But where did we get all this information about dwarves and elves and spirits? How was so much intangible belief and ritual passed down so that a writer like Tolkien could create a world from it? Neil Price ascribes the detail and clarity of today’s knowledge of Norse myth to the Icelandic poet, scribe, and historian Snorri Sturluson. Snorri was active during the 12th century in Iceland, and was part of the movement to record belief that included the transcription of the Völuspá itself. He used the Völuspá as a source for his Prose Edda, a compendium for the Old Norse religion. In Children of Ash and Elm, Price raises an interesting point: “Why should this canny Christian politician, acutely aware of his place in the world, take such pains to record the intricacies of a dead religion that was anathema to the Church whose interests he upheld?” (33). Perhaps it was a sort of textual colonization, an attempt to retroactively Christianize ancestral stories, make them safe. Price suggests that the myths appeal to Snorri by upholding the hierarchical structure of kings (33), but some of the Prose Edda is ambiguous when it comes to rulership:
Then he asked what the name of their ruler was. The man who had brought him in replied that the one that sat in the lowest throne was king and was called High, next to him the one called Just-as-high, and the one sitting at the top was called Third.
— Snorri, Edda (trans. Faulkes)
The seen depicts the intrusion of a human man into the world of the gods. The man begins asking questions, and the gods respond. The rulers in the Edda seem very comfortable with subverting the codes of kingship. The most important ruler sits on the “lowest throne,” and though his name is “High,” his fellow ruler is apparently “Just-as-high.” Much like we can’t understand many pieces of the viking worldview, the exact purpose for why Christian writers like Snorri preserved the Norse religion in text remains elusive.
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