[Next Project] The Poetic Edda, translated by Henry Adams Bellows

Galen Hazelwood

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Feb 27, 2025, 1:14:08 PM2/27/25

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I proposed doing this one previously, and was warned off based on the difficulty of formatting it. I think I've proved myself with my work on the Wellman collection, and would like to propose this one again.

As proof of concept, I've formatted the first poem in the book, the Voluspo, into what I think is an acceptable state. I've also patched together a preliminary local.css file based on the SEMoS and the examples of similar epic poems, specifically the Nibelungenlied. It's viewable in this repository:

https://github.com/galenhz/anonymous_the-poetic-edda_henry-adams-bellows

Thanks,

--Galen

Alex Cabal

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Feb 27, 2025, 4:16:28 PM2/27/25

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OK. This looks like a top tier difficulty book but if you want to give
it a shot then go for it. As you noted Emma worked on similar formatting
in the Nibelungenleid so I will assign her as the manager here.

The pronouncing index would be better formatted as a glossary. You will
have to include a search key map, see the manual. I don't think we need
to include the actual links to references as people can just search for
them if they want.

> <https://github.com/galenhz/anonymous_the-poetic-edda_henry-adams-bellows>
>
> Thanks,
> --Galen
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Emma Sweeney

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Feb 27, 2025, 5:29:01 PM2/27/25

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The file formatting should look something like this:

...

...

</section>

...

</section>

</body>

Some poems have subsections which would also be placed in separate <section> elements.

For this production, I recommend using <div> elements rather than <section> elements for the stanzas; the other poems have prose paragraphs in between stanzas.

You should also convert the stanza numbers to roman numerals.

In the endnotes and introductions, there are some lines of poetry listed on a single line that have caesuras. These need to be placed in <blockquote> elements and restructured like in SEMoS 7.5.

If you encounter anything else that is confusing, the poem how-to guide can help.

Good luck!

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Feb 27, 2025, 5:42:34 PM2/27/25

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Emma,

Thanks a lot! I may have to follow up with further questions, but this should be enough to get me going.

--Galen

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Galen Hazelwood

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Feb 27, 2025, 5:50:02 PM2/27/25

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(...are you sure you want the stanza numbers as roman numerals?)

Vince

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Feb 27, 2025, 6:09:22 PM2/27/25

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That is our standard (same as for chapter numbers). I will point out for Emma’s sake that Hovamol has 165 stanzas, and we normally switch to decimal when chapters get much above 100. Hovamol’s the only one over 100, though, so she may still prefer roman.

Emma Sweeney

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Feb 27, 2025, 6:25:45 PM2/27/25

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Yes, they should be roman numerals (SEMoS 8.1.1). The Nibelungenlied uses Arabic numerals because the numberings reach well over 2000. In the Poetic Edda, only one out of thirty-five poems breaks 100. Since a majority of the poems are below 100 stanzas, they should all be converted roman numerals for consistency.

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Feb 27, 2025, 6:36:29 PM2/27/25

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All right. I've pushed a commit for the Voluspo which matches your suggestions, and will continue work on the rest.

--Galen

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Galen Hazelwood

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Mar 18, 2025, 11:58:37 AM3/18/25

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I've completed the machete-tier formatting work on the poems themselves, and am going to start up on the pronunciation index next. It's going to be a slog with only a limited amount of automation possible, since the original spelling of the names aren't in the index at all, just the pronunciations. A few questions before I get going:

1. The SEMoS glossary section allows for multiple terms with a single definition (dd). The index has the opposite situation: a single term with multiple definitions. I think it makes sense to have a single entry for the term with enumerated definitions, like a dictionary word with multiple meanings. Does this make sense, and is there a particular way it should be formatted? Multiple p elements inside the dd, or an HTML ordered list?

2. Given 1, it might be good to keep the links to references, to help differentiate which version applies. No page numbers of course, so I'd need to convert them as links to individual stanzas. If you still think we don't need them, I won't argue; it would save me a lot of work.

3. I'd like to save the phonetic pronunciations as part of the glossary definitions, so I'd like to save the pronunciation guide. Should it be a separate backmatter page, or an introductory section to the glossary itself?

4. (Tangentially related) How should we semanticate the names of the poems, and the names of the work? SEMoS might suggest that "Poetic Edda" would be considered a long poem (se:name.publication.poem) and the individual poems quoted (not italicized) as short works, but that doesn't feel right. The Edda is a collection of poems, not a single unified epic, so I suggest it should get se:name.publication.book, and the poem names italicized with se:name.publication.poem.

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Emma Sweeney

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Mar 18, 2025, 3:24:49 PM3/18/25

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1. According to MDN Web Docs, a term with multiple definitions is structured like:

<dl>
<dt id="[TERM]" epub:type="glossterm">
<dfn>[TERM]</dfn>
</dt>
<dd epub:type="glossdef">
<p>[DEFINITION 1].</p>
</dd>
<dd epub:type="glossdef">
<p>[DEFINITION 2].</p>
</dd>

...

