Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 155

VI From the turn of the century to Jan de Vries
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double-sided lays of incident. Younger representatives of the group, like
the mythological poems Prymskvida and Hymiskvida, retain their typi-
cal defining features, whereas poems like Atlamål and Sigurdarkvida in
skamma tend in the direction of lyric, containing parts that are close to
the situation poems. In poems of incident like Grottasgngr and Gud-
runarkvida III, on the other hånd, dialogue tends to dominate over nar-
ration.
The purely dramatic group, one-sided lays of incident, is a small one,
comprising the Eddie poems Skirnismål as well as parts of Regins-
mal/Fåfnismål (das “Hortlied”) and Helgakvida Hundingsbana II
(“Helgis Tod und Wiederkehr”, HH. II 30-51), two poems from Eddica
minora and finally two poems rendered into Latin by Saxo. While the
double-sided poems were supposed to be a Common Germanic type, the
one-sided group appears to have been a Common Scandinavian one,
intrinsically later than its Germanic counterpart, but as a poetic form
dating from pre-Icelandic times.
The purely lyrical group, the situation poems, is conveniently sub-
divided according to the sex of the protagonists. In the Codex Regius
there are five female elegies, three of which are double-sided, Gudrun-
arkvida /, Oddrunargråtr and Gudrunarhvgt, and two one-sided, Helreid
Brynhildar and Gudrunarkvida II, the last being, as Svend Grundtvig had
shown (cf. p. 90 above), a double-sided lay of incident that has been
transformed into a monologue (Heusler 1941: 185). The Old Norse lyric
has a still later “inner age” than the dramatic type and can be divided into
three different layers. Primary is the female elegy, which has served as a
pattern for the male elegy, where a hero looks back at his past at the mo-
ment of death (“Sterbelieder”). This group has in its tum given rise to a
third group of retrospective poems without any elegiae sentiment, the
hero instead indulging in recalling his former deeds. According to Heus-
ler, the lyrical group as a whole is, together with the later lays of incident,
tinged with lyric, an Icelandic aftermath of heroic poetry.50
I regard Heusler’s form criticism as a towering achievement in
Eddie scholarship which has greatly contributed to a more profound
50 “Das ungeschwachte Fortleben der alten Liedkunst und Sagenmasse und das Bediirf-
nis, sich diese gewohnte Phantasiewelt blutwarm zu erhalten, sich schopferisch in ihr zu
tummeln: beides zusammen ergab eine islåndische Nachblute der Heldendichtung. Der
vomehmste Ertrag dieser Nachbliite war das elegische Heldenlied” (Heusler 1941: 187).