The Prose Edda

Written in 13th-century Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda is part cosmic origin story, part poetic handbook, and part mythic encyclopedia. It’s our richest surviving source of Norse mythology—the strange, brutal, radiant tales of Odin, Thor, Loki, and the twilight of the gods.

But The Prose Edda is more than legend. It is a deliberate attempt to preserve a dying world: a pagan past reimagined for a Christian age, cast in prose to explain poetry, and passed d...