Editing Poetic Edda (section)

==Composition==
The '''''Eddic poems''''' are composed in [[alliterative verse]]. Most are in ''[[fornyrðislag]]'' ("old story [[Metre (poetry)|metre]]"), while ''[[málaháttr]]'' ("speech form") is a common variation. The rest, about a quarter, are composed in ''[[ljóðaháttr]]'' ("song form"). The language of the poems is usually clear and relatively unadorned. [[Kenning]]s are often employed, though they do not arise as frequently, nor are they as complex, as those found in typical [[skaldic poetry]].

===Authorship===
Like most early poetry, the Eddic poems were [[minstrel]] poems, passed orally from singer to singer and from poet to poet for centuries. None of the poems are attributed to a particular author, though many of them show strong individual characteristics and are likely to have been the work of individual poets. While scholars have speculated on hypothetical authors, firm and accepted conclusions have never been reached.

===Date===
<!--This section can be expanded A LOT. Cf. Fidjestøl 1999, Sapp 2022: Dating the Old Norse Poetic Edda-->
Accurate dating of the poems has long been a source of scholarly debate. Firm conclusions are difficult to reach; lines from the Eddic poems sometimes appear in poems by known poets. For example, [[Eyvindr skáldaspillir]] composed in the latter half of the 10th century, and he uses a couple of lines in his ''[[Hákonarmál]]'' that are also found in ''[[Hávamál]]''. It is possible that he was quoting a known poem, but it is also possible that ''Hávamál'', or at least the [[strophe]] in question, is the younger derivative work.

The handful demonstrably historical characters mentioned in the poems, such as [[Attila]], provide a ''[[terminus post quem]]'' of sorts. The dating of the manuscripts themselves provides a number of useful ''[[terminus ante quem]]''.

Individual poems have individual clues to their age. For example, ''[[Atlamál|Atlamál hin groenlenzku]]'' is claimed by its title to have been composed in [[Greenland]] and seems so by some internal evidence. If so, it must have been composed no earlier than about 985, since there were no Scandinavians in Greenland until that time.

More certain than such circumstantial evidence are linguistic dating criteria. These can be arrived at by looking at [[Skaldic poems]] whose dates are more firmly known. For instance the particle ''of'', corresponding to ''ga-'' or ''ge-'' in other old Germanic languages, has been shown to occur more frequently in Skaldic poems of earlier date.<ref>Kuhn, Hans. 1929. ''Das Füllwort of-um im Altwestnordischen. Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der germanischen Präfixe: Ein Beitrag zur altgermanischen Metrik.'' Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.</ref> Applying this criterion to Eddic poetry, Bjarne Fidjestøl found large variation, indicating that some of the poems were much older than others.<ref>Fidjestøl, Bjarne. 1999. ''The dating of Eddic poetry: A historical survey and methodological investigation.'' Edited by Odd Einar Haugen. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitals Forlag.</ref>

Other dating criteria include the use of the negative adverb ''eigi'' 'not', and alliteration of ''vr-'' with ''v-''. In western dialects of Old Norse the former became ''r-'' around the year 1000, but in some Eddic poems the word ''vreiðr'', younger form ''reiðr'', is seen to alliterate with words beginning in an original ''v-''. This was observed already by [[Óláfr hvítaskáld Þórðarson|Olaf ‘White Skald’ Thordarson]], the author of the [[Third Grammatical Treatise]], who termed this ''v'' before ''r'' the ''vindandin forna''; 'the ancient use of [[Vend (letter)|vend]]'.

In some cases, old poems may have been interpolated with younger verses or merged with other poems. For example, stanzas 9–16 of ''[[Völuspá]]'', the "Dvergatal" or "Roster of Dwarfs", is considered by some scholars to be an [[Interpolation (manuscripts)|interpolation]].

===Location===
The problem of dating the poems is linked with the problem of determining where they were composed. Iceland was not settled until approximately 870, so anything composed before that time would necessarily have been elsewhere, most likely in [[Scandinavia]]. More recent poems, on the other hand, are likely Icelandic in origin.

Scholars have attempted to localize individual poems by studying the geography, flora, and fauna to which they refer. This approach usually does not yield firm results. For example, there are no wolves in Iceland, but we can be sure that Icelandic poets were familiar with the species. Similarly, the apocalyptic descriptions of ''[[Völuspá]]'' have been taken as evidence that the poet who composed it had seen a volcanic eruption in Iceland – but this is hardly certain.