Gripla - 20.12.2008, Blaðsíða 151

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“Christianity,” without any specification of what exactly is meant by such
terms, void as they are of empirical demonstration through citation to
relevant sources. The opposition is assumed, but the sources do not reveal
it. A closely related set of questions in this context: What was the state of
mythological knowledge in Christian medieval Iceland? Was mythological
knowledge general? Was it declining? Who possessed it? Who transmitted
it and made use of it?
There are hardly any sources that demonstrate a decline in knowledge
of mythology in the age of skaldic poetry. Quite the contrary: solid, even
thorough, knowledge in mythology is testified to widely in the sources.
Nevertheless, strong notion seems still to be among many that Snorri
wrote the Edda as some sort of a rescue project. The work is, among
other things, a handbook in skaldic poetry, particularly in the mythologi-
cal knowledge necessary to understand and acquire fluency in the art of
kennings:
En þetta er nv at segia vngvm skaldvm, þeim er girnaz at nema mal
skaldskapar ok heyia ser orþfiolþa með fornvm heitvm eþa girnaz
þeir at kvɴa skilia þat, er hvlit er qveþit, þa skili hann þesa bok til
froþleiks ok skemtvnar ...80
But the assumption that Snorri was documenting knowledge in decline
seems to rest on the dubious and unspoken assumption that documenta-
tion must in and of itself suggest a declining knowledge in that which is
being documented. Cyclical argumentation is not far away: The writing of
Snorra-Edda is first used to demonstrate a decline in mythological knowl-
edge, and then a decline in mythological knowledge is used to explain the
motivation behind its documentation.
The role played by skaldic poetry in the saga corpus does not attest to
decline in knowledge, transmission, and use of mythology and mythologi-
cal material. Skaldic poetry fills sagas of all periods, and we have to assume
that the authors understood what they were writing, and that they did not
fill their works with poetry none of the audiences really understood. The
fact that even Snorri could occasionally misunderstand some of the oldest
poetry, as did some saga authors once in a while, does not hint at decline.
The skaldic tradition was already centuries old when Snorri and others
80 Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, 86.
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY