The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson Read Free Book Online

his son Skjold ruler. Skjold’s son was named Fridleif and from him are descended the kindred known as the Skjoldungs, the family of the kings of Denmark. What is now called Jutland was then called Reidgotaland.
    He then went northward to what is now called Sweden, where a king named Gylfi lived. When the king learned of the journey of these Asians, who were called Æsir, he went to meet them, offering to grant Odin as much authority in his kingdom as he wanted. Wherever they stayed in these lands a time of peace and prosperity accompanied their journey, so that all believed the newcomers were the cause. This was because the local inhabitants saw that they were unlike any others they had known in beauty and intelligence. Recognizing the land’s rich possibilities, Odin chose a place for a town, the one that is now called Sigtun. 1 He appointed leaders and, in accordance withthe customs of Troy, he selected twelve men to administer the law of the land. In this way he organized the laws as they had been in Troy, in the manner to which the Turks were accustomed.
    Then he went north, continuing until he reached the ocean, which people believed surrounded all lands. There, in what is now called Norway, he placed his son in power. This son was named Saeming, and Norway’s kings, as well as its jarls and other important men of the kingdom, trace their descent to him, as it is told in
Haleygjatal
. 2 Odin also had with him his son named Yngvi, who after him became a king in Sweden, and from whom those kinsmen called the Ynglings are descended.
    The Æsir and some of their sons married women from the lands where they settled, and their families increased. They spread throughout Saxland and from there throughout all the northern regions so that their language – that of the men of Asia – became the native tongue in all these lands. People think, because the names of their ancestors are recorded in genealogies, they can show that these names were part of the language that the Æsir brought here to the northern world – to Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Saxland. In England, however, some names of ancient regions and places lead one to believe that the names originally came from another language.

GYLFAGINNING (THE DELUDING OF GYLFI)
1. KING GYLFI AND THE WOMAN GEFJUN
    King Gylfi ruled over the lands now called Sweden. It is said that he offered a travelling woman, in return for the pleasure of her company, a piece of ploughland in his kingdom as large as four oxen could plough in a day and a night. But this woman, named Gefjun, was of the Æsir. She took four oxen from Jotunheim [Giant Land] in the north. They were her own sons by a giant, and she yoked them to the plough, which dug so hard and so deep that it cut the land loose. The oxen dragged this land westward out to sea, stopping finally at a certain channel. There Gefjun fastened the land and gave it the name Sjaelland. 1 The place where the land was removed has since become a body of water in Sweden now called Logrinn [the Lake], 2 and in this lake there are as many inlets as there are headlands in Sjaelland. So says the poet Bragi the Old:
    Gefjun dragged from Gylfi
gladly the land beyond value,
Denmark’s increase,
steam rising from the swift-footed bulls.
The oxen bore eight
moons of the forehead and four heads,
hauling as they went in front of
the grassy isle’s wide fissure.
2. GYLFI ENCOUNTERS THE THREE CHIEFTAINS OF THE ÆSIR 1
    King Gylfi was a wise man skilled in magic. He was amazed that the Æsir knew so much that everything went according to their wishes. He wondered whether this was because of their own nature or whether it came from the divine power of the gods they worshipped. He set out on a secret trip to Asgard and changed into the likeness of an old man to disguise himself. But the Æsir, because they had the gift of prophecy, were the wiser in such matters. Before his arrival they foresaw his coming and, in