Sæmundur fróði Snorri Sturluson
Authorship and attribution
This volume joins two distinct bodies of medieval Icelandic writing. The Poetic, or Elder, Edda preserves poems by unknown authors; its old attribution to Sæmundr the Wise arose from a seventeenth-century identification that is no longer accepted. The Younger, or Prose, Edda is associated with Snorri Sturluson and explains poetic art through traditional stories and examples. The historical names in the volume’s title therefore represent different kinds of attribution, rather than two equivalent, securely documented acts of original authorship.
Two traditions in one historical volume
The 1906 title page names Benjamin Thorpe and I. A. Blackwell as the translators of its two parts. The contents range from The Vala’s Prophecy and The High One’s Lay to poems concerning Sigurd and Gudrun. This variety is a reminder that the Elder Edda is a collection of voices and forms. Snorri’s prose organization represents a different literary undertaking, even when it draws on related figures.
The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson
This volume brings Benjamin Thorpe's translation of the Elder Edda together with I. A. Blackwell's translation of the Younger Edda. The first part includes mythological and heroic lays, whose voices can be prophetic, argumentative, practical, or tragic. The prose material offers another way of organizing stories about the gods and the language used to tell them. Reading the two parts together reveals recurring figures without making their different forms interchangeable. The historical title associates the Elder Edda with Saemund, but that attribution should not be mistaken for certain individual authorship of the collected poems. Introductory matter reflects the scholarship of the edition. The texts themselves reward patient attention to names, repetitions, and the tension between extraordinary power and foreseen limits. English translations by Benjamin Thorpe and I. A. Blackwell.
Preserve differences between versions
Treat a recurring name as an invitation to compare passages, rather than a guarantee that they tell precisely the same story. A prophetic voice, a wisdom exchange, and an explanatory prose account establish different relations to their audience. The edition’s introductions preserve older scholarship and inherited attributions. Separating those claims from the poems and prose helps avoid turning the collection into a single uniform statement of medieval belief.