Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 68
48
Part One
Norse literature in their history of Danish poetry (Bidrag til den danske
Digtekunsts Historie) (1800); referring to Hans Gram they admitted that
Eddie and skaldic poetry were neither Danish nor Swedish but rather
Norwegian and Icelandic, and thus had no place in a history of Danish
poetry.3 Carl F. Koeppen’s well-written Literarische Einleitung in die
Nordische Mythologie (1837) is primarily motivated by interest in the
old religion, as the title of the book indicates. At the same time, how-
ever, he tried to satisfy the need for a more comprehensive presentation
of Old Norse literature without pretending to break new ground. Finally,
Edélestand Du Méril published in 1839 a history of Scandinavian poetry,
Histoire de la poésie scandinave. Like Riihs he was preoccupied with
the special relationship between Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England,
and he thought that the Scandinavian emigration to England in the 5th
century had created a particular linguistic community (Du Méril 1839:
47—48).4 Even in the USA an American lawyer and chargé d’affaires to
Denmark, Henry Wheaton, who used to inform the American public on
Scandinavian laws and letters, published an essay on “Scandinavian
Mythology, Poetry and History” (Wheaton 1829; cf. Benson 1930).
The period following the great debate between Professor Riihs and
the Grimms may be characterized as a period of “normal science”
(Thomas S. Kuhn), during which various aspects of the problem already
introduced into the discussion were further elaborated, but without any
revolutionary upheavals. Probably as a result of the “victory” of the
Grimms, the discussion mostly concentrated on “intemal” aspects. Miil-
ler’s balanced and thoroughly argued view on the age of the Edda was
largely accepted. Even an authority like Wilhelm Grimm in his all-
embracing compendium of German legends from 1829 (Deutsche Hel-
densage) accepted Muller’s view that in their extant form the heroic
poems as a general rule belong to the 8th century, but are based on older
poems, probably from the 6th century. Some poems, e.g. the Atli poems,
may be later than the rest, but most of the heroic poems are from the
heathen period (Wilhelm Grimm 1829: 4).
3 “Kunde man ikke - siger han [Gram] - spørge, om vi Danske og Svenske have saa al-
deles Ret til at tilegne os hin - Eddas og Skaldas - Digtart? Norsk og islandsk er den; deri
er Tingen alleneste og tillige overmaade klar og bevislig. Men hvad der savnes, er, at man
endnu aldrig har seet noget gammelt Vers i dansk eller svensk Maal gjort paa den Maade,
og efter de Regler, som de norske” (Nyerup and Rahbek 1800: preface, second page).
4 On Du Méril, cf. Th. Beck 1935; 228^t8.