Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Side 102
82
Part One
The consensus was challenged in a resounding manner by Edwin Jes-
sen, an academic outsider and a most independent and critical mind,
who in the following issue of Historisk Tidsskrift published an objection
(“indsigelse”) to Grundtvig’s review. Grundtvig replied in the next is-
sue, upon which the debate was closed in Historisk Tidsskrift, and Jessen
had to go to a minor journal in order to get some remarks (“bemærk-
ninger”) published. In 1871 he finally published an important summary
of his views in a German article on the origin, age and character of the
Eddie poems (“Uber die Eddalieder. Heimat, alter, charakter”) in Zeit-
schrift fiir deutsche Philologie, which has remained one of the classic
contributions to Eddie scholarship.21
Contributions to the discussion were also published in Norway, chief-
ly in newspapers;22 but the most important contribution, by a young
cand. philol. Gustav Storm, later a prominent historian and philologist,
was issued as a separate publication (Storm 1869). Keyser’s immigra-
tion theory was now obsolete, the young man stated with remarkable au-
thority, but it should be judged in terms of the State of knowledge a gen-
eration earlier. He applied a similar judgement to Keyser’s view on the
firm oral prose tradition. Keyser’s point of departure in 1846 had been
P. E. Miiller’s views from the beginning of the century on the oral saga,
but recent research on the kings’ sagas by P. A. Munch, N. M. Petersen
and others had pointed out the literary connections between them.
Concerning the question of dating Eddie poetry he defended the posi-
tion of Keyser and Grundtvig, however, without bringing substantial
new arguments, and in the debate on the “right of possession” of Old
Norse literature, he supported Keyser against Grundtvig, while at the
same time being more careful than Keyser had been in giving the Ice-
landers their fair share. Advocating the term “norrøn” instead of “old-
nordisk”, covering Old Norwegian and Icelandic to the exelusion of
Danish and Swedish, he underlined the Icelanders’ leading position as
far as the prose literature was concemed, and their absolute dominance
in poetry and works concerning Icelandic history, but he still held that
the greater part of the older poetry was composed in Norway. Like Key-
21 Jessen 1867-69 [April 1868]; Grundtvig 1869-70 [January 1869]; Jessen 1869, 1871.
22 Cf. Grundtvig 1869-70: 3. One of these articles, published in Norden 5 (1868), was
signed “L.D.”. Mobius (1880: 5) identified the author as the politician Ludvig Daae
(1829-1893); Grundtvig (1869-70: 5) had already eliminated the two historians Ludvig
Kristensen Daa (1809-1877) and Ludvig Ludvigsen Daa (1834—1910).