The three oldest MSS. of the prose _Edda_ all belong to the beginning of the 14th century. The Wurm MS. was sent to Ole Wurm in 1628; the Codex Regius was discovered by the indefatigable bishop Brynjulf Sveinsson in 1640. The most important, however, of these MSS. is the Upsala Codex, an octavo volume written probably about the year 1300. There have been several good editions of the _Edda Snorra Sturlusonar_, of which perhaps the best is that published by the Arne-Magnaean Society in Copenhagen in 1848-1852, in two vols., edited by a group of scholars under the direction of Jón Sigurdsson. There are English translations by T. Percy, _Northern Antiquities_, from the French by P.H. Mallet (1770); by G. Webbe Dasent (Stockholm, 1842); by R.B. Anderson (Chicago, 1880). 2. The Elder _Edda_, Poetic _Edda_ or _Saemundar Edda hins froða_ was entirely unknown until about 1643, when it came into the hands of Brynjulf Sveinsson, who, puzzled to classify it, gave it the title of _Edda Saemundi multiscii_. Saemund Sigfusson, who was thus credited with the collection of these poems, was a scion of the royal house of Norway, and lived from about 1055 to 1132 in Iceland. The poems themselves date in all probability from the 10th and 11th centuries, and are many of them only fragments of longer heroic chants now otherwise entirely lost. They treat of mythical and religious legends of an early Scandinavian civilization, and are composed in the simplest and most archaic forms of Icelandic verse. The author of no one of them is mentioned. It is evident that they were collected from oral tradition; and the fact that the same story is occasionally repeated, in varied form, and that some of the poems themselves bear internal evidence of being more ancient than others, proves that the present collection is only a gathering made early in the middle ages, long after the composition of the pieces, and in no critical spirit. Sophus Bugge, indeed, one of the greatest authorities, absolutely rejects the name of Saemund, and is of opinion that the poetic _Edda_, as we at present hold it, dates from about 1240. There is no doubt that it was collected in Iceland, and by an Icelander. The most remarkable and the most ancient of the poems in this priceless collection is that with which it commences, the _Völuspá_, or prophecy of the Völva or Sibyl. In this chant we listen to an inspired prophetess, "seated on her high seat, and addressing Odin, while the gods listen to her words."