</dl>

2. That would be nice, but you would be creating thousands of links. I don't want you to torture yourself. :)

3. I think you should keep the "Pronouncing Index of Proper Names"; these names don't follow typical English phonemes. It's also pretty helpful to know that "Alf" refers to seven different people in the story. This would be in an `appendix.xhtml` with `appendix` semantics. Take a look at other appendices in the corpus for details.

4. The individual stories are short publications so they are quoted. The Poetic Edda would have <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book"> semantics.

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Mar 18, 2025, 4:47:24 PM3/18/25

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Thanks. Your response to 3 is a little confusing. I'm converting the pronunciation index as a whole into a glossary to preserve it, and my question was specifically about the two-page introduction that precedes it. That section should be made into an appendix? I can see the logic, but wanted to make sure I understood.

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Emma Sweeney

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Mar 18, 2025, 7:49:42 PM3/18/25

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Sorry, I should've looked at the book rather than rely on memory!

Now that I'm able to look at the book, It looks like the Introductory Note would be in an appendix file. It will be titled:

<hgroup>
<h2 epub:type="title">Pronouncing Index of Proper Names</h2>
<p epub:type="subtitle">Introductory Note</p>
</hgroup>

Emma

Emma Sweeney

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Jun 6, 2025, 12:16:12 AM6/6/25

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Hi Galen. I'm checking in to see how progress is going. Are you still working on this? Do you need any help?

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Jun 6, 2025, 2:04:51 AM6/6/25

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Real life hijacked my time for a while. I'm back on it, building a tool to help autobuild the glossary. I hope to have that done before too much longer.

--Galen

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Galen Hazelwood

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Jul 18, 2025, 2:24:01 PM7/18/25

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All right, I've worked through the index and created a first pass at the Glossary of Proper Names. With that heavy lifting done, I've got a few questions as I start going through the rest of the process.

1. The poems often have parts where the original text is missing or illegible. The translation marks these bits with a series of 8 dots. Typogrify wants to convert them to two sequences of an ellipsis and a dot:

- <span>. . . . . . . .</span>
+ <span>… .⁠ ⁠… .</span>

I don't think this is right. The original matches what's in the physical books, and it makes logical sense to me. Can I leave these as is?

2. Typogrify also wants to remove commas before dashes, in places like the third line of Voluspo 12:

Vigg and Gandalf, Vindalf, Thrain,
Thekk and Thorin, Thror, Vit and Lit,
Nyr and Nyrath,— now have I told—
Regin and Rathsvith— the list aright.

Should I accept typogrify's fix here, or leave the poem as it was in the original? I also see the same thing being fixed in the introduction sections. Should I accept it only for the modern text, and leave the poems alone?

3. Semanticating italics. "Poetic Edda" is obviously a "book". The individual parts (Hovemol, Fafnismol, etc.) are also often italicized, so are they "poems"? The standard indicates in 8.2.11.3 that shorter works that don't stand alone should be quoted, not italicized, but this strikes me as a corner case, and italicizing them as poem names is defensible.

4. In the endnotes, a word being defined/glossed is italicized to differentiate it from the rest of the text. How should these be marked? Nothing in the se vocab seems to quite fit.

--Galen

Emma Sweeney

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Jul 18, 2025, 3:57:55 PM7/18/25

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1. In poetry, we use the vertical ellipsis for missing lines (SEMoS 7.5.7).

2. Accept the changes made by `se typogrify` in the whole production.

3. These aren't book-length poems; they were probably italicized because they are non-English titles. The titles would be formatted like `“<span xml:lang="non">Voluspo</span>”`

4. You can use the `<dfn>` element for terms being defined in endnotes.

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Jul 18, 2025, 4:51:25 PM7/18/25

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Thanks!

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Galen Hazelwood

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Jul 18, 2025, 9:38:41 PM7/18/25

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Okay, regarding the ellipses, a follow-up question on Hovamol 79:

Certain is that which is sought from runes,

That the gods so great have made,

And the Master-Poet painted;

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . of the race of gods:

Silence is safest and best.

Here we have a missing line, but also half a missing line after it. Should I substitute a horizontal ellipsis on the half-missing line, like so?

Certain is that which is sought from runes,

That the gods so great have made,

And the Master-Poet painted;

⋮

… of the race of gods:

Silence is safest and best

--Galen

Emma Sweeney

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Jul 18, 2025, 11:50:49 PM7/18/25

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That looks correct.

Emma

Emma Sweeney

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Dec 22, 2025, 1:16:59 AM12/22/25

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Hi Galen. I'm checking in to see how progress is going. Are you still working on this?

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Dec 22, 2025, 1:50:52 AM12/22/25

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As I told Alex, I've hit a point where I need to sit down and learn CSS properly to figure out how to solve the last problems of formatting. I can't guarantee when I'll have time to do that. I'd hoped to take time in November, and life didn't cooperate. I might be able to make time over the holidays. I really do want to finish this; if I can overcome this last hurdle, all that's left is proofreading and choosing the cover art.

