Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 35
II Scholarly prehistory
15
declared that “Vola est Sibylla Erythræa”. He believed, however, that
there were, in faet, two sybils and did not venture any dating (ed.
Faulkes 1977: hl-2). The chronological problems were solved by
GuSmundur Andrésson, the Icelander behind Resen’s text of Vgluspå,
who assumed that the Erythrean Sibyl had in reality lived in the period
immediately before the emigration of the æsir, but that the æsir had
made people believe that she was mueh older in order to strengthen con-
fidence in her prophecies about them (ed. Faulkes 1977: Voluspå Cl).
The Hyperborean Edda
The leamed combinations of Nordic prehistory and legends from Medi-
terranean antiquity associated with Old Norse literature flourished in
particular in Sweden, where the enthusiastic “goticists” spurred their
imagination and leaming in order to evoke a patriotism worthy of Swe-
den’s status as a world power. The Goths (and Getes - in faet, all the
“Northern” peoples of antiquity)17 known from ancient literature were
identified with the “Gotar” in Scandinavia, and Sweden was taken as the
officina gentium and vagina nationum - hive of races or womb of na-
tions - that Jordanes talked about in his History of the Goths, referring
to Scandza insula (cf. Th. Beck 1934: 19^-4). This movement, which
has been called the “yverboma” Gothic Romanticism, attained, in the
words of its historian Johan Nordstrom, its “canonical expression in the
historical works of Johannes Magnus [Historia de omnibus Gothorum
Sveonumqve regibus, 1540] and its fantastic coronation in Rudbeck’s
Atlantica [1677-98]”.18 Allusions in the Old Testament to the realm of
Magog, son of Japheth, son of Noah, which was situated in the north (cf.
e.g. Ezekiel ch. 38-39), were expanded to a theory that Sweden was this
northerly realm, where “the tree of Japhet” had cast its fruit shortly after
the Deluge. The curious Swedish word yverboren is founded on the
Greek hyperborean (cf. ‘YjtepPåpeoi - traditionally interpreted as ‘be-
17 “De Skytar, Getar, ok Gotar, voro alle ett ok samma folk” (Goransson [1746]: vi). Ac-
cording to Goransson, these people came to Sweden shortly after the Babylonian captivity
and later disseminated.
18 “[...] den yverboma gotiska romantik, som sedermera får sitt kanoniska uttryck i Jo-
hannes Magnus’ historieskrivning och sitt fantastiska kron i Rudbecks Atlantica” (Nord-
strom 1975: 86).