In 1643, an Icelandic bishop named Brynjólfur Sveinsson received a parchment manuscript that had been sitting in a farmhouse for centuries. When he opened it, he found a collection of anonymous poems that told stories he knew from other sources but had never seen assembled in one place. He assumed it had been written by the scholar Sæmundr fróði Sigfússon (1056–1133), and he called it the Elder Edda. He was wrong about the author, but he was right about what he had found: the oldest surviving anthology of Old Norse mythological and heroic poetry. That manuscript, now known as the Codex Regius (GKS 2365 4to), is the Poetic Edda.
The Prose Edda, written around 1220 by the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241), is a textbook that explains the myths and poetic forms a skald needed to compose traditional verse. The Poetic Edda is a collection of actual poems, most composed between the 9th and 11th centuries, copied down anonymously in the 1270s. One is a manual that quotes poetry. The other is the poetry itself.
Together, they are the two primary surviving textual sources for Norse mythology. But they are not the same thing, and treating them as interchangeable obscures how each was made, who made it, and what it was meant to do.
Where the Two Eddas Came From
The Prose Edda came first as a dated text. Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic chieftain, historian and poet, wrote it around 1220, probably in Reykholt, western Iceland. He called it simply the Edda. The title may derive from the Old Norse word óðr (poetry or inspiration), or from the Latin edo (I compose). No one is certain. What is certain is that Snorri, a Christian writing for a Christian audience, was trying to preserve a dying tradition. Skalds in his time could no longer understand the complex kennings and allusions of older verse. Without a guide, the mythological references in their own poetic tradition would become unintelligible. Snorri wrote his Edda as a handbook for poets who still wanted to compose in the old meters. He quoted the old poems to illustrate his points.
The Poetic Edda has no single author. The 29 poems in the Codex Regius (plus four others found in other manuscripts) were composed over roughly three centuries, from the 9th to the 11th, in what is now Norway, Iceland, and possibly Greenland. They were transmitted orally by poets whose names we do not know. The manuscript we have was copied around 1270, on vellum, by a single scribe whose identity is lost. Brynjólfur Sveinsson sent the Codex Regius to King Frederick III of Denmark in 1662, where it stayed in the Royal Library until 1971, when it was returned to Iceland. That return was a national event. The manuscript was transported by naval escort and greeted by crowds at the Reykjavik harbor.
The human consequence is this: without Snorri’s Prose Edda, we would have no framework for many of the myths the poems tell. Without the Poetic Edda, Snorri would be quoting poetry we could not read. Each needs the other. But they were made for different reasons.
What Each Text Actually Contains
The Prose Edda is divided into four sections. The Prologue frames the Norse gods as historical refugees from Troy, a Christian rationalization that Snorri probably added to make his work acceptable to church authorities. Gylfaginning (The Beguiling of Gylfi) is a long narrative in which the Swedish king Gylfi questions three figures about the gods and learns the myths in dialogue form. Skáldskaparmál (The Language of Poetry) lists kennings and heiti for poets to use, with mythological anecdotes explaining each one. Háttatal (List of Verse Forms) demonstrates Snorri’s own poetry in 102 different meters, showing what the handbook was meant to teach. Snorri quotes extensively from older poems, including several that survive in the Poetic Edda, but he also quotes from poems that are now lost.
The Poetic Edda contains two types of verse: mythological poems and heroic poems. The mythological poems include Völuspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy), Hávamál (The Sayings of the High One), Grímnismál (Grímnir’s Sayings), and Skírnismál (Skírnir’s Journey), among others. The heroic poems trace the story of the Völsung family, including Sigurðr the dragon-slayer, Brynhildr, Guðrún, and Atli (the historical Attila the Hun). These poems are stark, compressed, and often brutal. A character might speak ten lines and then die. The narrative is carried entirely by dialogue and action, with no editorial commentary.
The difference in form is telling. Snorri explains. The Poetic Edda simply presents. A reader of Gylfaginning learns about the death of Baldr through a prose story with quoted verses. A reader of Völuspá experiences Ragnarok through the voice of a dead völva, speaking in a meter called fornyrðislag, with no mediation.