--Galen

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Alex Cabal

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Dec 22, 2025, 12:26:40 PM12/22/25

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Poetry formatting is mostly already solved in the manual unless you have
some kind of truly unique and strange formatting issue. Why not post it
to your project thread?

> missing lines (SEMoS 7.5.7 <https://
> standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.3/single-page#7.5.7>).

> <https://
> developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
> docs/Web/HTML/Element/dd>, a

> > <https://
> github.com/galenhz/
> anonymous_the-
> poetic-edda_henry-
> adams-bellows
> <https://github.com/
> galenhz/
> anonymous_the-
> poetic-edda_henry-

> adams-bellows>>
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --Galen
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Galen Hazelwood

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Dec 22, 2025, 8:18:44 PM12/22/25

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Sure. Right now I've got a couple of problems I need to solve. (I had three, but I had a brain-wave while drafting this email and resolved one.)

The poems in this collection are not purely verse. There are prose sections scattered between some of the verses; I've corralled them into their own div sections, lined up with everything else. As long as the prose sections are immediately after a header they're fine, but just in between the verses they get mashed up against the previous verse, probably because they don't have headers themselves. This feels like it should be easy to solve, but hasn't been.

The second is a table of vowel pronunciations in the appendix. (It's a four-column layout in the text to save space, but PG transcribed them as two columns.) Two of the entries have a bracket and comment to the right, clearly showing that the note refers to both entries. I'm not sure how to make this work.

--Galen

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Emma Sweeney

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Dec 22, 2025, 8:56:39 PM12/22/25

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1. The prose does not need to go in their own <div> sections, only the numbered verse. There shouldn't be any prose within the verse <div> sections either. I'm assuming the prose in your verse sections are the paragraphs that indicate who is speaking; in your page scans, these are located before the verse header. When there is a mixture of prose and verse, the individual verse sections will need to be tagged.

Here's an example of how all that should be structured:

oddrunargratr.xhtml:

<section id="oddrunargratr-poem">
<p>Heithrek was the name of a king, whose daughter was called Borgny...</p>

...

<p>Oddrun spake:</p>

<div epub:type="z3998:verse">
<header>
<p epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">V</p>
</header>
<p>
<span>
<span>“Who worked this woe</span>
<span>for the woman thus,</span>
</span>
<br/>
<span>
<span>Or why so sudden</span>
<span>is Borgny sick?”</span>
</span>
</p>

</div>

2. This should be structured as an unordered list, since it is a list of graphemes and their phonemes. You can use CSS to make it appear in two columns, but I don't think that is necessary.

Feel free to let me know if you have further issues!

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Dec 22, 2025, 10:04:22 PM12/22/25

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1. The prose sections I'm most concerned with are the longer ones. I can put the id tag for them on the p section, and get rid of the div. I'll start with a full conversion on one of the poems to see the results.

I realize the speaker "tags" are above the verse number in the scans, but the verse numbers in the scans are to the left of the verses rather than above them. They're visually distinct from the prose paragraphs as well, which is why I pulled them into the verse sections.

That example you picked, oddrunargratr-poem-5, actually has two such tags, one at the start, one between lines two and three. I can't put the second one before the verse number, and one in and one out is going to look jarring.

2. Reworking the table as an unordered list seems like a sensible approach, but I still need something for that bracket on the side. I'll try it out and get back on that.

--Galen

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Emma Sweeney

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Dec 22, 2025, 10:19:03 PM12/22/25

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You can add a class to make them italicized. The dialogue tags are prose and shouldn't be tagged as verse. If there is another dialogue tag in the verse section, you can separate the sections into two <div> sections:

<p class="speech-tag">Oddrun spake:</p>

</header>
<p>
<span>
<span>“Who worked this woe</span>
<span>for the woman thus,</span>
</span>
<br/>
<span>
<span>Or why so sudden</span>
<span>is Borgny sick?”</span>
</span>
</p>
</div>

<p class="speech-tag">The serving-maid spake:</p>

<p>
<span>
<span>“Vilmund is he,</span>
<span>the heroes’ friend,</span>
</span>
<br/>
<span>
<span>Who wrapped the woman</span>
<span>in bedclothes warm,</span>
</span>
<br/>
<span>
<span>(For winters five,</span>
<span>yet her father knew not).”</span>
</span>
</p>
</div>

Emma

Galen Hazelwood

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Jan 21, 2026, 1:36:10 PM (yesterday) Jan 21

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I'm working on the final fixes for this project, and have begun the proofreading process. It's not ready for review yet, but I thought I'd clear my idea for the cover image. It turns out there's already a good one in the artworks database: Winge's "Tor's Fight with the Giants."

https://standardebooks.org/artworks/marten-eskil-winge/tors-fight-with-the-giants

I'd like to go ahead and use this for the cover.

--Galen

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Emma Sweeney

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Jan 21, 2026, 8:32:51 PM (18 hours ago) Jan 21

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Great choice! I've updated the art DB.

Emma

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