Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Side 105

V Nordic debate in the period of Scandinavianism
85
(1869-70: 75). A stylistic issue was the use of kennnings; according to
Jessen the kennings of a more artificial kind imply a late dating, while
nothing can be said on this basis about the date of a poem lacking ken-
nings. In this case Grundtvig pointed to the occurrence of similar ken-
nings in Beowulf, supposed to be from the 8th century (Jessen 1867-69:
257; Grundtvig 1869-70: 85-89). A criterion which we have seen used
in the discussion on VQluspå was the occurrence of similar or identical
expressions or verses in different poems, verbal loans. According to Jes-
sen Baldrs draumar had taken over parts from VQluspå and Prymskvida
verbatim, showing with great probability that Baldrs draumar is a late
Icelandic “exercise piece”. Grundtvig was not convinced; the direction
of verbal loans is difficult to establish, and he held that the verses Baldrs
draumar had in common with Prymskvida were obviously “loci com-
munes” of the kind that is frequently found in popular poetry (Jessen
1867-69: 260; Grundtvig 1869-70: 90).
Although this debate thus led primarily to a more sophisticated ex-
amination of different external criteria, Jessen also attached great im-
portance to various intemal criteria, such as judgements on a poem’s
aesthetic value. In this respect his judgements were more negative, how-
ever, than those of most other spokesmen for this way of thinking. His
overall view on the development of the mythological poems was similar
to that of, for instance, Rosselet, but he underlined far more strongly the
“literary” character of the younger group of poems, deducing it from a
negative evaluation of their art. He claimed that the Eddie poems were
anything but popular in form, but rather literary in a peculiarly Icelandic
manner, and suggested that “the Icelandic ossification in the inner or-
gans” made these poems unsuitable for resuscitation.25 This particular
Icelandic group of poems was to be explained by a change of taste.
Commenting on a group of poems where Baldr is mentioned, he said:
“people got tired of constantly hearing the old poems like Prymskvida or
Skirnismål, where the story is told straightforwardly, without presuppos-
ing a thorough knowledge of the content beforehand, which is the case
25 “Eddaviseme er med faa Undtagelser alt andet end ‘folkelige’ (det vil heller aldrig lyk-
kes at gore dem til ‘Folkelæsning’); de er alt andet end ukunstlet naturlig Folkepoesi. [...]
Det er det ‘Literaire’, det ejendommelig islandsk Literaire; denne islandske Forbening i de
indre Organer; det er Mangelen paa ‘Primitivitet’, som har gjort disse Digtformer uduelige
til Genoplivelse, endog for en Digter som Øhlenschlæger” (Jessen 1869; 216).