Poetic Edda
Poetic Edda is the modern attribution for an unnamed collection of Old Norse anonymous poems, different from the Edda written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all of text from the Icelandic medieval manuscript known as the Codex Regius; the Codex Regius is arguably the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends. From the early 19th century onwards, it has had a powerful influence on Scandinavian literatures. Not only by its stories, but by the visionary force and the dramatic quality of many of the poems, it has become an inspiring model for many innovations in poetic meter in Nordic languages, offering many varied examples of terse, stress-based metrical schemes that lack any final rhyme by instead using alliterative devices and strongly-concentrated imagery. Poets who have acknowledged their debt to the Codex Regius include Vilhelm Ekelund, August Strindberg, J. R. R. Tolkien, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, Karin Boye. Codex Regius was written in the 13th century, but nothing is known of its whereabouts until 1643, when it came into the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson Bishop of Skálholt.
At the time, versions of the Edda were known in Iceland, but scholars speculated that there once was another Edda, an Elder Edda, which contained the pagan poems that Snorri quotes in his Edda. When Codex Regius was discovered, it seemed that the speculation had proved, but modern scholarly research has shown that Edda was written first and the two were, at most, connected by a common source. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to Sæmundr the Learned, a larger-than-life 12th century Icelandic priest; that attribution is rejected by modern scholars, but the name Sæmundar Edda is still sometimes associated with both the "Codex Regius" and versions of "Poetic Edda" using it as a source. Bishop Brynjólfur sent Codex Regius as a present to the Danish king. For centuries, it was stored in the Royal Library in Copenhagen but in 1971, it was returned to Iceland; the Eddic poems are composed in alliterative verse. Most are in fornyrðislag; the rest, about a quarter, are composed in ljóðaháttr. The language of the poems is clear and unadorned.
Kennings are employed, though they do not arise as nor are they as complex, as those found in skaldic poetry. Like most early poetry, the Eddic poems were minstrel poems, passing orally from singer to singer and from poet to poet for centuries. None of the poems are attributed to a particular author, though many of them show strong individual characteristics and are to have been the work of individual poets. Scholars sometimes speculate on hypothetical authors, but firm and accepted conclusions have never been reached; the dating of the poems has been a source of lively scholarly argument for a long time, firm conclusions are hard to reach. Lines from the Eddic poems sometimes appear in poems by known poets, but such evidence is difficult to evaluate. For example, Eyvindr skáldaspillir composed in the latter half of the 10th century, he uses a couple of lines in his Hákonarmál which are found in Hávamál, it is possible that he was quoting a known poem, but it is possible that Hávamál, or at least the strophe in question, is the younger derivative work.
The few demonstrably historical characters mentioned in the poems, such as Attila, provide a terminus post quem of sorts. The dating of the manuscripts themselves provides a more useful terminus ante quem. Individual poems have individual clues to their age. For example, Atlamál hin groenlenzku is claimed by its title to have been composed in Greenland, seems so by some internal evidence. If so, it can be no earlier than about 985, since there were no Scandinavians in Greenland until that time. In some cases, old poems may have been merged with other poems. For example, stanzas 9-16 of Völuspá, the "Dvergatal" or "Roster of Dwarfs", is considered by some scholars to be an interpolation; the problem of dating the poems is linked with the problem of finding out. Iceland was not settled until about 870, so anything composed before that time would have been elsewhere, most in Scandinavia. Any young poems, on the other hand, are Icelandic in origin. Scholars have attempted to localize individual poems by studying the geography and fauna to which they refer.
This approach does not yield firm results. For example, there are no wolves in Iceland, but we can be sure that Icelandic poets were familiar with the species; the apocalyptic descriptions of Völuspá have been taken as evidence that the poet who composed it had seen a volcanic eruption in Iceland - but this is hardly certain. Some poems similar to those found in Codex Regius are included in some editions of the Poetic Edda. Important manuscripts include AM 748 I Hauksbók and Flateyjarbók. Many of the poems are quoted in Snorri's Edda, but only in bits and pieces. What poems are included in an edition of the Poetic Edda depends on the editor; those not in Codex Regius are sometimes called Eddica minora, from their appearance in an edition with that title edited by Andreas Heusler and Wilhelm Ranisch in 1903. English translators are not consistent on the translations of the names of the Eddic poems or on how the Old Norse forms should be rendered in English. Up to three translated titles are given below, taken from the translations of Bellows and Larrington with proper names in the normalized English forms found in John Lindow's Norse Mythology and in Andy Orchard's Cassell's Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend.
