‘Where Are All the Eddic Champions Gone?’ The Disappearance and Recovery of the Eddic Heroes in Late Medieval Icelandic Literature, 1400–1800

By the fifteenth century, the heroic poems of the Edda had all but been forgotten except as they are recorded in prose in Völsunga saga. Since the twelfth century there had existed kappakvadi, a genre of poetry consisting of lists of champions, but they only listed figures from the Íslendingasögur, Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, and riddarasögur. The lack of heroic poems was filled by new creations such as Krákumál and Völsungs rímur. Two eighteenth-century recreations of Eddic heroic poetry are translated and annotated: Gunnars slagur, by Gunnar Pálsson (1714-91), text is taken from Thorlacius and others 1967; Valagaldur Kráku, by the rimur-poet Árni Böðvarsson (1713-76), text prepared by Haukur Þorgeirsson from MS Lbs. 636, 4to.