Before you is the first and so far the only prose adaptation of the famous Scandinavian epic “Elder Edda”, made by the famous writer Ilya Boyashov. Now this literary monument, which until recently was of interest exclusively to specialists, has gone beyond the academic circle and has become accessible to the widest audience. The Elder Edda is on a par with such epics as the Iliad and the Mahabharata. Despite the fact that the Edda has reached our time in the form of scattered parts, its “Songs about the Gods” and “Songs about Heroes” played a colossal role in the development of Western European literature. The epic is still in demand today - just look at the works of such popular writers as John Tolkien and George Martin to see this. It was thanks to the Edda that creatures such as elves, gnomes, trolls, kobolds and the gods of Asgard came into use in modern fiction.