Contents [hide] 1 Etymology 2 The Poetic Edda 3 The Prose Edda 4 External links
[edit] Etymology There are several theories concerning the origins of the word edda. One theory holds that it is identical to the word that seems to mean "great-grandmother". (See Ríg.) Another theory holds that edda derives from Old Norse óðr, "poetry." A third is that it means "the book of Oddi", Oddi being the place where students (including Snorri Sturluson) were educated. The most plausible idea is that the word was coined as a diminutive of Latin "edo" (I compose [poetry]) in imitation of Old Icelandic "kredda" (superstition), which is derived from Latin "credo" (creed, literally 'I believe'). See www.VSNRweb-publications.org.uk/Edda.pdf
[edit] The Poetic Edda Main article: Poetic Edda The Poetic Edda, also known as Sæmundar Edda or the Elder Edda, is a collection of Old Norse poems from the Icelandic medieval manuscript Codex Regius ('The King's Manuscript'). Along with Snorri's Edda the Poetic Edda is the most important source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends. The first part of the Codex Regius preserves poems that narrate the creation and destruction of the Old Norse mythological world as well as individual myths about gods such as Odin, Thor and Heimdall. The poems in the second part narrate legends about heroes and heroines such as Sigurd the Dragonslayer, Brynhildr and Gunnar.
The Codex Regius was written down in the 13th century but nothing is known of its whereabouts until 1643 when it came into the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson, then Bishop of Skálholt. At that time versions of Snorri's Edda were well known in Iceland but scholars speculated that there once was another Edda - an Elder Edda - which contained the pagan poems Snorri quotes in his book. When the Codex Regius was discovered it seemed that this speculation had proven correct. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to Sæmundr the Learned, a larger-than-life 12th century Icelandic priest. While this attribution is rejected by modern scholars the name Sæmundar Edda is still sometimes encountered.
Bishop Brynjólfur sent the Codex Regius as a present to the Danish king, hence the name. For centuries it was stored in the Royal Library in Copenhagen but in 1971 it was returned to Iceland.
[edit] The Prose Edda Main article: Prose Edda The Younger Edda, known also as the Prose Edda or Snorri's Edda is an Icelandic manual of poetics which also contains many mythological stories. Its purpose was to enable Icelandic poets and readers to understand the subtleties of alliterative verse, and to grasp the mythological allusions behind the many kennings that were used in skaldic poetry.
It was written by the Icelandic scholar and historian Snorri Sturluson around 1220. It survives in seven main manuscripts, written down from about 1300 to about 1600.
The Prose Edda consists of a Prologue and three separate books: the Gylfaginning, concerning the gods' creation and destruction, the Skáldskaparmál, a dialogue between Ægir, the god of the sea and Bragi, the god of poetry, and the Háttatal, a demonstration of verse forms used in Norse mythology.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:09 am (Intriguing Antiquity)
This small device is something that absolutely stunned me when I came across it in a technology story on the New Zealand Herald website. The precision with which this was built is astounding, but the calculation and design that must have gone into its construction is what really gets me. How do you build the first analog computer on an island off the coast of Greece around 100 - 150BC… without using the Internet?!
Reading a bit more about the Antikythera Mechanism really fascinated me, things like this satisfy my very generalized interests in classical history, archaeology, gadgets and technology. One might theorize that the pictures would also appeal to the steampunk aesthetic in some. Here is what I found when doing more research:
About 75-80 BC a Roman merchant ship sunk on a popular trade route between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, most likely destined for Rome. That ship was carrying something that has taken extensive use of 21st century technology to completely identify; the Antikythera Mechanism.
Following a storm in 1900 that moved sponge divers from their normal diving places the wrecked ship was discovered off the Greek island of Antikythera. Elias Stadiatis, the sponge diver who found the wreck at 42 meters below sea level, returned to the surface exclaiming he’d found a heap of naked, dead women on the sea floor. The wreck contained a valuable assortment of Greek statues and other items.
