group of poems, but a copy of earlier versions, which can be traced back to around 1200
(Pétursson 1993 ). The early thirteenth century was also the time Snorri Sturluson was
compiling his Edda, a handbook of mythology and poetry which both paraphrases and
quotes from poems like those in the Poetic Edda (Faulkes 1982 – 98 , 1987 ). Snorri
clearly knew some poems not in the Poetic Edda, and others he seems to have known
in different versions. A further manuscript, from around 1300 , contains seven of the
mythological poems from the Codex Regius, and an additional one (Baldrs draumar) not
found there (Pétursson 1993 ), and Eddic-style poems are found in other manuscripts
(Hallberg 1993 ). It is clear that scribes and authors of the thirteenth century knew a lot
of Eddic-type poetry and took pains to collect, record and study it.
But how old is this poetry and did it originate in the Viking Age? By this time
Iceland was thoroughly Christian, and yet much of the poetry deals with the pre-
Christian mythology of Scandinavia, or with semi-historical heroes from the Migration
period. Again, a runic inscription comes to our aid to demonstrate that both the form
and the subject matter of Eddic verse were known in the Viking Age. The Rök stone
from Östergötland in Sweden cites a fornyrðislag stanza that would not be out of place in
the Codex Regius, and which alludes to heroic legends:
Reð Þioðrik
hinn þurmoði,
stilli flutna,
strandu Hraiðmara.
Siti nu garu
a guta sinum,
skialdi umb fatlað,
skati Mæringa.Theodric the bold,
king of sea-warriors,
ruled over
Reid-sea shores.
Now he sits armed
on his Gothic horse,
shield strapped,
prince of Mærings.
( Jansson 1987 : 32 )This stone is dated to the beginning of the Viking Age, around ad 800. Theodric is the
famed ruler of the Ostrogoths in the fifth/sixth century – quite what he is doing on
a Swedish runestone nearly three centuries later is hard to determine, but he fits the
pattern of Migration-period heroes celebrated in Eddic verse, like Attila the Hun and
Gunnar the Burgundian who appear in several of the legendary poems in the second half
of the Codex Regius.
The Rök stone shows that the type of poetry found in the Codex Regius was known
in Viking Age Scandinavia, but not that the Eddic poems themselves are from that
period. There have been many attempts to date the Eddic poems on the grounds of their
language, metre, style, literary connections or contents (Hallberg 1993 ; Fidjestøl 1999 ),
–– Judith Jesch ––