Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 310

GRIPLA310
I was from the beginning uneasy with the notion of one discipline pos-
ing a challenge to another. I prefer to think of synergy or inspiration, of an
intersection of fields that can lead to productive ways of thinking. What is
particularly striking in the relationship among the fields I wish to discuss
today is the fact that they emerged together: not just at the same time and
in the same places, but as more or less the same field. Even as they became
independent research fields, they continued to evolve along parallel lines.
nevertheless, significant differences emerged (even if they are most visible
in hindsight), and it is in some of these differences that folkloristic research
has something to offer to the study of Old Norse myth and religion.
national romanticism, with its view fixed firmly on the past, valued
both medieval documents in libraries and archives and the “age-old”
poetry and other materials to be heard (and gathered) from the lips of
countryside singers and story-tellers. the medium (written or oral) mat-
tered little at this stage of things; what mattered was the supposed voice
from the national past. as modern academic study dawned along with the
nineteenth century, scholars moved comfortably and seamlessly between
what we now regard as two different data sets. the brothers Grimm, and
especially Jacob, are the best examples: just as they were issuing editions
of medieval literature (ones that look surprisingly competent two centu-
ries later), they were also issuing editions of folklore materials – folktales
and legends – and laying the foundation for the academic field of folk-
loristics. their famous statement about the two folklore genres (“Das
Märchen ist poetischer, die Sage historischer” [“the Märchen is more
poetic, the legend is more historical”]) remains fundamental,3 even if we
no longer understand the terms “poetic” and “historical” as the Grimms
did and take a far more nuanced view of both genres. the notion of the
essential equivalence of medieval written materials and contemporary
oral materials persisted. In an inaugural lecture in 1863, Svend Grundtvig
stated that nordic philology, then understood as language history and
therefore based on older written materials, comprised: “the spiritual life
of the nordic peoples in all ages and in all its manifestations, the way
the spirit of this people has revealed itself and still reveals itself both in
the language itself – the words, logos, the immediate expression of the
3 Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche Sagen (Darmstadt: Wissen schaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft, 1977 [1816–18]), 7.