This chapter focuses on Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, providing a thorough introduction to this important text. It argues that few books have been as foundational to several fields of study as Snorri’s treatise has been for the investigation and appreciation of Norse myth, poetry and religion. The opening section of the chapter discusses the work’s title, structure and authorship, and describes the most significant manuscripts and modern translations of the text. It emphasizes the heterogenous character of the Edda, suggesting that the work’s variegated and intertextual nature has given rise to sharply divergent critical impressions of the text and competing theories about its origins and function. The most notable of these different perspectives are summarized, with a comparison of contrasting views on how the Edda came together and what its purpose may have been. Each section of the text is then considered in turn, discussing in detail its content, sources, form and purpose, and the relationship of each section to the compilation as a whole.

This chapter discusses the interactions between Latin learning and Old Norse-Icelandic vernacular literature between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Beginning with the arrival of Latin textual culture in Iceland with the introduction of Christianity, it describes how oral literary culture was transformed by contact with these new forms of learning. It takes as case-studies manuscripts which reveal the influence of learned material, first considering the relationship between Ari’s Íslendingabók and the study of computus, chronology and geographical learning, and then discussing encyclopaedic handbooks attributed to two lawmen, Sturla Þórðarson’s Resensbók and Haukr Erlendsson’s Hauksbók. To explore the interaction between Latin learning and skaldic poetry, it then focuses on Codex Wormianus, a compilation of vernacular grammatical literature and skaldic poetics. It argues that skaldic verse was reconciled with Christian textual culture by functioning in vernacular grammatical literature in the same way as classical verse did in Latin culture, and analyses an example from the Third Grammatical Treatise to show how a skaldic stanza could be used in this way.