Structure, Manuscripts, Dictionaries, and Further Reading

Joseph S. Hopkins for Mimisbrunnr.info, August, 2022. Art by Rim M. for Mimisbrunnr.info. Special thanks to Haukur Þorgeirsson (University of Iceland) for his recommendations and suggestions. All errors are those of the author.

The god Odin as wanderer by Rim M. for Mimisbrunnr.info.

In this piece, we provide information about some of our choices in producing "The Comparative Vǫluspá" and provide a list of resources that allow for deeper study of the poem and eddic poetry more broadly.

Structure

Any comparative study will need some kind of framework. For our purposes here and for the convenience of our readers, the author has decided to use Neckel and Kuhn's still widely used and edition of the poem as its base for comparison:

  • Neckel, Gustav & Hans Kuhn. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. Carl Winter. Publisher Website.

While this edition is not in the public domain, readers can find a partial transcription of it through the University of Frankfurt’s TITUS project here. We also provide the first edition of Neckel's work alongside translations. As it was published in 1914, it has long been in the public domain in the United States. Read more about that edition here.

Manuscripts

For manuscript photos, see the digital collections of Handrit.is:

Click here for all scans of eddic poetry manuscripts at Handrit.is. Readers may find older black and white images of some of the manuscripts easier to read, and these may be viewed here in the University of Copenhagen’s collections (example).

Dictionaries

None of the resources in this section will be of any use to you without a way to make sense of the Old Icelandic used in these texts. Fortunately, there are a variety of resources for approaching Old Icelandic, the westernmost member of the Old Norse dialect continuum, available online today. These include:

Alongside dictionaries of Old Icelandic, including:

Oxford published a second edition of this dictionary that includes revisions by William A. Craigie in 1957, but this is not in the public domain and therefore unavailable for viewing online (you can preview it here).

In 1910, Geir T. Zoëga published a ‘concise’ edition of the first edition of Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon’s Old Icelandic dictionary:

  • Zoëga, Geir T. 1910. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic. Oxford Clarendon Press. Viewable online.

Note however that while Icelandic syntax may seem somewhat familiar to English speakers, eddic poetry is another matter entirely. For eddic poetry, we strongly recommend consulting the notes of translators in not only the editions presented here but also more modern editions.

Further reading

If you’re new to the topic of Norse mythology, here’s a handy guide to getting started us here at Mimisbrunnr.info. On the topic of eddic poetry and Vǫluspá more specifically, the following collection of contemporary papers makes for a great place to start:

  • Haukur Þorgeirsson. 2020. “In Defence of Emendation. The Editing of Vǫluspá”. Saga-Book XLIV, p. 31–56. Viewable online at Academia.edu.

  • Larrington, Carolyne; Judy Quinn; and Brittany Schorn. Editors. 2016. A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia. Cambridge University Press. Publisher website.