1643 AD: The bishop of Iceland, Brynjolv Sveinsson, received an ancient leather manuscript already 500 years old. It had been hidden away for hundreds of years, from the Church authorities. Brynjolv realized that a long lost ancestral treasure had been recovered. Ancient legends and myths speak out from the leathery pages through the almost forgotten language of poetical metaphors.
Snorri Sturluson (1225 AD) sometimes referred and quoted from them in his Prose Edda and today the body of mythical and legendary poems found in the hidden manuscript are known as the "Elder, Poetic Edda".

Why was the manuscript hidden? What were the real messages behind Old Norse poetry? Are the Norse myths truly just funny stories about gods, trolls and giants, or do they hide some deeper insights?
In The Seed of Yggdrasil, Kvilhaug explores the allegories, metaphors and parables of Old Norse myths, revealing how spiritual mysteries and metaphysical speculation - speculation that sometimes borders on the scientific - were at the heart and core of Old Norse Paganism.

...At három þúl hleþu aldregi
opt er gott þat er gamlir qveþa;
opt or scarpom belg
scilin orð coma,
þeim er hangir meþ hám
oc skollir meþ scrám

Never laugh at the ancient Sage:
Often it is good what the old ones say;
Often from the wizened old body
wise speech issues:
They that hang among leathers
and hide between hides

- (Hávamál - The Speech of the High One, st. 134, Poetic Edda)