One of these other items was an encrusted bronze lump. Eight months after this was recovered, the archaeologist, Valerios Stais, realized something unusual had been found - when a artefact originally thought to be rock broke apart to reveal a fragment of gear wheel. Further investigations found that there were three main fragments and dozens of smaller pieces.
Known now as the Antikythera Mechanism, the Greek device is an order of magnitude more complicated than anything else of its era or the following thousand years. The level of miniaturization and complexity of its parts are comparable to that of 18th century clockwork.
The complete mechanism is 33cm high, 17cm wide and 9cm thick, made of bronze and was originally mounted in a wooden frame. More than 2000 characters are inscribed on it. There are three main dials, one on the front and two on the back. Contained within it are upwards of 30 gear wheels, operated (most likely) by a crank handle.
The first reconstruction using information from the available fragments was by the British science historian, Derek J. De Solla Price during the early 1970s. More recently Allan George Bromley, Michael Wright and the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project have built on Price’s model with newer information from gamma ray and x-ray studies.
Price (with Charalampos Karakalos) was the first to theorize that the purpose of the mechanism was to calculate the motion of astronomical objects. This makes the Antikythera mechanism the first analog computer.
Michael Wright, from the Imperial College London, reinterpreted the work of Price between 2002 and 2005 and developed a radically different assembly for the mechanism’s 30 gears. His work is used as the basis for research by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, a team of Greek and British scientists which have been studying the mechanism in situ at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Their findings and photos of the mechanism’s fragments and of reconstructions can be found here, at the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project homepage.
This is an old Norse game that is found in many Viking and Norse sites. It consists of a board (which can be cardboard or even paper) and game pieces. Students can make their own board and playing pieces and challenge each other to games until there are two champions of the class. The appendix includes a starting board layout and information on the game. The Old Norse played and a lot of board and card games in the winter. Can you guess why?
Hnefatafl (or hneftafl) [Nhev-eh-TAH-full] means the "king's board or game". It is older than chess and like chess is a game of strategy.
SET-UP: Hnefatafl simulates a Viking raid. The attackers are situated along the four sides, each side representing a ship. The king and the defenders are located in the middle of the board.
On the set-up diagram (above) attacking warriors are represented by the horizontal striped circles while the defenders are vertically striped. The king (in the middle) is represented by the dotted piece. There are twice as many attackers as defenders.
For our game, the attackers are made of antler disks, the defenders of glass drops, and the king is pewter.
The attackers' goal is to capture the king. The defenders goal is to help the king escape to safety. To win the battle, the attackers must trap the king so he can't move.
This can be done by surrounding the king on all four sides of the center square.
The king can also be trapped on three sides against the center square. Only the king can stay on the center square although another piece can move through it.
The defenders win when the king gets safely to one of the corners (king's squares).
Players play only one piece at a turn.
All pieces move in straight lines, either vertically or horizontally - no diagonal moves permitted. You can move as many squares as you like but can't jump!
Only the king can move onto the king's squares, the center square and the corner squares.
You can eliminate a standing piece by sandwiching it between two opponents. You can also defeat a player piece by sandwiching it between a corner square and the opponent.
saga n : a narrative telling the adventures of a hero or a family; originally, a story of the families that settled Iceland and their descendants.
The Icelandic Saga Database is an online resource dedicated to the digital publication of the Sagas of the Icelanders -- a large body of medieval literature which forms the foundation of the Icelandic literary tradition. The sagas are prose histories describing events that took place amongst the Norse and Celtic inhabitants of Iceland during the period of the Icelandic Commonwealth in the 10th and 11th centuries AD.
Hrafnkels saga is now available with Old Norse spelling.
Laxdæla saga now available in Norwegian translation.
All sagas are now available in PDF format, with a table of contents. To access a saga in PDF format, press the left-most control button on the page for the saga. All the sagas can be downloaded in PDF format on the Downloads page.
Icelandic language interface is now available. Interface language can be selected in the top right menu bar.
