Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 124
VI From the tum of the century to Jan de Vries
In the years before and after 1900 two major surveys appeared, one of
Old Norse literature in general, the other of Eddie poetry in particular,
which may serve as suitable vantage points for summing up the results
of the research of the foregoing period. In 1894 Finnur Jonsson pub-
lished the first volume of his great history of Old Norwegian and Old
Icelandic literature, which is still the most comprehensive description of
this literature, and despite a number of shorteomings, an indispensable
work of reference. In a subehapter devoted to the age of the Eddie
poems he underlined the value of linguistic criteria, subscribing without
reservation to the idea that the Proto-Nordic/Old Norse language bound-
ary was an indisputable terminus a quo - yet without adhering to the
theory of an origin for the Edda in the British Isles (1894: 63). Thus, ac-
cording to Finnur Jonsson, “no Eddie poem can be older than 800”
(1894: 42).1 This dating obviously implies that Eddie poetry as a genre
is contemporary with skaldic poetry, and it is therefore natural that
when, some years later, he published a historical survey of the language
of the skalds, Det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog omtr. 800-1300 (1901),
Finnur Jonsson emphasised the identity of the language in the two kinds
of poetry. In this work he provided the means for a detailed comparison
of linguistic forms in the two genres. The absence in the Edda of con-
tracted forms of the type blåm (< blgum), found in younger skaldic
poems, for example, he took as a proof that the Eddie poems could not
be mueh younger than 1100, and this general terminus ad quem he found
corroborated by religious history (1894: 44, 54—56).
1 In faet, Finnur Jonsson preferred the latter part of the 9th century as the most probable
limit a quo: “[...] c. 850 (875) er den allertidligste grænse for Eddakvadenes
tilblivelse opad i tiden” (Finnur Jonsson 1894:47).