Gripla - 01.01.1979, Page 202

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GRIPLA
He states expressly that he considers what is said in the poems to be
true, especially in poems recited for the chiefs themselves or their sons,
because no poet would dare to hold a chief up to ridicule by attributing
to him in his presence feats that he as well as the rest of the audience
knew he had never performed.15 It appears from this statement that
Snorri, and no doubt other historians as well, used the poems in good
faith. But this optimistic statement, while expressing Snorri’s view on
the matter, tells nothing about the historical value of the poems.
Apparently the historians considered a verse containing a vague de-
scription a reliable source and a corroboration of the accompanying
tale.
In what follows the historical value of the court poems will be briefly
touched upon:
(a) A verse or verses inserted in a tale often lack both personal
names and place names and therefore contain no concrete information.
This makes it uncertain whether the verses and the tale originally dealt
with the same matter.
(b) A verse often contains a description of a very general nature
that could just as well fit a number of other tales. This is especially
clear in the case of battle descriptions.
(c) The descriptions found in the verses are remarkably similar. The
reason for this may be that the poets were expected to deal with special
subjects only. Besides, they were restricted by the elaborate poetic
diction. It may in fact be impossible to decide whether a poet was
faithfully describing an event or merely filling in a scheme fumished
by poetic convention and poetic diction. Cf. on this de Vries (1964:
99):
Die Hofpoesie laBt persönlichen Einfallen des Dichters nur wenig
Raum, denn sie ist gewissermaBen festgegliedertes Element der
höfischen Etikette: Hauptsache ist, daB dem Herrscher nach den
althergebrachten Formeln der Tradition das ihm gebuhrende Lob
gespendet wird, nicht, daB der Dichter eigener Phantasie und
Gestaltungskraft frönen kann.
And furthermore (1964:100):
15 Some control being exerted by the audience, both regarding the truthfulness
of the poem as well as the accuracy of the recitation is well known elsewhere, cf.
Vansina 1973:28.