Publication of Poetic Edda

The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems about the gods and heroes of Germanic mythology, and it is one of the main sources for what is known of Norse religion. Most of the poems are preserved in a single Icelandic manuscript, the Codex Regius, written in the later thirteenth century, although many of the poems themselves are thought to be much older and to have passed down orally. They include the Voluspa, which describes the creation and the end of the world, the Havamal, a collection of Odin's wisdom, and the Thrymskvida, in which Thor recovers his stolen hammer. The manuscript was rediscovered in the seventeenth century and was returned from Denmark to Iceland in 1971.

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