Gripla - 01.01.1977, Page 40

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GRIPLA
reference is to some of the traditional tales in Gylfaginning.14 But in the
middle ages (and later) it was Skáldskaparmál that was most often
copied and adapted, and it was this part of the work that was evidently
considered the most important (it is also the longest part). The name of
the work ought to apply primarily to that. The other etymologies that
have in modern times been thought possible are derivation from the
place-name Oddi, where Snorri received his early education, and deri-
vation from the word óðr ‘poetry’.15 It requires some ingenuity to ex-
plain why a book written long after the author left Oddi should be called
‘the book of Oddi’ (though there is a parallel in the similar misnomer
‘Laufás Edda’). Derivation from óðr at least gives a plausible semantic
development, but even if it were accepted that the phonological develop-
ment were possible, it would have had to have taken place gradually.
It is unlikely that the word edda could have been coined in the thirteenth
century on the basis of óðr, and it does not seem likely that edda in the
sense ‘poetics’ existed in the pre-literary period.
Snorri’s Edda is the first book of its kind extant from medieval Scan-
dinavia, and it is unlikely that it had any predecessors either written or
oral that dealt theoretically with the art of scaldic poetry (the twelfth-
century Háttalykill and the þulur can scarcely be said to do this). Until
it was written, therefore, there would have been no Norse word to de-
scribe it, though as soon as it was written one would be required; Ice-
landers were not in the habit of giving their books foreign titles.16 It is
probable that Snorri (and his first audience) knew at least a little Latin,
and most of the treatises that could have inspired him to write his were
14 My attention has been drawn to the title ‘Ribe Oldemoder (Avia Ripensis)’,
which was given to a ‘Samling af Adkomster, Indtægtsangivelser og kirkelige Ved-
tægter for Ribe Domkapitel og Bispestol, nedskrevet 1290-1518’ (see B. Erichsen
and A. Krarup, Dansk Historisk Bibliografi I, K0benhavn 1918-21, p. 636, no.
11195); but this does not seem to be any more than an interesting though insigni-
ficant coincidence.
15 All three etymologies are old ones (like the one defended below), and were
already discussed by Jón Olafsson of Grunnavík in British Museum MS Egerton
642 (written 1735), fol. 13.
16 Ari, however, seems to have entitled his only extant work Libellus Islando-
rum (see Islendingabók, Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, Reykjavík 1968,
p. 4). In the present context, though, it is interesting that Ari used the diminutive
form libellus.