Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Qupperneq 119

V Nordic debate in the period of Scandinavianism
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that matter, GuSbrandur Vigfusson - ever took notice of this predecessor.
The Grimms’ victory had been total, and Riihs appears to have been for-
gotten. The reaction to Bugge’s mythological theories was very similar to
that provoked by Riihs’s theories, particularly in Germany. The Scandin-
avian shift of focus away from the more hypothetical origin of the Eddie
genre evidently implied a threat to any German claim to the Edda; it was
thus natural that Edzardi had underlined the distinetion between preform
and actual poem. As in the early 19th century, a salvage action was
mounted in order to “rescue” the Eddie poems as sources of Germanic
mythology,48 to a great extent even to rescue Germanic mythology as such.
The weightiest objections to Bugge were put forth by von der Hagen’s suc-
cessor at the University of Berlin, Karl Miillenhoff. He heard about the
new theories while he was working on his Deutsche Altertumskunde, in
which he was to gi ve a thorough survey of the oldest German history on the
basis of sources from Greek and Roman antiquity. He immediately tumed
to the Nordic sources, and henceforward until his death in 1884 worked in
opposition to Bugge. The fifth volume of Deutsche Altertumskunde is
therefore devoted to the two Eddas, and especially to Vgluspå.
Conceming the “great prophecy of the vglva”, Bugge stated that “fan-
tastic theories as to primitive Germanic mythology [urgermanske Drøm-
merier] have hindered a truly historical understanding of this poem; but
the truth cannot be completely hidden: it was in Christian Britain, where
the revelations of southem prophets had quickened the souls of men,
that the great sibyl of Scandinavian heathendom saw her most splendid
visions, and found Words in which to make known the fate of the world
from the earliest eras to the most remote futurity” (Bugge 1899: 11; cf.
1896: 23). Miillenhoff saw no reason to reject these “dreams”, however,
and insisted that a doser inspection would show that the matter of Vglu-
spå had its roots in German proto-history.49 Rejecting Bishop Bang’s
48 Miillenhoff would hardly have written his volume on Vgluspå, Mogk wrote, “wenn nicht
das erscheinen von Bugges Studier over de nordiske Gude- og Heltesagns Oprindelse
und Bangs Untersuchungen iiber die Voluspå den rastlosen samler und priifer veranlasst
hatten sein schweigen zu brechen und im namen der deutschen nation als berufenster ger-
manisches eigentum, deutsche poesie, deutschen gotterglauben, deutschen geist und mit
ihnen deutsche methode und die friichte deutschen fleisses zu schirmen und zu verteidi-
gen” (Mogk 1885: 367; cf. further Mogk 1884).
49 “iiberall zeigt sich bei etwas naherem zusehen dass der stoff eine lange vorgeschichte
hat, die selbst bis in die germanische urzeit zuriickreicht” (Miillenhoff 1883: 38).