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these poems cannot have assumed anything like their present form before the ninth century. As for the poems belonging to the hero cycles, one or two of them appear to be as late as 1100, but most of them clearly belong to the hundred years following 950. It is a fairly safe guess that the years between 900 and 1050 saw the majority of the Eddic poems put into shape, but it must be remembered that many changes took place during the long subsequent period of oral transmission, and also that many of the legends, both mythological and heroic, on which the poems were based, certainly existed in Norway, and quite possibly in verse form, long before the year 900. In considering such poems it is essential to forget the present mode of composition, whereby a poet at once fixes his thought and his style by means of writing, and to remember that for at least two centuries, and possibly much longer, the correct transmission of many of the Eddic poems depended solely on accurate hearing and retentive memory.

As to the origin of the legends on which the poems are based, the whole question, at least so far as the stories of the gods are concerned, is much too complex for discussion here. How much of the actual narrative material of the mythological lays is properly to be called Scandinavian is a matter for students of comparative mythology to guess at. The tales underlying the heroic lays are clearly of foreign origin: the Helgi story comes from Denmark, and that of Völund from Germany, as also the great mass of traditions centering around Sigurth (Siegfried), Brynhild, the sons of Gjuki, Atli (Attila), and Jormunrek (Ermanarich). The introductory notes to the various poems deal with the more important of these questions of origin.