Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 25
I Introduction
5
Midten af det 9de Aarhundrede, for at være beviist med saa
gode Grunde, som man i en Sag af den Beskaffenhed kan fordre.2
([...] one should regard it as proven, for the best reasons that can pos-
sibly be demanded in a matter of this nature, that the Eddie poems ori-
ginated in a period older than the days of Haraldr hårfagri, older than
the middle of the 9th century.)
Bugge, on the other hånd, believed that the poems belonged to the time
af ter the 9th century:
Intet af de norrøne Digte, der give os de tidligste omfattende
Vidnesbyrd om Aase-Religionen, kan være ældre end niende
Aarhundred. Det er Vikingetidens mægtige Bølgeslag, som først
har baaret hele den til os bevarede mythisk-heroiske Digtning frem.3
(None of the Old Norse poems containing the oldest and most com-
prehensive accounts of the Asa-religion can be older than the ninth
century. It is the mighty swell of the Viking Age that first bore the to-
tality of the preserved mythical-heroic poetry.)
Although Keyser was referring to the origin of the poetry, and Bugge to
the poetry as we have it, “den til os bevarede”, I think it is fair to say that
for Keyser Eddie poetry per se is older than 850 A.D., whereas for
Bugge it is, in its totality, younger than that date.
The outeome of this fundamental tuming point in the history of Eddie
scholarship thus appears to be that in the modern view the Eddie poems
are younger than was hitherto believed. In a survey of Eddie studies
Joseph Harris, for example, maintains that “it would be fair to say that
the tendency of recent times is to propose ever later dates” (Harris 1985:
93-94). There is some truth, certainly, in the feeling that there is a uni-
linear tendency towards later datings. In the first generations of Eddie
scholarship may be found opinions on the extreme age of Eddie poems
which everyone nowadays would certainly find exaggerated. Probably it
2 Keyser 1866: 269.
3 Bugge 1881-89: 3. Cf. Bugge 1896: 2 and 1899: xviii, 2.