Völuspá
University of California Press
University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868, its headquarters are located in California. The University of California Press publishes in the following general subject areas: anthropology, ancient world/classical studies and the West, cinema & media studies, environmental studies and wine, music, psychology, public health and medicine and sociology, it is a non-profit publishing arm of the University of California. Of its authors 25% are affiliated with the University of California, it publishes on average 175 new books and 30 multi-issue journals in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences. It maintains 4,000 book titles in print, it is the publisher of Collabra and Luminos open access initiatives. The Press commissioned as its corporate typeface University of California Old Style from type designer Frederic Goudy from 1936-1938, although it no longer always uses the design.
Language As Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Carlos Castaneda Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, Asia and Oceania, Jerome Rothenberg The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution The Making of a Counter Culture, Theodore Roszak Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature, Stanley Fish The Ancient Economy, Moses I. Finley Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, Marina Warner Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, Benjamin R. Barber Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, Thomas Albright Religious Experience, Wayne Proudfoot The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam, Tom Wells George Grosz: An Autobiography, George Grosz Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Kevin Bales Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, Karen McCarthy Brown A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, Michael Barkun Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, Norman G. Finkelstein Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume One, Mark Twain Collabra Collabra is University of California Press's open access journal program.
The Collabra program publishes two open access journals, Collabra: Psychology and Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, with plans for continued expansion and journal acquisition. Luminos Luminos is University of California Press’s open access response to the challenged monograph landscape. With the same high standards for selection, peer review and marketing as its traditional book publishing program, Luminos is a transformative model, built as a partnership where costs and benefits are shared; the University of California Press re-printed a number of novels under the California Fiction series from 1996–2001. These titles were selected for their literary merit and for their illumination of California history and culture; the Ford by Mary Austin Thieves' Market by A. I. Bezzerides Disobedience by Michael Drinkard Words of My Roaring by Ernest J. Finney Skin Deep by Guy Garcia Fat City by Leonard Gardiner Chez Chance by Jay Gummerman Continental Drift by James D. Houston The Vineyard by Idwal Jones In the Heart of the Valley of Love by Cynthia Kadohata Always Coming Home by Ursula K.
Le Guin The Valley of the Moon by Jack London Home and Away by Joanne Meschery Bright Web in the Darkness by Alexander Saxton Golden Days by Carolyn See Oil! by Upton Sinclair Understand This by Jervey Tervalon Ghost Woman by Lawrence Thornton Who Is Angelina? by Al Young Books portal California portal Official website Frugé, August. A Skeptic Among Scholars: August Frugé on University Publishing. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1993 1993. California Digital Library – University of California Libraries Free Online - UC Press E-Books Collection Mark Twain Project Online "Mark Twain's Biography Flying Off the Shelves", The New York Times, Nov. 19, 2010
Norse mythology
Norse mythology is the body of myths of the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Norse paganism and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, into the Scandinavian folklore of the modern period. The northernmost extension of Germanic mythology, Norse mythology consists of tales of various deities and heroes derived from numerous sources from both before and after the pagan period, including medieval manuscripts, archaeological representations, folk tradition; the source texts mention numerous gods, such as the hammer-wielding, humanity-protecting thunder-god Thor, who relentlessly fights his foes. Most of the surviving mythology centres on the plights of the gods and their interaction with various other beings, such as humanity and the jötnar, beings who may be friends, foes or family members of the gods; the cosmos in Norse mythology consists of Nine Worlds that flank Yggdrasil. Units of time and elements of the cosmology are personified as beings. Various forms of a creation myth are recounted, where the world is created from the flesh of the primordial being Ymir, the first two humans are Ask and Embla.
