Manuscript, Transmission, and a Disputed Line

Voluspa survives complete in the Codex Regius, an Icelandic manuscript copied around 1270, and partially in the slightly later Hauksbok manuscript, with real differences in wording and stanza order between the two. Snorri Sturluson quotes and paraphrases large sections of it in his Prose Edda, written around 1220, which shows the poem was already established and authoritative within two and a half centuries of Iceland's conversion to Christianity around the year 1000, though how much older the poem itself is remains unsettled; some scholars place its composition in the later tenth century, close to the conversion, others argue for material transmitted orally well before that.

One stanza sharpens the question of how far the poem as it survives reflects a Christian scribal environment rather than the pre-Christian religion it describes. A verse describing a single, more powerful ruler who comes to govern everything after the world is renewed appears in neither Codex Regius nor Hauksbok; it survives only in later paper copies. Scholars are divided on whether it belongs to the poem and was lost to a gap in both medieval manuscripts, or is a later addition reflecting an idea foreign to the rest of the vision. Because Ragnarok itself is cyclical, ending in renewal rather than in judgment or a final kingdom, most readers treat the poem's core vision as pre-Christian even where this one closing line stays contested.

Sources The Poetic EddaAnonymous (Codex Regius) with The Prose EddaSnorri Sturluson