Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Side 120

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Part One
view, which had greatly stimulated Bugge’s research, that VQluspå was a
Scandinavian offshoot of the classical Judaeo-Christian sibylline tradi-
tion (cf. Bang 1879), Miillenhoff found it impossible to imagine that a
poet as profoundly immersed in heathen thought as the poet of VQluspå
was could be a disguised Christian.50
However sharp the opposition between these leamed antagonists
seemed to be in their apprehension of VQluspå, they did not actually dif-
fer very much in their dating of the poem. Bugge, who dated Eddie
poetry in general to the period after 800, believed that the author of
VQluspå was Icelandic and from not before the first half of the lOth cen-
tury (cf. Bugge 1881-89: 415), whereas Miillenhoff did not go further
back than the 9th century either, even admitting that the expression
hvera lundr (st. 35) pointed towards Iceland, but assuming that this
stanza, which is lacking in Hauksbok, was not authentic (Miillenhoff
1883: 9-10). It is worth noting that several of Miillenhoff’s adherents
guard against this early, pre-Icelandic dating, however (cf. Gering 1884:
857-59; Mogk 1885: 379-80; Hoffory 1885: 27 = 1889: 29).
Bugge’s startling theory on the origin of Eddie mythology can hardly
be said to have won the day; but in contrast to the similar debate
between Riihs and the Grimms, the dating presupposed by the “British
Isles” theory seems to have prevailed. In the discussion between Keyser
and Grundtvig on the one hånd and Jessen on the other, the main alterna-
tives had been Scandinavian Iron Age - be it South Scandinavian or
Norwegian - versus Icelandic Middle Ages, but from now on the
archaeological concepts more or less vanished from the discussion to-
gether with the concentration on possible Germanic preforms; and the
alternatives which remained were West-Nordic or Western Isles Viking
Age as opposed to the Icelandic Middle Ages.
As I have already suggested, this shift is partly due to philological
arguments based on a better understanding of the history of the runic
language and on Eddie metrics, which were important, but I think that a
general change in “the spirit of the time” is not to be overlooked.
In his field Rudolf Keyser is a major representative of the so-called
50 “ein christ der sich soweit alles christlichen entauBerte und sich so tief ins heidentum
versenkte, wie er als dichter der VQluspå getan haben miiste, horte auf ein christ zu sein
und die einzige vemiinftige ansicht, die damach Ubrig bleibt, ist also die dass der dichter
ein heide war” (Miillenhoff 1883: 38).