Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Side 30
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Part One
is compatible with modern scholarship. For Schimmelmann and the
generations of historians until the Age of Enlightenment there was no
distinction between Biblical and secular history, and every history of the
world appropriately began with the creation some 6000 years ago.3 Fur-
ther, the humanistic background of educated people was a classical one,
so if archaic-looking poetry was not associated with the patriarchs, it
would at least be natural to try to fit it into the history of Greek litera-
ture. For the comprehension of Nordic history, finally, it is decisive that
medieval Euhemerism was still in vigour, according to which the æsir
were originally human beings, who had immigrated from Asia in the
beginning of our era,4 and later on, both on account of their deeds and
through their devilish deceit, were worshipped as gods.
The Edda of the æsir
For the 17th-century Icelandic scholars who first brought the Eddie
manuscripts to light, the poems were composed by the æsir themselves -
a view which is in best accordance with the testimony of the very texts
of the poems, Håvamål being the ‘sayings of the High one’, i.e. OSinn,
who according to Snorri used to speak in poetic form.5 Even before the
Codex Regius was rediscovered in 1642, Icelandic men of letters like
the Bishop of Skålholt, Brynjolfur Sveinsson, and the Parson of Laufås,
Magnus Olafsson, dreamt of an Edda older and greater than that of
Snorri, made by the æsir themselves or their descendants:
Ex veterum rhythmis, ut etiam appellationibus Asarum nonnullis ac
inprimis Odini et aliarum deniqve rerum, apparet, aliam fuisse Ed-
dam antiqviorem avt volumen fabularum ab ipsis Asis confectum avt
eorum nepotibus qvod interierit, et cujus hæc nostra Edda aliqvale sit
compendium: qvia nominum paveissimorum, qvæ Odino ex varijs
3 Cf. Whitrow 1989: 153-54.
4 According to Codex Wormianus, Oøinn emigrated at the same time as the Roman chief-
tain Pompejus was harrowing the Mediterranean (ed. Finnur Jonsson 1924: 6; cf. Ynglinga
saga ch. 5, ed. Bjami Aøalbjamarson 1941: 14).
5 “Mælti hann allt hendingum, svå sem nu er {sat kveØit, er skåldskapr heitir. Hann ok hof-
goøar hans heita ljoøasmiøir, {m at sii fprott hofsk af jreim i NorØrlgndum” (Ynglinga saga
ch. 6, ed. Bjami Aøalbjamarson 1941: 17).