Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 53
III The period of romanticism
33
What is new in Riihs’s theory is first and foremost the method of
argumentation, which was principally linguistic - including metrics.
Pointing to the faet that the vocabulary of Old Norse poetry differs sub-
stantially from that of prose writings, he produced an imposing list of
about fifty poetic words common to Icelandic poetry and the Anglo-
Saxon language but not found in Nordic prose texts. This, he main-
tained, had to be explained as the Wholesale import of poetry from Eng-
land to Iceland (Riihs 1812: 115-18). A similar common stock he found
in the kennings. Also loan words from Latin like toflur and hrimealer
were taken as a proof of late origin. The other main argument are the
Eddie metres, which according to Riihs were used only in Old Icelandic
and Anglo-Saxon poetry.
The faet that Riihs and his predecessors looked upon Eddie mytholo-
gical poems not as religion but as poetry had far-reaching consequences
for the discussion. Both for themselves, and even more so for their op-
ponents, this view implied a substantial depreciation of the Edda. Ade-
lung even conceded that his main purpose in examining a matter of as
little consequence as the age and authenticity of these Nordic verses was
to “arouse suspicion of them” in order to counteract an exaggerated ven-
eration. His irritation had been kindled in particular by Friedrich David
Grater.14 The controversy obviously mirrors the great shift from the Age
of Enlightenment to the Age of Romanticism, and this explains the
depth of feeling attached to it. It is interesting to note that Johann
Gottfried Herder agreed with the criticism of Adelung and Schlozer.
Perhaps he reacted less negatively than most of his contemporaries to
the notion of poetry, seeing it as something more noble than “mere
fiction”; but his main point was that by recognizing the Judaeo-Christian
aspects of Old Norse mythology it might be possible to excise them, in
order to elicit the authentic, “natural” heathendom of the Nordic people.
Old ideas will by necessity be enclosed in notions from a later period, he
14 “Wir leben in einer Zeit, wo sich Lehren, woran man seit Jahrtausenden Himmel und
Holle gekniipft hatte, mussen gepriift und bestritten sehen, und eine an sich so gleich-
giiltige Sache, als das Alter und die Aechtheit gewisser Nordischer Reimereyen ist, soli
schlechterdings nicht historisch gepriift, soli auf das Wort einiger weniger Manner blind-
lings geglaubt werden. [...] Gegen diese Gedichte MiBtrauen zu erwecken, war meine vor-
nehmste Absicht. weil Grater gerade diese, ohne alle vorher gegangene Untersuchung, mit
dem unbeschranktesten Lobe erhoben und wieder erhoben hatte” (Adelung 1803:212-13).