These worlds are foretold to be reborn after the events of Ragnarök when an immense battle occurs between the gods and their enemies, the world is enveloped in flames, only to be reborn anew. There the surviving gods will meet, the land will be fertile and green, two humans will repopulate the world. Norse mythology has been the subject of scholarly discourse since the 17th century, when key texts were brought to the attention of the intellectual circles of Europe. By way of comparative mythology and historical linguistics, scholars have identified elements of Germanic mythology reaching as far back as Proto-Indo-European mythology. During the modern period, the Romanticist Viking revival re-awoke an interest in the subject matter, references to Norse mythology may now be found throughout modern popular culture; the myths have further been revived in a religious context among adherents of Germanic Neopaganism. The historical religion of the Norse people is referred to as Norse mythology. In certain literature the terms Scandinavian mythology or Nordic mythology have been used.
Norse mythology is attested in dialects of Old Norse, a North Germanic language spoken by the Scandinavian people during the European Middle Ages, the ancestor of modern Scandinavian languages. The majority of these Old Norse texts were created in Iceland, where the oral tradition stemming from the pre-Christian inhabitants of the island was collected and recorded in manuscripts; this occurred in the 13th century. These texts include the Prose Edda, composed in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, the Poetic Edda, a collection of poems from earlier traditional material anonymously compiled in the 13th century; the Prose Edda was composed as a prose manual for producing skaldic poetry—traditional Old Norse poetry composed by skalds. Composed and transmitted orally, skaldic poetry utilizes alliterative verse and various metrical forms; the Prose Edda presents numerous examples of works by various skalds from before and after the Christianization process and frequently refers back to the poems found in the Poetic Edda.
The Poetic Edda consists entirely of poems, with some prose narrative added, this poetry—Eddic poetry—utilizes fewer kennings. In comparison to skaldic poetry, Eddic poetry is unadorned; the Prose Edda features layers of euhemerization, a process in which deities and supernatural beings are presented as having been either actual, magic-wielding human beings who have been deified in time or beings demonized by way of Christian mythology. Texts such as Heimskringla, composed in the 13th century by Snorri and Gesta Danorum, composed in Latin by Saxo Grammaticus in Denmark in the 12th century, are the results of heavy amounts of euhemerization. Numerous further texts, such as the sagas, provide further information; the saga corpus consists of thousands of tales recorded in Old Norse ranging from Icelandic family histories to Migration period tales mentioning historic figures such as Attila the Hun. Objects and monuments such as the Rök Runestone and the Kvinneby amulet feature runic inscriptions—texts written in the runic alphabet, the indigenous alphabet of the Germanic peoples—that mention figures and events from Norse mythology.
Objects from the archaeological record may be interpreted as depictions of subjects from Norse mythology, such as amulets of the god Thor's hammer Mjölnir found among pagan burials and small silver female figures interpreted as valkyries or dísir, beings associated with war, fate or ancestor cults. By way of historical linguistics and comparative mythology, comparisons to other attested branches of Germanic mythology may lend insight. Wider comparisons to the
Jötunn
In Norse mythology, a jötunn is a type of entity contrasted with gods and other figures, such as dwarfs and elves. The entities are themselves ambiguously defined, variously referred to by several other terms, including risi and troll. Although the term giant is sometimes used to gloss the word jötunn and its apparent synonyms in some translations and academic texts, jötnar are not notably large and may be described as exceedingly beautiful or as alarmingly grotesque; some deities, such as Skaði and Gerðr, are themselves described as jötnar, various well-attested deities, such as Odin, are descendants of the jötnar. Norse myth traces the origin of the jötnar to the proto-being Ymir, a result of growth of asexual reproduction from the entity's body. Ymir is killed, his body dismembered to create the world, the jötnar survive this event by way of sailing through a flood of Ymir's blood; the jötnar dwell in Jötunheimr. In Scandinavian folklore, the ambiguity surrounding the entities gives way to negative portrayals.
