actually contains two very different types of poetic work, written in two quite different
metres. The former metre, fornyrðislag, is used essentially for epic narrative works, most
of them dealing with ancient Germanic heroes. In these works, which for the main part
are composed in the third person, the audience is informed of earlier events by a narrator
who refers back to the past, thereby acting as a middle-man between the past and the
present (the audience). They recount actions and dialogues, but never personally leave
the present world of the performance situation. The latter metre, ljoðaháttr, is totally
different: all of the works in this metre, which deal with the world of the gods and those
archetypal heroes like Sigurðr Fáfnisbani who had business with the gods, take the form
of monologues and dialogues in the first person. Although the works have prose intro-
ductions in the Codex Regius, these have been shown to be of questionable origin.
A number of them are taken directly from Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (see Gunnell
1995 : 218 – 35 ). In short, in these works, there is no middle-man: the form forces the
performer to take on the role(s) of the characters in question, in other words, the gods
and their followers, who are simultaneously ‘brought to life’ in front of the audience.
This is even more likely if the performer in question adds tone, emotion or gesture to the
words they are presenting, thereby encouraging a degree of identification between them-
selves and the characters. At the same time, the audience is brought actually to ‘witness’
the events of the past. Two times are thus present simultaneously. All of the implica-
tions are that the ljóðaháttr works in question have strong dramatic qualities in perform-
ance, quite different from those works in fornyrðislag (see Phillpotts 1920 ; Gunnell
1995 ).
The dramatic aspects of the dialogic ljóðaháttr works are emphasised still further by
the fact that in both main manuscripts of the Poetic Edda, when recording five dialogic
works (Skírnismál, Hárbarðsljóð, Va fþrúðnismál, Lokasenna and Fáfnismál) the scribes felt a
need to adapt a form of marginal speaker notation that was never used anywhere else in
medieval Scandinavian manuscripts before or after that time. In other Icelandic and
mainland Scandinavian manuscripts containing dialogue (e.g. the Dialogues of Gregory
the Great), names of speakers are always given in abbreviated form in the main text
(sometimes rubricated). This is attempted and then rejected in the Eddic manuscripts
before being replaced by the marginal notation (see Gunnell 1995 : 282 – 329 ). The
marginal notation form is only encountered elsewhere during this period in manuscripts
from northern France and England containing dramas in the vernacular (such as
Le Mystère d’Adam, or La Seinte Resureccion) or works meant to be performed in dramatic
fashion (such as Babio and Dame Sirith) (see further Gunnell 1995 : 206 – 18 , 282 – 329 ).
Furthermore, careful analysis of the texts of these Eddic poems underlines the fact that
a single performer would have immense difficulty in presenting them and conveying
the various changes of character without making use of some form of acted character
presentation in voice or action (especially in Skírnismál, Fáfnismál and Lokasenna).
Indeed, as I have noted elsewhere, the humour of Hárbarðsljóð and Lokasenna seems to
depend on this (see Gunnell 1995 : 182 – 281 ). The likelihood must then be that two or
more performers would have been involved in presenting these dialogues. It might be
noted that Skírnismál, Lokasenna and Hárbarðsljóð have all been presented effectively as
dramas in Iceland in recent years.
In short, it appears that the two main types of poetic works within the Eddic corpus
had different forms of performance. Those in fornyrðislag might have been performed as
Norna-Gestr presents his poems (although it must remain somewhat questionable
–– chapter 22 ( 1 ): The performance of the Poetic Edda––