Hrafnkels saga is now available in English translation
The sagas are believed to have been written in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD, perhaps originating in an oral tradition of storytelling. While their facticity and authorship is for the most part unknown, they are a widely recognized gem of world literature thanks to their sparse, succinct prose style and balanced storytelling. The sagas focus largely on history, especially genealogical and family history, and reflect the struggles and conflicts that arose amongst the second and third generations of Norse settlers in medieval Iceland, which was in this time a remote, decentralised society with a rich legal tradition but no organized executive power.
This website contains all the extant Icelandic family sagas. The sagas are made available in an easy, readable format using modernized Icelandic spelling, with the Old Norse versions and translations into English and other languages made available where these exist in the public domain.
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Wes said,
July 16, 2007 at 10:49 pm
It really is absolutely amazing, and shows what the individual is capable of in isolation. Not to suggest that this unknown inventor lived in a bubble, but the diffusion of knowledge was lesser, and there were fewer shoulders to stand on at the time of its creation. I think it also eludes to just how fragile scientific endevour can be, and how it needs to be nurtured and protected (within reason, of course).
I really think the importance of this device to human history has been gravely overlooked. I know many other discoveries had not been made at this point, particularly in terms of manufacturing process, but to have produced an analog computer in this era, and then to be lost for well over a millenia? It almost hurts to think about the possibility of how much has been lost. It makes a much stronger case for the equal diffusion of knowledge to all and sundry.
Charlie said,
July 10, 2008 at 2:52 am
By the internets :)
Kevin said,
July 10, 2008 at 5:08 am
and to think that the romans were most likely going to jsut toss this artifact aside in place of the more precious jewles that the ship was carring. typical roman, dont understand it, then its barbaric.
Milander said,
July 10, 2008 at 7:53 am
@wes said,
you’re missing the point, if this device was so valuable and unique it would never have been transported by sea. It is far more likely that there were many, a few hundred, of these devices well know and well used at the time.
Never forget that if all humanity were to disappear overnight our entire civlisation, all our works, buildings, literature, everything, would be completely destroyed to the extent that no visiting alien would ever know we had ever existed within 100, 000 years. The only evidence we ever existed at all would be the plaque left on the moon by apollo 11.
Might sound crazy but I firmly believe that there were other cultures and civilisations before us, possibly even reptilian given that they had 250 million years to rise and fall. It is entirely possible that all evidence of their existence has been erased from history.
Besides which there are stranger things out there than this device such as the crystal skulls, the ruins of Delathamaya and the battery of Baghdad.
Tempyra » Blog Archive » On holiday said,
July 11, 2008 at 1:29 pm
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dinosuar said,
July 15, 2008 at 7:24 am
Hi wake up where is proof of finding ? who when what why you have been hoaxed and are spreading a lie cheers dinosuar
heitz said,
July 16, 2008 at 5:53 am
“How do you build the first analog computer on an island off the coast of Greece around 100 - 150BC… without using the Internet?!”
Are you serious?
That statement proves that people living thousands of years ago were far more intelligent than people like you, today.
There wer5e no corporations and mass media outlets that herded you to and fro and coerced you into doing what you think you wanted to do.
People used to think for themselves and crafted things to actually improve their environment… not go out and buy a saladshooter because the tv told them they need it, and because theyre too lazy to chop lettuce themselves, and then not even bother to use it cause theyve grown too fat on fast food and preservatives.
sasha said,
July 16, 2008 at 8:48 am
Hi Heitz,
No, I wasn’t being serious actually - it was something more akin to sarcasm. Feel free to make any more assumptions that might take your fancy with my next two paragraphs.
I’m not so sure whether people really thought for themselves more, in the time period that the Antikythera mechanism is thought to be constructed in, than the present. Why? Because of the constraints imposed by religion, education, communication technology, and social inequality. <– That is a generalised statement, not specific to 100 - 150 BC Greece, just to Europe & the Middle East around that time.
