The Poetic Edda on Rigsthula

The > Poetic Edda > What Is The Poetic Edda?

• attestation: The passage explains the etymology or meaning of a name related to Rigsthula.

  "Jacob Grimm ingeniously identified the word with the word "edda" used in one of the poems, the Rigsthula, where, rather conjecturally, it means "great-grandmother." The word exists in this sense nowhere else in Norse literature, and Grimm's suggestion of "Tales of a Grandmother," though at one time it found wide acceptance, was grotesquely inappropriate to either the prose or the verse work."

The > Poetic Edda > The Origin Of The Eddic Poems

• attestation: The passage provides information about Rigsthula.

  "Certainly in one poem, the Rigsthula, and probably in several others, there are marks of Celtic influence."

The > Volume I > Introductory Note

• attestation: The passage provides naming or identification for Rigsthula.

  "The Rigsthula is essentially unlike anything else which editors have agreed to include in the so-called Edda."

The > Volume I > Notes

• attestation: Sprinkling water on children was a pre-Christian custom that long antedated the introduction of Christianity

  "Water, etc.: concerning the custom of sprinkling water on children, which long antedated the introduction of Christianity"

• attestation: The word 'kartr' (cart) in the Rigsthula is one of the clear signs of Celtic influence on the poem

  "Cart: the word in the original, "kartr," is one of the clear signs of the Celtic influence noted in the introduction"

• attestation: Jarl means 'Nobly-Born' in the social hierarchy of the Rigsthula

  "Jarl: "Nobly-Born.""

• attestation: Birds frequently serve as mentors in Norse literature

  "Crow: birds frequently play the part of mentor in Norse literature"