Old Norse jötunn and Old English eóten developed from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun *etunaz. Philologist Vladimir Orel says that semantic connections between *etunaz with Proto-Germanic *etanan makes a relation between the two nouns likely. Proto-Germanic *etanan is reconstructed from Old Norse etall'consuming', Old English etol'voracious, gluttonous', Old High German filu-ezzal'greedy'. Old Norse risi and Old High German riso derive from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun *wrisjon. Orel observes that the Old Saxon adjective wrisi-līke'enormous' is also connected. Old Norse þurs, Old English ðyrs, Old High German duris'devil, evil spirit' derive from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun *þursaz, itself derived form Proto-Germanic *þurēnan, etymologically connected to Sanskrit turá-'strong, rich'. For discussion regarding Old Norse troll and its development, see troll. Several terms are used to refer to female entities that fall into this category, including íviðja and gýgr; the jötnar are attested throughout the Old Norse record.
For example, in a stanza of Völuspá hin skamma, a variety of origins are provided: völvas are descended from Viðòlfr, all seers from Vilmeiðr, all charm-workers from Svarthöfði, all jötnar descend from Ymir. List of jötnar in Norse mythology Trollhunter Jeramy; the Poetic Edda. Coach House Books. ISBN 978 1 55245 2967. Bellows, Henry Adams; the Poetic Edda. Princeton University Press. New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Orel, Vladimir. A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Brill. ISBN 9004128751 Thorpe, Benjamin. Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: The Edda of Sæmund the Learned. Part I. London: Trübner & Co
Wilhelm Engelhard
Friedrich Wilhelm Engelhard was a German sculptor and painter. He was born in Grünhagen, he studied at Copenhagen with Thorwaldsen and at Munich with Schwanthaler. He executed single figures and genre pieces, his chief work was a frieze on the Edda. This was executed in 1857 in the Marienburg Palace at the request of King of Hanover, it is a colossal work dealing with the main features of the saga and rich in grand sculptural effects. Among Engelhard's other creations are “Love on a Swan,” “Dancing Springtime,” “Slinger with Dog,” “Bacchus Conquering a Panther,” “Cupid and Psyche,” “A Child Fishing,” “A Child Threading a Needle,” statue of St. Michael, portrait medallion of Bismarck, “Christ Blessing Little Children,” and legendary characters of Germany: Odin and the Valkyries. Gilman, D. C.. "Engelhard, Wilhelm". New International Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rines, George Edwin, ed.. "Engelhard, Friedrich Wilhelm".
Encyclopedia Americana
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house and the second-largest university press in the world, it holds letters patent as the Queen's Printer. The press mission is "to further the University's mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education and research at the highest international levels of excellence". Cambridge University Press is a department of the University of Cambridge and is both an academic and educational publisher. With a global sales presence, publishing hubs, offices in more than 40 countries, it publishes over 50,000 titles by authors from over 100 countries, its publishing includes academic journals, reference works and English language teaching and learning publications. Cambridge University Press is a charitable enterprise that transfers part of its annual surplus back to the university. Cambridge University Press is both the oldest publishing house in the world and the oldest university press.
It originated from letters patent granted to the University of Cambridge by Henry VIII in 1534, has been producing books continuously since the first University Press book was printed. Cambridge is one of the two privileged presses. Authors published by Cambridge have included John Milton, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking. University printing began in Cambridge when the first practising University Printer, Thomas Thomas, set up a printing house on the site of what became the Senate House lawn – a few yards from where the press's bookshop now stands. In those days, the Stationers' Company in London jealously guarded its monopoly of printing, which explains the delay between the date of the university's letters patent and the printing of the first book. In 1591, Thomas's successor, John Legate, printed the first Cambridge Bible, an octavo edition of the popular Geneva Bible; the London Stationers objected strenuously. The university's response was to point out the provision in its charter to print "all manner of books".
