The Elder Edda (Bray Translation): Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Elder Edda (Bray Translation), credited to Sæmund Sigfusson, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Elder Edda (Bray Translation) by Sæmund Sigfusson. (Translated by Olive Bray.) Read in English by Expatriate The Elder or Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems dating from the thirteenth century CE. Though no two translators or editors seem to agree on precisely which poems should be included in this collection, the Elder Edda is the most important source for Norse mythology and legends of northern European heroes. The later "Younger" or Prose Edda, gathered or transcribed by Snorri Sturluson in about 1220 CE, is the other such source, largely drawing on and even directly quoting from the poetic material of the Elder Edda. Even the uninitiated reader of the Eddas may find them familiar in sound, rhythm, and content because of their considerable influence on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Middle Earth fantasies. Though the Bray edition is entitled "The Elder or Poetic Edda, commonly known as Sæmund's Edda," even at the time of its 1908 publication no scholar still believed that the twelfth-century Icelandic scholar Sæmundur Sigfússon had anything to do with the Poetic Edda; whoever actually compiled and transcribed these old oral myths is unknown to modern scholarship. This recording is of Part I (Mythological Poems), including elegant introductory material by translator and scholar Olive Bray. It does not include the Icelandic of the facing pages in this parallel bilingual edition. ( Expatriate)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Elder Edda (Bray Translation)
• Author credits: Sæmund Sigfusson
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 31
• Listed recording duration: 6:39:57

Catalogue topics

• norse mythology

Opening tracks: first 24 of 31

1. 01 - Introduction, Pt. 01 (General) — 29:08
2. 02 - Introduction, Pt. 02 (The Sayings of Grimnir) — 21:00
3. 03 - Introduction, Pt. 03 (The Wisdom of All-Wise) — 8:19
4. 04 - Introduction, Pt. 04 (The Words of the Mighty Weaver) — 12:11
5. 05 - Introduction, Pt. 05 (The Words of Odin, the High One) — 19:39
6. 06 - Introduction, Pt. 06 (The Lay of Hymir) — 12:28
7. 07 - Introduction, Pt. 07 (The Lay of Thrym) — 7:08
8. 08 - Introduction, Pt. 08 (The Story of Skirnir) — 5:58
9. 09 - Introduction, Pt. 09 (Day-Spring and Menglöd) — 11:04
10. 10 - Introduction, Pt. 10 (Greybeard & Thor) — 14:52
11. 11 - Introduction, Pt. 11 (The Song of Rig) — 7:47
12. 12 - Introduction, Pt. 12 (The Lay of Hyndla) — 18:50
13. 13 - Introduction, Pt. 13 (Baldr's Dreams) — 20:03
14. 14 - Introduction, Pt. 14 (Loki's Mocking) — 16:37
15. 15 - Introduction, Pt. 15 (The Soothsaying of the Vala) — 21:29
16. 16 - I. The Sayings of Grimnir — 13:42
17. 17 - II. The Wisdom of All-Wise — 7:45
18. 18 - III. The Words of the Mighty Weaver — 11:24
19. 19 - IV. The Words of Odin, the High One — 35:12
20. 20 - V. The Lay of Hymir — 8:06
21. 21 - VI. The Lay of Thrym — 6:38
22. 22 - VII. The Story of Skirnir — 9:26
23. 23 - VIII. Day-Spring and Menglöd — 13:27
24. 24 - IX. Greybeard & Thor — 9:46

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.