The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems

The vibrant Old Norse poems in this collection, which may have been brought together as early as the thirteenth century, authentically capture the ancient oral traditions of the Norsemen. In addition, their images of a mythical world profoundly influenced latter-day storytellers as Richard Wagner and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Known as the "Lays of the Gods," these mythological poems include the Voluspo, one of the broadest conceptions of the world's creation and ultimate destruction ever crystalli...