Dec 25, 2009

Elder Edda | Critical Overview

The first indication of the Elder Edda's critical reception is the simple fact of its preservation in a quietly elegant manuscript, the Codex Regius with the explanatory prose passages interspersed among the lays. It is often assumed that, as Christianity reached the peoples of northern Europe, devout Christians, as well as the institutional church, automatically attempted to destroy the memory of the old gods and the human heroes whose activities, judged by Judeo-Christian standards, were often less than edifying. Nevertheless, the poems in Elder Edda were...