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sons, until euhemerism and natural theology offered excuse and justifica-
tion for an old-skaldic renaissance of the late twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries. Pagan kennings were revived, the dust was blown of mythologi-
cal knowledge. This thesis is problematic on several levels.
The notion that skaldic poetry became somewhat simpler and its dic-
tion less laden with kennings in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries
extends back to Finnur Jónsson and earlier.83 The religious framework of
the thesis is associated primarily with Jan de Vries’s De skaldenkenningen
met mythologischen inhoud, published in 1934 and his main contribution
to a debate on the issue with Hans Kuhn.84 Besides de Vries’s study, which
argues for a lull in use of pagan kennings both numerically and relatively
in the given period, there seem to be few if any studies that systematically
and empirically demonstrate the thesis through counting; and we should
emphasize that it is a thesis. But would a systematic count do the job? Is a
systematic count possible? Such a count, like de Vries’s, relies on absolute
accuracy in dating of all skaldic poetry. Without absolute certainty in the
dates of the poetry in question a count would quickly incorporate a distor-
tion to the degree of meaninglessness. Since Finnur Jónsson’s fundamen-
talist stand on the issue just around a century ago, arguing generally for
the trustworthiness of the dates given by medieval writers themselves, the
development has been gradually but decisively towards skepticism. The
problems facing us in dating skaldic poetry are not of minor sorts.85
83 Finnur Jónsson, Den oldnorske og oldislandske litteraturs historie I, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen:
G. E. C. Gad, 1920), 389; see also Erik Noreen, Studier i fornvästnordisk diktning, Uppsala
Universitets årsskrift IV:2, Filosofi, språkvetenskap och historiska vetenskaper 3 (Uppsala:
Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1923), 27–44.
84 Jan de Vries, De skaldenkenningen met mythologischen inhoud, Nederlandsche bijdragen op
het gebied van germaansche philologie en linguistiek 4 (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk Willink
& Zoon, 1934); Kuhn, “Das nordgermanische Heidentum”; Jan de Vries, “Kenningen und
Christentum,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 87 (1956–1957): 125–131.
85 Finnur Jónsson, Den oldnorske og oldislandske litteraturs historia I, 357-367, 390-398, pas-
sim. Doubts about accurate dating of skaldic poetry were voiced already in the nine-
teenth century, e.g., by Guðbrandur Vigfússon in Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of
the Old Northern Tongue, from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century, eds. and transl.
Guðbrandur Vigfússon and F. York Powell (New York: Russel & Russel, 1965 [orig. 1883]),
lxxxiiff. The literature of the past century outlining the problems of dating skaldic poetry
is voluminous; for an overview, see Roberta Frank, “Skaldic Poetry,” Old Norse-Icelandic
Literature: A Critical Guide, eds. John Lindow and Carol J. Clover, Islandica 45 (Ithaca, et
al.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 157–196.
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY