Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 128

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Part One
At this period Rosenberg’s view seemed somewhat old-fashioned,
however, and the Swedish historian of literature Henrik Schiick saw him
as a representative of the nationalistic reaction against the intemational-
ism of Julius Paludan, who had recently written a book on foreign in-
fluence on Danish literature in the 17th and 18th centuries.5 Rosenberg’s
conception of the relative age of the Eddie poems is to a great extent
compatible with Finnur Jonsson’s view, however, apart from the faet that
in accordance with the romantic tradition he considered VQluspd to be the
very oldest of all Eddie poems. Like Finnur he underlined the common
religious background of VQluspå and Lokasenna, which he interpreted as
a humorous but nevertheless profoundly tragic poem, on the same reli-
gious level as VQluspå,6 and consequently of comparably early date.
Unlike Finnur, Rosenberg thought that Hårbardsljod and Rigspula were
recent in relative terms, which does not mean that he held them to be
more recent in absolute terms than Finnur did, since no really mytholo-
gical poem was taken by Rosenberg to be composed after 800.
To compare Finnur Jonsson’s dated list of poems with Guøbrandur
Vigfusson’s datings is very complicated because of the latter’s rather
idiosyncratic arrangement, where e.g. the entire “Helgi trilogy” is taken
as an entity, apparently ascribed to one single poet. But in contrast to the
view of Rosenberg, GuSbrandur’s absolute dating of Eddie poetry as
such is of the same type as Finnur’s; only his relative dating is quite
different.
As already mentioned, Finnur Jonsson did not accept Jessen’s argu-
ments for an Icelandic origin of the Eddie poems, with the exception of
two poems, VQluspå in skamma and Gripisspå, and this has naturally in-
fluenced his dating. German scholars were in general more apt to agree
with Jessen in this respect, and consequently some poems believed to be
typical of Icelandic leamedness are sometimes given a late dating. An
5 “Schiick staller från denna synpunkt två verk om den aldre danska litteraturen mot var-
andra: Carl Rosenbergs Nordboernes aandsliv (1878-85) och det recenserade arbetet av
Paludan [Fremmed Indflydelse paa den danske Nationalliter atur i det 17. og 18. Aarhun-
drede, 1887]. Grundtvigianen Rosenberg hade ‘foralskat sig i ett i viss mån uppkonstrue-
radt ideal af nordisk folklighet’ och ‘såsom ett historiskt onskningsmål uppsatt en nordisk
kultur, fredad från alla frammande inflytelser’ [...]” (Gustafsson 1983: 145, cf. Schiick
1889: 75).
6 “[...] den er visselig et humoristiskt, men netop ved sit Humor et dybt tragiskt Digt, som
i Aand og mytologisk Betydning ikke staar langt under Vølvespaadommen” (Rosenberg
1878: 199).