How the Christian Context Affects Both
Snorri was a Christian, probably a deacon, and he wrote under a Christian king. His Prologue attempts to euhemerize the Norse gods, turning them into human kings whose deeds were exaggerated over time. This was not dishonesty. It was a survival strategy. If Snorri had presented Odin and Thor as literal deities, his work would have been suppressed. By framing them as historical figures, he could preserve the stories and the poetic forms that depended on them. The Prologue is often omitted from modern translations, but it matters. It tells us that the Prose Edda is not a neutral record. It is a negotiated text, shaped by the religious politics of its time.
The Poetic Edda shows almost no Christian influence. The poems were composed in a pre-Christian or early Christian context, and their worldview is uncompromising. Fate is inexorable. The gods die. The world ends. There is no salvation, no afterlife of reward, no moral judgment from a single deity. The Völuspá poet describes a new green world rising after Ragnarok, but it is not heaven. It is a second chance for a world that will fall again.
The difference matters for anyone using these texts for guide: runic or Norse magical practice. If you are reconstructing a pre-Christian worldview, the Poetic Edda is closer to the source. If you need to understand how Norse poetry and mythology were systematized and transmitted, the Prose Edda is essential. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient on its own.
What Each One Gets Wrong or Leaves Out
The Prose Edda is not a perfect record. Snorri occasionally conflates different versions of a myth, or imposes an order that the original tradition may not have had. His account of the death of Baldr, for instance, is the fullest we have, but it is also the most novelistic. The Poetic Edda mentions Baldr’s death only in fragments and allusions. Snorri may have been working from oral versions that did not survive, or he may have been filling in gaps himself. Scholars disagree. We cannot be certain.
The Poetic Edda, for its part, is incomplete. The Codex Regius has a gap of eight leaves, a lacuna that almost certainly contained poems about Sigurðr and Brynhildr that we can only reconstruct fragmentarily from other sources. The manuscript also breaks off abruptly in the middle of a stanza. We do not know what else may have been lost from the original collection.
A related misconception is that the Poetic Edda is the source Snorri used for the Prose Edda. It is not. Snorri quotes poems that appear in the Codex Regius and quotes other poems that do not. He almost certainly knew different oral versions of the same material. The relationship between the two Eddas is not one of direct dependence. They are sibling texts, not parent and child. Both draw on a shared tradition that was far larger than either one preserves.
How the Eddas Are Used Today
In the occult revival of the 19th and 20th centuries, the two Eddas took on different roles. The Prose Edda, with its systematic structure, became the primary source for the Norse mythology sections of textbooks and encyclopedias. The Poetic Edda, with its raw poetic power, became the inspiration for reconstructed heathen and Ásatrú liturgies. The Hávamál is still used as a source of ethical proverbs. The Völuspá is recited in ritual contexts.
In modern Norse paganism, the Poetic Edda is often treated as a sacred text. But it was not written as one. The poems are not scripture. They are literature. They contain contradictions, variant accounts, and passages that are intentionally obscure. Treating them as a single coherent revelation misses the complexity of the oral tradition that produced them.
The Prose Edda remains indispensable for anyone studying related Old Norse terms and concepts. Its explanations of kennings alone make it a reference work that no practitioner of runic or skaldic tradition can afford to ignore.
FAQ
Which Edda is older? The poems in the Poetic Edda were composed earlier (9th-11th centuries), but the Prose Edda was written down first (around 1220). The Poetic Edda manuscript dates to about 1270.
Can you read the Poetic Edda without the Prose Edda? You can read it, but many mythological references will be unclear. Snorri’s Prose Edda provides the narrative context that the poems assume.
Are the stories in the two Eddas the same? They overlap but do not always agree. Snorri sometimes gives a fuller version or a different detail. The Poetic Edda often presents events more ambiguously.
Why is the Poetic Edda called “Elder” and the Prose Edda called “Younger”? Brynjólfur Sveinsson assumed the Poetic Edda was older because its poems were composed earlier, even though the Prose Edda was written down first. The labels are traditional but misleading.
Closing
The two Eddas are not rivals. They are complementary witnesses to a tradition that would otherwise be mostly lost. One gives us the framework. The other gives us the voice. For anyone working with Norse mythology in a practical or scholarly context, the question is not which one to use, but how to read each one on its own terms. The Norse mythology hub offers further guides on individual poems, kennings, and the figures who appear in both texts. The Edda glossary entry provides a quick reference for the terminology used in both collections.