The Laufás-Edda was written in the period 1608-9 by the priest Magnús Ólafsson at Laufás on the request of Arngrímur Jónsson

Arngrímur Jónsson

Arngrímur Jónsson the Learned was an Icelandic scholar and an apologist. His father was Jón Jónsson, who died in 1591...

.

The purpose was to make a systematic and encyclopedic version of Snorri Sturluson

Snorri Sturluson

Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...

's Prose Edda

Prose Edda

The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...

. The myths in Gylfaginning

Gylfaginning

Gylfaginning, or the Tricking of Gylfi , is the first part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda after Prologue. The Gylfaginning deals with the creation and destruction of the world of the Norse gods, and many other aspects of Norse mythology...

are presented as a series of examples and the kenning

Kenning

A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry...

s of Skáldskaparmál

Skáldskaparmál

The second part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" is effectively a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined...

are organized alphabetically. The last part, Háttatal

Háttatal

The Háttatal is the last section of the Prose Edda composed by the Icelandic poet, politician, and historian Snorri Sturluson. Using, for the most part, his own compositions, it exemplifies the types of verse forms used in Old Norse poetry...

was not included.

The result was a distorted version of Snorri's work, but a version which became a convenient and popular work of reference for poets and antiquarians.

Source and external link

• http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~alvismal/9muse.pdf Margaret Clunies Ross and Lars Lönnroth, "The Norse Muse: Report from an International Research Project," Alvíssmál 9 (1999): 3–28, here pp. 8–11.