Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 38
18
Part One
poem may have preserved some of man’s original knowledge of true re-
ligion from the period before the emergence of heathendom. In the same
way Schimmelmann looked at the Edda primarily as a Christian work of
edification: the Eddie religion not only resembles Christianity, under the
veil of metaphors there is complete identity, and the Edda is no less than
God’s special revelation to the Nordic peoples (Schimmelmann 1777:
17).28
This apogee in the appraisal of Eddie wisdom tumed out to be a dead
end in Eddie scholarship. In the history of ideas it may have some im-
portance, however, if, as Thomas Krommelbein has argued, Schimmel-
mann influenced N.F.S. Grundtvig through Rasmus Nyerup (Krdmmel-
bein 1998). Since no scholarly profit could be gained in polemics
against the exaggerations of a Schimmelmann, the real debate concem-
ing the date and authenticity of the Edda arose from statements in the
opposite direction.
“Collections of fiction”
Even in Renaissance Sweden the goticists did not have the field to them-
selves, and in matters of history as well as religion the exiled Arch-
bishop Johannes Magnus had an energetic adversary in the reformer
Olaus Petri, who had leamt from his teacher Philipp Melanchton that the
theory of the Swedish origin of the Goths was false. On the contrary, he
believed that the Nordic countries were inhabited by a “rude and injudi-
cious people, who had but little respect for good manners and culture,
and began to leam discipline and good behaviour only when they had
converted to Christianity”.29
28 Cf.: “Hat nicht GOtt [...] der nicht wil, daB ein einziger Mensch, vielweniger eine gan-
ze Nation, ohne Erkenntnis der Wahrheit und Information zur Seligkeit, bleiben soli; [...]
den Nordem, Geten, den, Honeten, Vandalen etc. bey ihrer ersten Auswanderung [...] ein
Sansscrit und Schrift mitgeben? und gleich Anfangs bey ihrem erstem Auszuge, als ein
Grund und kurzen Inbegrif der Gotteslehre, gleich als einen Wegweiser und Licht zur Se-
ligkeit zukommen lassen?” (Schimmelmann 1774: 161).
29 “Det ar visst, att i desse try riken, som ock i mång annor land, haver varit grovt och
oforståndigt folk, de dår fogo aktat hava det som till goda seder och skicklighet hort haver.
Och begynte endeis då forst låra tukt och seder, nar de vordo kristne” (quoted by Nord-
strom 1975: 12, cf. p. 116-17).