The Poetic Edda is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related Prose Edda, although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse poetry. Several versions of the Poetic Edda exist; especially notable is the medieval Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius, which contains 31 poems.

The Eddic poems are composed in alliterative verse. Most are in fornyrðislag ("old story metre"), while málaháttr ("speech form") is a common variation. The rest, about a quarter, are composed in ljóðaháttr ("song form"). The language of the poems is usually clear and relatively unadorned. Kennings are often employed, though they do not arise as frequently, nor are they as complex, as those found in typical skaldic poetry.

Like most early poetry, the Eddic poems were minstrel poems, passed orally from singer to singer and from poet to poet for centuries. None of the poems are attributed to a particular author, though many of them show strong individual characteristics and are likely to have been the work of individual poets. While scholars have speculated on hypothetical authors, firm and accepted conclusions have never been reached.

Accurate dating of the poems has long been a source of scholarly debate. Firm conclusions are difficult to reach; lines from the Eddic poems sometimes appear in poems by known poets. For example, Eyvindr skáldaspillir composed in the latter half of the 10th century, and he uses a couple of lines in his Hákonarmál that are also found in Hávamál. It is possible that he was quoting a known poem, but it is also possible that Hávamál, or at least the strophe in question, is the younger derivative work.

The handful demonstrably historical characters mentioned in the poems, such as Attila, provide a terminus post quem of sorts. The dating of the manuscripts themselves provides a number of useful terminus ante quem.

Individual poems have individual clues to their age. For example, Atlamál hin groenlenzku is claimed by its title to have been composed in Greenland and seems so by some internal evidence. If so, it must have been composed no earlier than about 985, since there were no Scandinavians in Greenland until that time.

More certain than such circumstantial evidence are linguistic dating criteria. These can be arrived at by looking at Skaldic poems whose dates are more firmly known. For instance the particle of, corresponding to ga- or ge- in other old Germanic languages, has been shown to occur more frequently in Skaldic poems of earlier date. Applying this criterion to Eddic poetry, Bjarne Fidjestøl found large variation, indicating that some of the poems were much older than others.

Other dating criteria include the use of the negative adverb eigi 'not', and alliteration of vr- with v-. In western dialects of Old Norse the former became r- around the year 1000, but in some Eddic poems the word vreiðr, younger form reiðr, is seen to alliterate with words beginning in an original v-. This was observed already by Olaf ‘White Skald’ Thordarson, the author of the Third Grammatical Treatise, who termed this v before r the vindandin forna; 'the ancient use of vend'.