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The Poetic Edda
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Anonymous (Old Norse); edited collection · translated by Henry Adams Bellows. Internet Archive metadata: possible-copyright-status NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT, copyright-region US. Published 1923 in New York, before 1931; translator Bellows died 1939 but the 1923 publication is public domain in the US.
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TextVoluspaA seeress tells Odin everything: the first giant, the falling stars, the sun turning black and the world burning. Then the poem does something odd. The earth rises green again, and the surviving gods find golden game pieces lying in the grass. Scholars still argue how much of this is truly pagan.BeingYmirIn Norse myth, the world was built from a butchered giant: his flesh became earth, his blood the sea, his skull the sky. The story says the gods themselves descend from giants. How did a cow, a flood of blood and a lone survivor get the cosmos started? Read what the old poems and Snorri tell.PlaceGinnungagapBefore anything existed, the Norse sources describe a yawning void with fire at one end and ice at the other, and life began where they met. Later, Icelandic geographers reportedly reused the name for a real stretch of sea. What did the name actually mean, and why do scholars still argue about it?
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