Page:The Elder Edda and the Younger Edda - tr. Thorpe - 1907.djvu/23



The Eddaic series of the Yolsung and Niflung lays terminates with the Lay of Hamdir; the one entitled Gunnar's Melody is no doubt a comparatively late composition; yet being written in the true ancient spirit of the North is well deserving of a place among the Eddaic poems. Nor, indeed, is the claim of the Lay of Grotti to rank among the poems collected by Sæmund, by any means clear, we know it only from its existence in the Skalda; yet on account of its antiquity, its intrinsic worth, and its reception in other editions of the Edda, both in original and translation, the present work would seem, and justly so, incomplete without it.

The Prose, or Younger Edda, is generally ascribed to the celebrated Snorre Sturleson, who was born of a distinguished Icelandic family, in the year 1178, and after leading a turbulent and ambitious life, and being twice the supreme magistrate of the Republic, was killed 1241, by three of his sons-in-law and a step-son. When Snorre was three years

xi