The wording, stanza divisions, notes, and tone vary from edition to edition. Use this guide to identify what you are reading before comparing individual passages.
The poem survives in Old Norse, while English editions reflect different editorial choices and different periods of scholarship. The archive preserves each edition’s printed numbering instead of forcing every translation into the same sequence.
The Poetic Edda: Translated from the Icelandic with an Introduction and Notes
A public-domain English translation published in 1923. The archive uses Bellows as its internal comparison anchor while preserving every edition’s own printed numbering.
The Edda of Sæmund the Learned
A public-domain English translation from 1866. Thorpe’s printed stanza divisions differ in places from later editions, so the archive keeps his numbering intact.
The Elder or Poetic Edda
A public-domain 1908 edition with English translation and Old Norse text, useful for readers who want the translation beside the original language.
The Poetic Edda
The original 1928 English translation. This archive uses only that public-domain U.S. edition, not Hollander’s later revised text.
The Poetic Edda: A Dual-Language Edition
A modern dual-language English and Old Norse edition released under CC BY-NC 4.0. It is available here only while the archive remains noncommercial.
The Wanderer’s Hávamál
A modern copyrighted English translation. The archive provides bibliographic information and an official source link but does not reproduce the text.
The archive also keeps a short guide to legal public-domain scans, ebooks, and openly licensed editions.
Find free Hávamál editions →