Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 161
VI From the tum of the century to Jan de Vries
141
This is just a simpler version of the tripartite scheme referred to above
(pp. 66-67), in which the three cultural-geographical terms are com-
bined with categories of form: Germanic, Scandinavian, Icelandic on
the one hånd, epic, drama and lyric on the other.
In its combined form the scheme is very persuasive, but I am inclined
to believe that to some extent its persuasiveness derives from its beau-
tiful form. From the examples given by Heinrich Beck in two recent
studies on Heusler (Beck 1986 and 1989) it appears that Heusler had a
marked tendency to perceive historical developments in triadic terms,
which seems to be an extremely elementary form of thought. As a paral-
lel one could mention the archaeological scheme created by the Danish
archaeologist Christian Jiirgensen Thomsen, Stone Age - Bronze Age -
Iron Age, a triad with deep roots in antique and medieval thinking. After
having adopted Thomsen’s classification for the arrangement of the Mu-
seum of the University in Oslo, Rudolf Keyser in 1839 exploited it for a
historical theory about the origin of the peoples in the North. Either the
three groups of archaeological objects represented three stages in the
history of one single tribe, he thought, or else they represented three dif-
ferent peoples. Keyser concluded that the historical facts pointed in the
direction of the latter, and so he established a connection between the
three “Ages” and the Finnish, Celtic and Norse peoples respectively (cf.
Andersen [1961]: 115-32).
Whereas I see no connection in substance between Keyser’s now ob-
solete theory and Heusler’s construction, I find them similar in form and
it is tempting to surmise that their force may have something to do with
this form.
Swedish philologists and archaeologists
In Sweden, Nordic philology was made a university subject in 1856-
1858, at about the same time as in Norway. Thanks to the Scandinavistic
spirit of the period it had a Scandinavian rather than a Swedish bias, and
the historical viewpoint naturally made Old Norse and Icelandic lan-
guage and literature a prominent part of the subject, in particular at the
University of Lund, where the famous Old Norse scholar Theodor
Wisén was professor from 1865 (Josefson 1978: 108-09). In 1907 Scan-
dinavian languages had to a great extent been introduced as a compuls-