Gylfaginning is the opening section of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, presenting a dialogue in which King Gylfi questions three enthroned figures about Norse mythology.
Disguised as Gangleri, Gylfi asks about the origins of the world, the gods, the giants, the worlds, and Ragnarök. The answers provide one of the fullest connected accounts of Norse myth to survive from medieval Scandinavia. The section is framed as a literary conversation rather than a simple collection of independent tales.
The Prose Edda has three main parts. Skáldskaparmál discusses poetic diction through a conversation involving the god Bragi, while Háttatal is a poem about verse forms. Gylfaginning is therefore the mythological narrative section, not the work’s entire title or a separate saga.
Snorri wrote the Prose Edda in Iceland in the early thirteenth century, probably around 1220.