Editing Prose Edda (section)

==Authorship==
The text is generally considered to have been written or at least compiled by [[Snorri Sturluson]]. This identification is largely based on the following paragraph from a portion of Codex Upsaliensis, an early 14th-century manuscript containing the ''Edda'':

{{Verse translation|lang=is
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Bók þessi heitir Edda. Hana hefir saman setta Snorri Sturluson eptir þeim hætti sem hér er skipat. Er fyrst frá Ásum ok Ymi, þar næst Skáldskaparmál ok heiti margra hluta, síðast Háttatal er Snorri hefir ort um Hákon konung ok Skúla hertuga.<ref name="FAULKES-XIII-2005">Faulkes 2005:XIII.</ref>
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This book is called Edda. Snorri Sturluson has compiled it in the manner in which it is arranged here. There is first told about the Æsir and Ymir, then Skáldskaparmál (‘poetic diction’) and (poetical) names of many things, finally Háttatal ('enumeration of metres or verse-forms') which Snorri has composed about [[Haakon IV of Norway|King Hákon]] and [[Skule Bårdsson|Earl Skúli]].<ref name="FAULKES-XIII-2005"/>
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Scholars have noted that this attribution, along with that of other primary manuscripts, is not clear whether or not Snorri is more than the compiler of the work and the author of ''Háttatal'' or if he is the author of the entire ''Edda''.<ref name="BYOCKXII">Byock (2006: XII).</ref> Faulkes summarizes the matter of scholarly discourse around the authorship of the ''Prose Edda'' as follows:
:Snorri's authorship of the Prose Edda was upheld by the renaissance scholar [[Arngrímur Jónsson]] (1568–1648), and since his time it has generally been accepted without question. But the surviving manuscripts, which were all written more than half a century after Snorri's death, differ from each other considerably and it is not likely that any of them preserves the work quite as he wrote it. A number of passages in Skáldskaparmál especially have been thought to be interpolations, and this section of the work has clearly been subject to various kinds of revision in most manuscripts. It has also been argued that the prologue and the first paragraph and part of the last paragraph of Gylfaginning are not by Snorri, at least in their surviving forms.<ref name="FAULKES-XIV-2005">Faulkes (2005: XIV).</ref>

Whatever the case, the mention of Snorri in the manuscripts has been influential in a common acceptance of Snorri as the author or at least one of the authors of the ''Edda''.<ref name="BYOCKXII"/>