Laufás-Edda

Laufás-Edda is an Icelandic manuscript dating from the early 17th Century.

Laufás Edda (Edda Magnúsar Ólafssonar) was written on the request of the Icelandic scholar Arngrímur Jónsson. Magnús Ólafsson (c.1573–1636), an Icelandic priest and poet, complied the document during the winter of 1608-9. Magnús Ólafsson would later serve as the priest at Laufás parish in Northern Iceland and as a consequence his version of Edda subsequently come to be referred to as the Laufás Edda.[1]

The purpose of his efforts was to make a systematic and encyclopedic version of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. Laufás Edda was a rearranged version of Snorri's work. The myths in Gylfaginning are presented as a series of examples and the kennings of Skáldskaparmál are organized alphabetically. The last part, Háttatal, was not included.

The Laufás Edda of Magnús Ólafsson was first published during 1665 in Copenhagen, accompanied by a Danish and Latin translation. The result became a convenient and popular work of reference for poets and antiquarians, serving as a dictionary for researching both myth and poetic expression.[2]

References

  1. Magnús Ólafsson (Dansk biografisk Lexikon / XII. Bind)
  2. Margaret Clunies Ross and Lars Lönnroth, The Norse Muse: Report from an International Research Project (Alvíssmál 9. 1999) 3–28 (pdf), here pp. 8–11.]

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