Gripla - 01.01.1990, Page 269

NORSE-CHRISTIAN SYNCRETISM
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tion in Matthew X, 16, to be prudent as serpents in a hostile envi-
ronment.53 In brief, the ethics in section one of 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 life 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.
ÁGRIP
í þessari grein er sýnt fram á grundvallarmun á sammna 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 Sörli; cf. the slow torments of Sörli’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).
54 From Bernhard Silvestris’ unpublished commentary on Martianus Capella’s De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.