What's a good edition of the Poetic Edda in Old Norse?

May 1, 2014 7:15 PM

I would like to buy and own a printed edition (not a CD-ROM or an online text) of the Poetic Edda in Old Norse. I don't mind if a translation is included or not, but the original text must be. Can anyone suggest any specific editions? Include ISBNs if possible! Thanks.

- I don't really mind what language the critical apparatus, notes, etc. are in. I suppose English or German would be best but Norwegian or Icelandic would not be a dealbreaker.
- Secondhand or new, either would be okay.
- Paperback or hardback, either would be okay.
- I want to avoid buying a POD version of an old edition snarfed from Google Books if possible (but would be okay with buying an actual original printing of an old edition, if it wasn't too expensive).
- My ideal purchase would be the Codex Regius equivalent of Bernard Muir's "Exter Anthology" (the two-volume set, not the DVD!). Except cheaper.

posted by No-sword to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

Best answer: The standard edition is Edda: die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. Vol. I. Text. Ed by. G. Neckel, revised by H. Kuhn. Heidelberg 1962 (4th ed.) or 1983 (5th ed.). No notes to speak of; very brief introduction in German. The companion vol. II, contains a glossary and is available either in the original German or in a translation by Beatrice La Farge and John Tucker (1992. Glossary to the Poetic Edda: based on Hans Kuhn's Kurzes Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Winter). You can get this one second hand for a reasonable price though watch out for copies used by students with lots of annotations. Earlier editions than the 4th and 5th may be fine for your purposes too (?) and may be cheaper, being superseded.

Not standard for scholarly purposes, because the text is in modern Icelandic rather than Old Norse, is Eddukvæði. Ed. by Gísli Sigurdsson. Reykjavik 1998. This is the best recent edition, with helpful notes (also in modern Icelandic), but the lack of Old Norse text may rule it out.

Ursula Dronke's edition, The Poetic Edda I-III. Ed. and trans. U. Dronke. Oxford 1969-?2010 or so, is very interesting, with great notes and English translation, but incomplete (i.e. does not contain all the poems) and now likely to remain that way, as Dronke is no longer with us.

A new edition is expected in the Islenzk fornrit series (the classic standard critical edition of the Old Norse saga literature, which has recently been branching out into other genres), but this probably won't be available for some time yet.
posted by ogorki at 9:32 PM on May 1, 2014 [7 favorites]

Response by poster: Amazing! Thanks Ogorki!
posted by No-sword at 9:55 PM on May 1, 2014