Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Síða 69

IV “Normal science” - after Grimm
49
Comparative religion
Contemporaneous with the Nordic revival in European Pre-Romanti-
cism was an increased interest in Asian religion, which to a certain ex-
tern was felt to be a cognate field. This in its tum led to a revival of some
aspects of the immigration theory, no longer in terms of political history,
but in the more general terms of cultural development. In an interesting
chapter in his well-informed book on the influence of Northern antiqui-
ties in France, Thor Beck has shown that Mallet only reluctantly adhered
to the old theory of Obinn’s immigration, apparently without believing
too firmly in it, but that at the same time Mallet was fascinated by the
points of contact he discemed between Old Norse and Asian, in particu-
lar Persian, religion, incessantly pointing out parallels between the two
(cf. Th. Beck 1934: 26-36; 1935: 19-36).
The Icelandic Edda translator and historian of religion Finnur
Magnusson, who worked in Copenhagen, developed this point of view
in a series of bold new interpretations of Eddie mythology. In introduc-
tions to leetures on the Eddie poems (1816) he even made an attempt to
rejuvenate the fantasies of Rudbeck, whose main point, namely that
there is a relationship between the Northern and Mediterranean peoples,
he accepted while acknowledging that Rudbeck’s linguistic knowledge
had clearly been insufficient.5 Referring to William Jones and Franz
Bopp, Finnur Magnusson was able to adduce new evidence from histor-
ical linguistics which showed an affinity between Sanskrit and Germanic
languages like Gothic and Icelandic, and from comparative religion,
which revealed points of comparison between Old Norse and Persian or
Indian cosmological and mythological ideas (Magnusen 1817: 57-61). A
plausible explanation of these resemblances, he thought, might be found
in the old immigration theory.
As we have seen, the theory of the immigration of the æsir from Asia
was doomed, but, rethought in a more general form, it pointed forward
towards the Indo-European theories of modem historians of religion.
Critics from the Age of Enlightenment, like Adelung, had been very rash
5 “Dog er det vist, at Rudbeck havde Ret i Hovedsagen, forsaavidt at Grækerne, samt de
tildeels fra dem nedstammende Latinere, og de gothiske Nordboer vare beslægtede Folk,
og at adskillige af deres ældste Myther og Troesmeninger vare betydelig overeensstem-
mende” (Magnus(s)en 1816: 104).