Thus began the press's tradition of publishing the Bible, a tradition that has endured for over four centuries, beginning with the Geneva Bible, continuing with the Authorized Version, the Revised Version, the New English Bible and the Revised English Bible. The restrictions and compromises forced upon Cambridge by the dispute with the London Stationers did not come to an end until the scholar Richard Bentley was given the power to set up a'new-style press' in 1696. In July 1697 the Duke of Somerset made a loan of £200 to the university "towards the printing house and presse" and James Halman, Registrary of the University, lent £100 for the same purpose, it was in Bentley's time, in 1698, that a body of senior scholars was appointed to be responsible to the university for the press's affairs. The Press Syndicate's publishing committee still meets and its role still includes the review and approval of the press's planned output. John Baskerville became University Printer in the mid-eighteenth century.
Baskerville's concern was the production of the finest possible books using his own type-design and printing techniques. Baskerville wrote, "The importance of the work demands all my attention. Caxton would have found nothing to surprise him if he had walked into the press's printing house in the eighteenth century: all the type was still being set by hand. A technological breakthrough was badly needed, it came when Lord Stanhope perfected the making of stereotype plates; this involved making a mould of the whole surface of a page of type and casting plates from that mould. The press was the first to use this technique, in 1805 produced the technically successful and much-reprinted Cambridge Stereotype Bible. By the 1850s the press was using steam-powered machine presses, employing two to three hundred people, occupying several buildings in the Silver Street and Mill Lane area, including the one that the press still occupies, the Pitt Building, built for the press and in honour of William Pitt the Younger.
Under the stewardship of C. J. Clay, University Printer from 1854 to 1882, the press increased the size and scale of its academic and educational publishing operation. An important factor in this increase was the inauguration of its list of schoolbooks. During Clay's administration, the press undertook a sizeable co-publishing venture with Oxford: the Revised Version of the Bible, begun in 1870 and completed in 1885, it was in this period as well that the Syndics of the press turned down what became the Oxford English Dictionary—a proposal for, brought to Cambridge by James Murray before he turned to Oxford. The appointment of R. T. Wright as Secretary of the Press Syndicate in 1892 marked the beginning of the press's development as a modern publishing business with a defined editorial policy and administrative structure, it was Wright who devised the plan for one of the most distinctive Cambridge contributions to publishing—the Cambridge Histories. The Cambridge Modern History was published
Ægir
In Norse mythology, Ægir is a sea jötunn associated with the ocean. He is known for being a friend of the gods and hosting elaborate parties for them, he is the namesake for the exoplanet known as Epsilon Eridani b. Ægir's servants are Eldir. The Nafnaþulur attached to the Prose Edda list Ægir as a giant. Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon saw his name as pre-Norse, derived from an ancient Indo-European root. Both Hversu Noregr byggðist and Snorri Sturluson in Skáldskaparmál state that Ægir is the same as the sea-giant Hlér, who lives on the Hlésey, this is borne out by kennings. Snorri uses his visiting the Æsir as the frame of that section of the Prose Edda. In Lokasenna, Ægir hosts a party for the gods where he provides the ale brewed in an enormous pot or cauldron provided by Thor and Týr; the story of their obtaining the pot from the giant Hymir is told in Hymiskviða. The prose introduction to Lokasenna and Snorri's list of kennings state that Ægir is known as Gymir, Gerðr's father, but this is evidently an erroneous interpretation of kennings in which different giant-names are used interchangeably.
According to Fundinn Noregr, Ægir is a son of the giant Fornjótr, the king of "Jotlandi, Kvænlandi and Finnlandi", brother of Logi and Kári.Ægir's wife is Rán. She is mother of the Nine Daughters of Ægir. Ler Trent Aegir Cleasby, Richard, Guðbrandur Vigfússon. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd ed. with supplement by William A. Craigie. Clarendon Press. Repr. 1975. ISBN 9780198631033 de Vries, Jan. Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte Volume 1. 2nd ed. Berlin: de Gruyter. Repr. 1970. Faulkes, Anthony. Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Everyman Classics. Repr. 1998. ISBN 0-460-87616-3. Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes and Beliefs. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515382-0 Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology, tr. Angela Hall. Cambridge: Brewer. Repr. 2000. ISBN 0-85991-513-1
