Body of ancient Icelandic literature.
Contained in two 13th-century books, it is the fullest and most detailed source for modern knowledge of Germanic mythology. The Prose Edda ( Younger Edda , or Snorra-Edda ; с 1222), a handbook on poetics by Snorri Sturluson , explains diction and metre in Poetic Edda ( Elder Edda , or Sæmundar Edda ; с 1250–1300) is a collection of mythological and heroic poems of unknown authorship composed с 800–1100. These austere lays are the oldest surviving antecedents of the {{link=Nibelungenlied">Nibelungenlied legends.