Poetic Edda

Preserved mainly in a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript, the Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse mythological and heroic poems older than their surviving copies. The mythic group includes a seeress's account of the world's making and ending, Odin's counsels, and flytings and tales of the gods. The heroic group follows the Volsung-Nibelung cycle: Sigurd, Brynhild, Gunnar, and Gudrun, through dragon-slaying, broken oaths, and the destruction of the Burgundians. The verse is alliterative, often in dialogue, and compressed. The book is a corpus of songs, not Snorri's later prose handbook and not a single continuous epic.

Bound in maroon leather with five raised bands, gilt blocked title on spine. Pages coloured light brown on all edges. Plain light brown slipcase bound in cloth.