Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 27

I Introduction
7
1860s and 1870s, now obviously kindled also by nationalistic feelings.
On the other hånd a profounder examination of the more technical prob-
lems involved in the dating also took place. Patriotic sentiments had
been associated with the study of Old Norse literature from the very be-
ginning, but the growth of nationalism in Post-Napoleonic Europe dur-
ing the 19th century led to a deepening of such feelings, not least in
Scandinavia, where a Pan-Scandinavian movement was confronted with
narrower nationalism on the part of each of the Scandinavian nations,
most acutely so when Denmark’s Scandinavian neighbours failed to as-
sist her in her war against Prussia in 1864.
In the modem period ideological viewpoints are less manifest, and as
the presentation of the history of scholarship draws nearer to our own
time, technical arguments will loom larger, and we will find it more dif-
ficult to confine ourselves to a historical perspective. From our century
only the more salient contributions will be put in focus, with an empha-
sis on the elaboration of different criteria for dating and on more com-
prehensive presentations of the philological problems involved in the
study of Eddie poetry. The final section of the historical part of the pres-
ent volume will thus lead into Part Two, where a selection of different
approaches to dating will be discussed from a methodological point of
view, which obviously means that the author will have to define his own
position within the ongoing debate. A comparable change from a histor-
ical point of view to a methodological one is also discernible in Theo-
dore M. Andersson’s magisterial survey, The Problem oflcelandic Saga
Origins (1964), where the historical survey concludes with a chapter de-
voted to “critical considerations”. I have chosen, however, to expand
these considerations into a full-fledged Part Two.
A convenient ending point to the historical part is a discussion of Jan
de Vries’s history of Old Norse literature, the second edition of which
was completed in 1967. Subsequent scholarship has mostly been led by
people who are still active, and I think it is prudent not to attempt a his-
torical evaluation of one’s own age. It is nevertheless permissible to
wonder to what extent the opinions of modern scholars - perhaps only
subconsciously - are also conditioned by their personal cast of mind on
the one hånd, or by ideological convictions on the other, and to what ex-
tent they - or we - may succumb to the intellectual fallacies implied in a
personal commitment of this kind. It is a banal but indeniable faet that
no scholarly work is carried out in a spiritual vaeuum - the present work