Jackson Crawford

"The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a Modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!) and well worth the wait. These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological and literary importance, containing the lion's share of information that survives today about the gods and heroes of pre-Christian Scandinavians, their unique vision of the beginning and end of the world, etc. Jackson Crawford's modern versions of these poems are authoritative and fluent and often very gripping. With their individual headnotes and complementary general introduction, they supply today's readers with most of what they need to know in order to understand and appreciate the beliefs, motivations, and values of the Vikings." --Dick Ringler, Professor Emeritus of English and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes

The Poetic Edda

Stefano Zorzi

Thus, a profound sense of hopelessness pervades the myths of the Poetic Edda. The gods know that they will inevitably die in the fery final battle of Ragnarok, and not a single one of the main human characters in the heroic poems dies happy. But surprisingly, the despair of a bad end is not accompanied by a sense of hopeless despair in any of the poems-instead, the gods and heroes alike are actively engaged in courageously combating the inevitable. 

You should be only a little wise, never too wise. A wise man's heart is seldom glad if he's truly wise. 

The Poetic Edda quotes

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