Undoubtedly one of his motives for including the prologue, and maybe the chief reason for the use of the framing device itself, was to avoid the criticism that his stories were dangerous to orthodoxy.įaulkes, Anthony (1985). The euhemerized account of the origins of the Norse pantheon in the prologue is one example:īut although the prologue has a primarily narrative function, and the author does not obtrude his own personality into it, he does appear to be trying in it to define his attitude to the mythology he is presenting and to clarify the relationship of the religion implied by the mythological stories in Gylfaginning to his own beliefs and to the Christian culture within which he was writing. As a result, he gives readers a more elaborate version of Norse mythology that at times reveals his Christian influence. However, experts agree that he did add many of his own details. Some researchers believe Snorri based it largely on folkloric oral traditions that he may have heard, while others think he used an elder written Edda. What those sources were is a matter of speculation. Snorri’s Edda was later nicknamed the 'Younger Edda' because much of it derives from older sources. I've often read that there are Christian influences in the Prose Edda:
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