Edam took its name and origin from the dam built on the little river Ye which joined the great Purmer lake close by. Free access to the Zuider Zee was obtained by the construction of a new dock in 1357, in which year the town also received civic rights from William V. of Bavaria, count of Holland. Owing to the danger of the extension of the Purmer and Beemster lakes, Philip II. of Spain caused a sluice to be built into the dock in 1567. In the next century Edam was a great shipbuilding centre, and nearly the whole of Admiral de Ruyter's fleet was built here; but in the same century the harbour began to get blocked up, and the importance and industrial activity of the city slowly waned. EDDA, the title given to two very remarkable collections of old Icelandic literature. Of these only one bears that title from antiquity; the other is called _Edda_ by a comparatively modern misnomer. The word is unknown to any ancient northern language, and is first met with in _Rigspula_, a fragmentary poem at the end of Codex Wormianus, dated about 1200, where it is introduced as the name or title of a great-grandmother. From the 14th to the 17th century, this word--but no one has formed a reasonable conjecture why--was used to signify the technical laws of Icelandic court metre, _Eddu regla_, and "Never to have seen Edda" was a modest apology for ignorance of the highest poetic art. The only work known by this name to the ancients was the miscellaneous group of writings put together by Snorri Sturlason (q.v.; 1178-1241), the greatest name in old Scandinavian literature. It is believed that the _Edda_, as he left it, was completed about 1222. Whether he gave this name to the work is doubtful; the title first occurs in the Upsala Codex, transcribed about fifty years after his death. The collection of Snorri is now known as the _Prose or Younger Edda_, the title of the _Elder Edda_ being given to a book of ancient mythological poems, discovered by the Icelandic bishop of Skálaholt, Brynjulf Sveinsson, in 1643, and erroneously named by him the _Edda of Saemund_.