Poetic Edda Edda Saeundar Hinns Froda

Saemund, son of Sigfus, the reputed collector of the poems bearing his name, which is sometimes also called the Elder, and the Poetic, Edda, was of a highly distinguished family, being descended in a direct line from King Harald Hildetonn. He was born at Oddi, his paternal dwelling in the south of Iceland, between the years 1054 and 1057, or about 50 years after the establishment by law of the Christian religion in that island hence it is easy to imagine that many heathens, or baptized favourers of the old mythic songs of heathenism, may have lived in his days and imparted to him the lays of the times of old, which his unfettered mind induced him to hand down to posterity.

The youth of Saemund was passed in travel and study, in Germany and France, and, according to some accounts, in Italy. His cousin John ogmundson, who later became first bishop of Holum, and after his death was received among the number of saints, when on his way to Rome, fell in with his youthful kinsman, and took him back with him to Iceland, in the year 1076. Saemund afterwards became a priest at Oddi, where he instructed many young men in useful learning but the effects of which were not improbably such as to the common people might appear as witchcraft or magic: and, indeed, Saemund's predilection for the sagas and songs of the old heathen times (even for the magical ones) was so well known, that among his countrymen there were some who regarded him as a great sorcerer, though chiefly in what is called white or innocuous and defensive sorcery, a repute which still clings to his memory among the common people of Iceland, and will long adhere to it through the numerous and popular stories regarding him (some of them highly entertaining) that are orally transmitted from generation to generation.

About the author

Benjamin Thorpe (1782 - 19 July 1870) was an English scholar of Anglo-Saxon.

In the early 1820s he worked as a banker in the House of Rothschild, in Paris. There he met Thomas Hodgkin, who treated him for tuberculosis.

After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, Thorpe returned to England in 1830. In a few years he established a reputation as an Anglo-Saxon scholar.

In recognition of unremunerative work, Thorpe was granted a civil list pension of ?160 in 1835, and on 17 June 1841 this was increased to 200 per annum. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Munich, and of the Society of Netherlandish Literature at Leyden. He died at Chiswick in July 1870.

In 1830 Thorpe brought out at Copenhagen an English version of Rask's Anglo-Saxon Grammar (a second edition of this appeared at London). That same year he moved to London with his new wife Mary Otte and her daughter Elise Otte. Thorpe educated and oppressed his step daughter and she had a troubled relationship and unattributed partnership with him throughout his life.

In 1832 he published at London C?dmon's Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of the Holy Scriptures in Anglo-Saxon; with an English Translation, Notes, and a Verbal Index, which was well reviewed. It was followed in 1834 by the Anglo-Saxon Version of the Story of Apollonius of Tyre and by Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, a textbook which was adopted at Oxford by Robert Meadows White. The Analecta was used, with Vernon's Anglo-Saxon Guide, for 40 years.

In 1835 Thorpe published Libri Psalmorum Versio antiqua Latina and then Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (1840). Two more volumes were published by Thorpe in 1842, The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon and Codex Exoniensis, a Collection of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, with English Translation and Notes, an edition of the poems in the Exeter Book with English translation. Next came, for the ?lfric Society, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church,' with an English version, published in ten parts between 1843 and 1846.

In 1834 Thorpe had begun a translation of Johann Martin Lappenberg's works on old English history, but was deterred. By 1842 he had started another version, with alterations, corrections, and notes of his own; it was published in two volumes in 1845 as A History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings. It was followed eventually by a version of Lappenberg's History of England under the Norman Kings (1857). Thorpe's two-volume edition of Florence of Worcester was issued in 1848-49.

For the publisher Edward Lumley Thorpe produced Northern Mythology (1851) with notes and illustrations. It was followed in 1853 by Yule Tide Stories which appeared in Bohn's Antiquarian Library. For the same library he translated in 1854 Pauli's Life of Alfred the Great, with Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius. In 1855 appeared Thorpe's Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, with translation, notes, glossary, and indexes. He had planned this work as early as 1830, and his text was collated with the Cottonian MS before John Mitchell Kemble's; the scorched edges of the manuscript suffered further shortly afterwards.

In 1861 Thorpe edited for the Rolls Series of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, according to the several Authorities. In the first volume are printed synoptically the Corpus Christi, Cambridge, the Bodleian, and the various Cottonian texts, with facsimiles and notes, while in volume two appeared the translation. Four years later, through the support of Joseph Mayer of Liverpool, Thorpe was able to publish his supplement to Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus ?vi Saxonici. His final work, done for Trubner in 1866, was a translation of the Elder Edda.

His other works include The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1844).