Gripla

						NORSE-CHRISTIAN SYNCRETISM                            265

tion in Matthew X, 16, to be prudent as serpents in a hostile envi-

ronment.53 In brief, the ethics in section one oí Sólarljóð conform in

structure to the visions in sections two and three, with a continuous in-

terpretatio christiana running beneath the literary and heathenish ex-

empla of heroic Iife in the northern world, as it does on through the

spectacles of heaven and hell in the other world. Section one, if you

will, is a condensed Christian version of the Hávamál, which is pro-

paedeutic to the esoteric revelations of the visions in the rest of the po-

em.

In Sólarljóð the poet's interpretation of pagan myths as Christian

symbols is admittedly idiosyncratic, but it is nonetheless justifiable in

principle by the medieval hermeneutic rule for the integumentum of

mythology which was said to 'cover' the moral or spiritual truth in

classical literature: 'integumentum vero est oratio sub fabulosa narra-

tione verum claudens intellectum, ut de Orpheo.'54 According to this

rule, the edifying truth in literature has been clothed by the poets with

fables or myths, which must be removed by their readers to discover

the truth underneath.55 We will not go so very far wrong if we abide by

this rule in our reading of Sólarljóð as I have in this short paper by

hewing to the Christian tenor of the mythologizing and moralizing of

its author.

AGRIP

í þessari grein er sýnt fram á grundvallarmun á samruna tvennra trúarbragða

annars vegar, og hins vegar túlkun kristniboða eða trúvarnarmanna á heiðnum

goðsögnum er þeir skoða sem kristin tákn. Samruni trúarbragða á með réttu

við raunverulegt sambland heiðinna og kristinna helgisiða og átrúnaðar, en

53 Fidjest0l is on the right track with this interpretatio, but errs in the hypothesis,

Sljð. III, p. 41, that the poet 'ironically' suspended judgment in the given case of the im-

prudent Sörii; cf. the slow torments of Sörii's murderers in hell, stanza 24. Similar ad-

vice to that in Sólarljóð, st. 19, and Hávamál, st. 45, is given in Hugsvinnsmál, st. 41

(quoted by Falk, Sljð. I, p. 11, fn. 3).

From Bernhard Silvestris' unpublished commentary on Martianus Capella's De

Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, as quoted by H. Brinkmann in Mittelalterliche Herme-

neutik, Darmstadt 1980, p. 169.

55   See the subchapter of Brinkmann's book, Analogische Wahrheit, pp. 169-214.