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What exactly in the Poetic Edda is Christian?

The Norroena SocietyLore Publications Sedian TraditionWhat exactly in the Poetic Edda is Christian?

Mar

1

What exactly in the Poetic Edda is Christian?

What exactly in the Poetic Edda is Christian? How do you know it's Christian?

People like to say that the Eddas were "rewritten" by Christians, or that they have "Christian influence". That statement is only half-true. There are two Eddas. The Poetic Edda, consisting of authentic heathen poems, and the Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson 230 years after the conversion of Iceland, attempting to explain the old eddic and skaldic poems to contemporary Christian poets.

In the Prose Edda it is obvious because the author is a Christian writing to a Christian audience and portrays the gods as men and Asgard as an earthly city. But scholars have yet to demonstrate significant (if any at all) Christian influence in the old Heathen poems.

-William P Reaves

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