Biboliography

Similarly to how Greek Mythology gets a lot of its background material from two main texts, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Norse Mythology comes almost exclusively from the texts of the Poetic and Prose Eddas. The Poetic Edda was the first work and is a collection of old Norse poems. Historians believe that it was written somewhere around 900 C.E. (common era) and its author is unknown. The Prose Edda is the second text, it was written around the turn of the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. Interestingly both are accepted by scholars as source text even though Snorri's Edda was written years later and specifically references lines of the Poetic Edda in his work. 

For this project I will mainly be basing my explanations on The Poetic Edda, as translated by Lee M Hollander and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda as translated by Jean I. Young. There will also be some explanations drawn from more popular works like The Echo of Odin, Norse Mythology and Human Consciousness by Edward W. L. Smith and Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. Finally some more contemporary works that show the dynamics of Norse beliefs as the Vikings began to clash with other religions like in The Saga of King Olaf from Tales of a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I also Interviewed one of my friends who has experienced Norse Mythology exclusively through Marvel movies to see what assumptions he makes as a starting base for my Misconception section.