Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 98
78
Part One
In connection with heroic poetry Petersen made an explicit reference
to Homeric philology, comparing the extant Eddie poems to the form of
Homer’s epics, as these were supposed to have been before they were
collected and united. He viewed the scattered Eddie poems in theforn-
aldarsogur (Eddica minora) in their relation to the Eddie collections as
the Homerides in their relation to Homer.14
Svend Grundtvig and Edwin Jessen
In 1867 Svend Grundtvig published a long review of the new histories
of literature by Petersen and Keyser in the Danish Historisk Tidsskrift.
In the main, his review was a polemical assault on the “Norwegian
school”, whom he criticized for their “one-sided New-Norwegian, but
Un-Nordic conception of the historie realities of the North, to put it
mildly”.15 Above all he was worried by the exelusively Norwegian claim
to Eddie poetry, which according to Grundtvig was common to the
Nordic countries, or, if some narrower limitation had to be made, must be
located in Southern Scandinavia, the oldest seat of Nordic civilization in
the early Iron Age. The later Viking culture, with its wilder character and
coarser taste, represented a decline from the primaeval period, he
thought (Grundtvig 1866-67: 589-92); and the language and literature,
which Keyser called “gammelnorsk” (Old Norwegian) or “norrøn”
(Norse-Icelandic), should properly be called “oldnordisk” or “gammel-
nordisk” (Old Nordic); Grundtvig 1866-67: 502). On the other hånd, he
found that Keyser had underestimated the importance of the Icelandic
contribution to Old Norse prose, and did not accept Keyser’s extreme
freeprose thinking. In particular, he ridiculed the theory that Porgeirr
afråSskollr, this “true Norwegian deus ex machina”, was the real author
14 “Digtene stå på samme trin, som de homeriske, forend de bleve samlede, forenede og
afdelte. Ingen sådan forening fandt sted i Norden” (Petersen 1865: 121). “Disse og endnu
flere mindre digtsamlinger kunne betragtes som et tillæg til hin store eddiske samling, om-
trent som Homerideme til Homer” (Petersen 1865: 129).
15 “[...] vi ansé det for en uopsættelig pligt at nedlægge en bestemt indsigelse imod dette
nye frembrud af den mildest talt ensidige, nynorske men unordiske betragtning af Nordens
historiske forhold” (Grundtvig 1866-67: 507).