As for people in the past being “far more intelligent” than the likes of me, there have been and will always be people smarter than I. And you. Intelligence is distributed along a bell curve. If you’ve got any evidence to show that the average has decreased over time, then I’d love to see it as I was under the impression that over the last half century average IQ scores seem to be increasing.
Wes said,
July 17, 2008 at 1:40 am
@Milander: I’m not missing any point and your assumptions are misguided. For one, I’m pretty sure Greeks and pretty much the entirety of human civilisation was pretty limited in terms of transportation when this mechanism was new and shiny. Why *wouldn’t* you take it by a more direct sea route, than a treacherous land base path? It would be quicker and, dare I say it, more gentle on a fragile mechanism, weather permitting of course.
As for your spurious claim about evidence of our existence being erased without 100,000 years I have one word for you: Dinosaur. Look it up, we’ve been finding these remains for years and years on end now. And some of them are MILLIONS of years old. Wow, just wow.
If that doesn’t grab you though, I can enlighten you of stone age tools made by precursors to modern humans as well. The oldest stone tools are apparently 2.6 million years old. Gone in 100,000? I don’t think so.
dan said,
July 25, 2008 at 4:17 pm
wes
you’re missing the point, this could have been a proto type. maybe the person, or persons wanted to make sure it worked before they put it on the market, as they say. anyway they tested things way back then too.
Wes said,
July 25, 2008 at 7:11 pm
At some point did “you’re missing the point” become a staple diet of opening sentence of numskulls everywhere? Dan, your post has no point, at all. Even the original post, which I think your post is trying to reference also has no point. And maybe my maths is a little rusty but I think 0+0 = 0. At any rate, this is about -archaeology- not numbers. At the point this thing existed in history there is no evidence to show that there had been any item/find that came before it which was as complicated or well engineered for its suggested purposes. Let’s throw your “theory” a bone for a moment and say they manufactured 2000 of these things (an optimistic number given the period) it would STILL be a marvelous find due to the fact that from our current records it is still the first of its kind.
For further reference, look up “Mass Production” and its invention and then see how long it took to make things before the introduction of such machines.
Jeff said,
July 28, 2008 at 1:44 am
Hopefully, the great minds of old did not waste their efforts berating each other — throwing each others’ words back at one another and polluting the issue with biting personal jabs. Get beyond the he-said-she-said crap and take the higher road. There is a great find here, certainly worthy of analysis, discussion, and debate.
We can only guess at what earlier civilizations knew and were capable of by what we find. Our knowledge of them are mere assumptions based on perhaps a small fragment of findings. I’m sure we are only scratching the surface of knowledge lost to the ages. There is so much we don’t know about what we have found, but think about what we have not yet found, what we will never find, and the inaccurate conclusions we may draw upon those things we do find. On the whole, our knowledge of past civilizations will always be limited and therefore, our assumptions mostly incomplete and probably inaccurate.
Personally, I look forward to the continued search for early technology. I’m convinced that the more we look and the more evidence we find of early technology, the more our previously conceived notions will be proven false. The technology we have today is not the result of a single, continuous path of improvement, but rather a multitude of serial, parallel, and overlapping accomplishments that we continuously rediscover and use for our present-day purposes. The Antikythera mechanism is but one modern-day discovery of ancient technology that once again reshapes our thinking about ancient capabilities. This is cools stuff.
sasha said,
July 28, 2008 at 1:51 am
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for making such a fair and balanced comment :-)
“There is so much we don’t know about what we have found, but think about what we have not yet found, what we will never find, and the inaccurate conclusions we may draw upon those things we do find. On the whole, our knowledge of past civilizations will always be limited and therefore, our assumptions mostly incomplete and probably inaccurate.”
I also wonder about these things and agree with what you say about the present human society not having a complete ‘picture’ of what has gone before us. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if future societies have a distorted view of ours - even with the communication technology and massive amounts of stored data that we possess.
Giorgis said,
December 20, 2008 at 9:19 am
Guys, have faith in our selves. This device is not out of nothing. There were many famed devices, this is the only one that survived. Look up astrolabe and heron of Alexandria.
G