Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 131
VI From the tum of the century to Jan de Vries
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a survey of editions and translations, and in another chapter on the inter-
nal history of the poems he not only discussed the questions of the age
and provenance of the Eddie poems, but also described details of lan-
guage, style, metrics and form types, which are relevant to different
methods of dating.
Sijmons’s interest in the problem of dating was of long standing. As
early as 1887 he had published an excellent article in which he treated
matters of principle as well as matters of detail, and this is probably the
earliest general article devoted entirely to a discussion of methodology
rather than of the age of any particular poem. Also in a review of
GuSbrandur Vigfusson’s Corpvs Poeticvm Boreale (1883) he had dis-
cussed some dating criteria (Sijmons 1886).
As for the age of the Eddie poems in general, Sijmons in his introduc-
tion rejoiced in the quasi-unanimity of opinion formulated by Bugge,
“the master of Eddie research”, to whom his volume was dedicated: no
Eddie poem in its present form is from earlier than the middle of the
ninth century (Sijmons 1906: ccxlviii; cf. 1887: 221-22). According to
the plan for the text edition, this dating was also as far as possible to be
reflected in the historical restoration of the linguistic forms of the text
(cf. [Gering 1885]). In principle Sijmons adhered firmly to the linguistic
boundary between Proto-Nordic and Old Norse as an Eddie terminus a
quo\ nevertheless, he was inelined to follow Hoffory in accepting the
restitution of non-syncopated forms like *qsur (> qss) in Prymskvida in
order to avoid verses with three syllables, regarded as non-metrical (Sij-
mons 1906: ccli-ccliv; [1888]: xv; cf. 1887: 237), accepting the conse-
quence that this poem was to be placed at the very beginning of the Old
Norse linguistic period (cf. Hoffory 1885: 31-34 = 1889: 36^10).
In Sijmons’s opinion a chronological arrangement of all the poems
was impossible, however. Instead he advocated a mixed chronological
and systematic ordering, where the undatable poems were associated
with datable poems, to which they were related in content and form.10 A
detailed dating of the various poems in absolute terms, such as that
found in Finnur Jonsson’s list, seemed premature to Sijmons (1906:
10 “Eine klassificierung der altnordischen gedichte kann uberhaupt nicht rein chrono-
logisch, sondem sie muss chronologisch-systematisch sein, d.h. die zeitlicht nicht bestim-
baren sind den zeitlich bestimten nach verwantschaft von inhalt und form beizuordnen”
(Sijmons 1886: 122).