Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 65
III The period of romanticism
45
eration than “external” arguments. I therefore believe that preferring the
intemal to external arguments will inevitably lead to reliance on author-
ities. As far as the authorities are trustworthy, this is an expedient way of
obtaining a safe result, but it is not the way of science or scholarship,
where everyone in the last instance will have to rely on his or her own
judgement, however fallible, and where it is a rule of the game that argu-
ments are put in a form which is intersubjectively understandable, in or-
der to be accessible to public scrutiny and discussion. This is hardly pos-
sible if internal reasons are taken as superior to external reasons, and
Wilhelm Grimm’s hierarchy of values should therefore not in my opin-
ion be upheld - even if it happens to be the way leading to truth: schol-
arship will sometimes have to be content with less, so long as it is
guided by a rational method of thought.
The problem remains, however, that “external” arguments very often
fail to lead to an unambiguous result - in faet it is not uncommon that the
same observation or argument can be adduced in favour of opposite con-
clusions. Provided that internal arguments yield to external arguments
that are really convincing, I see no objection to taking into account the
impressions caused by the elusive resonances aroused in the attentive
reader, even if they cannot be supported by positive, external arguments.
The result of the resounding controversy between Friedrich Riihs and
his powerful opponents was that the former was more or less beaten off
the field. In the first half of the century there are numerous shorter re-
marks in the literature on this subject showing the conviction that the
Anglo-Saxon theory, and its implications conceming the “inauthenticity”
of Eddie mythology, no longer deserved any counterarguments;39 and
later on it seems to have been forgotten; it is even reported that Riihs re-
tired from his old position himself.40 The Grimm party had won.
39 “Deras åsigt, som i denna Mythologi endast velat finna syssellosa Munkars dikt, en
plump harmning efter Grekers och Romares gudasagor, med inblandade christeliga fore-
stallningar, behofver i sjelfva verket ej mera vederlaggas” (Geijer 1825: 223.) Cf. further
Koeppen: Riihs’s Anglo-Saxon theory is “langst erledigt” (Koeppen 1837: 78; cf. Dietrich
1843: x-xi; Rosselet 1855: 246).
40 “Jag doide ej, [•••] huru vi ej kunna undgå, hvad hans åsigter af Eddoma och islandska
vitterheten betråffar, att aga samma mening som Rask, Muller och broderna Grimm så val-
digt mot honom forfåktat. Till min forundran svarade han, att han i afseende på dessa fore-
mål betydligt andrat sina tankesatt, och att man snart skulle få se det; likval utlat han sig ej
nårmare, hvarutinnan val den omnåmnda andringen kunde bestå” (Atterbom 1859:
61-62). Atterbom was referring to a joumey in the summer of 1817.