Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 156
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Part One
understanding of the art of Old Norse poetry. His terse and concise de-
scriptions of different art forms lead to a general evolutionary scheme
of illuminating clarity: Germanic epic lay - Scandinavian dramatical
form - Icelandic lyric. The feeling that this schematic morphology has
a direct bearing on the problem of dating is more a result of subcon-
scious persuasion than of argument, however; and, as we have seen,
Heusler himself wamed against taking it as a decisive dating cri-
terion.
In previous works Heusler had examined in greater detail a number of
the aspects summarized in this final work. Particularly important in our
context is an article from 1906 devoted to the presumably later, unique-
ly Icelandic contribution to Eddie poetry (“das islandische Sondergut”).
Crucial for the historical framework of this article is the idea that a
distinetive Icelandic character did not develop immediately after the
settlement. Although the first generations of Icelanders obviously shared
their poetry with the remainder of the West Nordic community, there
is nothing to preclude some of the poems from this period having
originated in Iceland. As a time limit for this transitional period Heusler
chose the end of the “Saga Age”, about 1030, a period which marks
an important change also in Norwegian history, leading to the disap-
pearance of Eddie poetry in the “mother country”, in part as a result
of Norway’s less tolerant conversion to Christianity.51 Specific dates
are rare in Heusler’s writing on Eddie poetry, and the more con-
sequential is this delimitation of what can be taken as distinetively
Icelandic.
In this article considerations of essence and genre loom large over
discussions of the historical preconditions of the poetry. The principal
idea is that the well-attested theoretical reflection in Iceland, as well as
the preservation and collection of Eddie poetry, provided a natural back-
ground for a new type of Eddie poem, a “secondary” poetry, presuppos-
ing the knowledge of the old texts, which are put to new use.
Three groups of poetry constitute, according to Heusler, the uniquely
Icelandic genres:
51 “Das Norwegen der Olafe kam nicht so um das groGe ‘Entweder-Oder’ herum” (Heus-
ler 1941: 190).