholt ...........................................................xi 1.2 The trip to Norway and return home (1218–20) ......................xix 1.3 Back to Norway (1237) ..........................................................xxiv 1.4 The wrong horse backed .........................................................xxv 1.5 ‘Do not strike!’ .......................................................................xxvi 2 Manuscripts ...................................................................................xxx 2.1 DG 11 4to ................................................................................xxx 2.2 Paper copies .........................................................................xxxiv 2.3 Manuscript relations ................................................................xlii 3 How did the text of the Edda come into being? ............................xliv 3.1 Myths ......................................................................................xliv 3.1.1 Summary..............................................................................lv 3.2 The language of poetry .............................................................lvi 3.2.1 Summary............................................................................lxv 4 One work or more than one? ........................................................lxvii 5 The DG 11 4to collection ............................................................lxxiv 5.1 Overview ...............................................................................lxxiv 5.2 Skáldatal ................................................................................lxxv 5.3 Ættartala Sturlunga .............................................................lxxvii 5.4 Lƒgsƒgumannatal ............................................................... lxxviii 5.5 Skáldskaparmál ......................................................................lxxx 5.6 Háttalykillinn— second grammatical treatise .......................lxxxi 5.7 list of stanzas ......................................................................lxxxii 5.8 Háttatal ...............................................................................lxxxvi 6 Headings and marginal notes ........................................................xcii 7 Empty space and additional material ............................................ xcv 8 Grammar and prosody ....................................................................... c 9 Summary ......................................................................................cxvi 10 Other editions of DG 11 4to ........................................................ cxx 11 This edition ...............................................................................cxxiv Index of Manuscripts ..................................................................cxxvii Bibliographical References ......................................................cxxviii uppsala Edda ......................................................................................... 1 Chapter Headings ................................................................................. 2 Prologue ............................................................................................... 6 Gylfaginning ....................................................................................... 10 Skáldatal ........................................................................................... 100 Genealogy of the Sturlungs .............................................................. 118 list of lawspeakers ......................................................................... 120 Skáldskaparmál ................................................................................ 124 Second Grammatical Treatise ........................................................... 250 Háttatal ............................................................................................. 260 Index of Names .................................................................................308 Illustrations Man with a sword ................................................................................... 118 Female dancer (1) .................................................................................. 118 Man with a stick ..................................................................................... 119 Female dancer (2) .................................................................................. 119 Two dancers ...........................................................................................120 Man riding a horse .................................................................................121 Gangleri and the Three Kings ................................................................122 Circular diagram ....................................................................................252 Rectangular diagram ..............................................................................253 Preface A quarter of a century has passed since the then textbook editor at Mál og Menning, Sigurður Svavarsson, asked me to undertake a school edition of Snorri’s Edda. I was not particularly familiar with the Edda, but was grateful for the confidence shown in me and decided to produce a printed text closer to the manuscript than most. I borrowed a word-processor (as we called desktop computers then) from the printers at Oddi, had an intensive course in how to use it from the typesetter Hafsteinn, who expressed a sensible attitude to it by saying: ‘Take it home with you and give me a ring when you get stuck.’ It was actually thought such a novelty that a photographer from the Sunday newspaper was sent to my house to take a picture of it all. It went better than might have been expected. I did indeed, like many others, make the great mistake of trusting blindly Finnur Jónsson’s text of 1931, and in fact I had been given that by the publishers to start me off. Although I was able to take account of Anne Holtsmark and Jón Helgason 1953 too, my text would not have satisfied the demands of modern textual criticism. When a new edition was issued in 2003, I had the help of Bragi Halldórsson with the text, and besides there had been some progress in readers’ editions of medieval texts with the publication of the Sagas of Icelanders by Svart á hvítu. In both my editions I was fixed in my view that the Edda ought to lie on the students’ desks as a whole. Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal had to be included. It was not acceptable to print just Gylfaginning and stories from Skáldskaparmál. In the later edition the þulur were added too, though it is disputed where they belong. It was only when I became lektor in uppsala for the second time, in 2004, that I realised that there were many unsolved problems in the history of the Edda. This was after I had got to know the facsimile and transcription of the text of the uppsala Edda, or DG 11 4to, published by Grape and Thorell. During the years 1973–1976 Olof Thorell and I were colleagues in Old Norse studies at uppsala university, and he was in fact my head. We never spoke together of Snorri’s Edda, and yet it was precisely during these years that he was engaged on the final stages of his major work, making the word list and putting the finishing touches to his literal transcription of the text that had been published in facsimile by Anders Grape in 1962. In 1929 the Swedish parliament had decided to give the Icelanders a gift in celebration of the millenium of the Alþingi in 1930 in the form of a facsimile of a major Icelandic manuscript in a Swedish library. It can be deduced from Tönnes Kleberg’s introductory remarks to the 1962 edition (pp. 1–2) that there had been some debate about the choice of manuscript for the gift, and it may be supposed that the Stockholm Homily Book had viii Preface been a competing candidate along with the uppsala Edda. It was the latter that triumphed, and the form in which it was produced turned out to be, as far as I am aware, a completely isolated experiment. The photographs were taken with equipment that had proved itself with, among other things, the publication of the Codex Argenteus in facsimile in 1927. But then this book was printed on vellum! A single copy was prepared which is now preserved in the National/university library of Iceland. It had been decided to provide copies of the photographs on paper for all the major libraries in Sweden, and at the same time as the vellum copy was made, 500 copies were printed on paper, and the majority of these were deposited in the university library in uppsala Carolina Rediviva ‘för att användas som bytesmaterial, varigenom en spridning till viktigare forskningscentra garanterades’ (to be used as exchanges by means of which dissemination to more important centres of research would be guaranteed), writes Kleberg in 1962. It has always been assumed that all