Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Side 164

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Part One
around 1300 - but as a dating criterion it belongs to an important type
which might be labeled “dating by historical or archaeological realia”.
By distinguishing between brunaQld and haugsQld, Snorri had already
shown some interest in archaeological periodisation according to fune-
real customs (ed. Bjarni ASalbjamarson 1941: 4—5), and as a means of
dating Eddie poetry such customs had been discussed by Muller (1818:
127-28), and later more extensively by Storm (1869: 18-19; cf. Finnur
Jonsson 1894: 233; Mogk 1885: 375-76).
Konrad Maurer declared that in general, realia provided the most solid
criteria for dating, and he enumerated a number of cases where strong ar-
guments were to be sought in this field - the mention of Greenland in the
title of Atlamål in grænlenzku, as well as the allusion to a “hvftabjgm” in
st. 18, the turf cutting in Rigspula (st. 12), fifteen years as the age of legal
maturity in Helgakvida Hundingsbana I (st. 10), the “Kesselfang” in
Gudrunarkvida III (Maurer 1870: 442-44; cf. Sijmons 1887: 227-29).
From the beginning of this century dating by archaeological means
has become more or less a Swedish speciality, above all due to the works
of Birger Nerman. In 1903 the brilliant archaeologist Knut Stjerna, who
was interested in the importance of Beowulf and other Germanic poetry
for the understanding of early Swedish history, and in consequence was
used to combining philological and archaeological arguments, remarked
that the Eddie expression concerning a sword, hringr er i hjald, would
apply to one particular type of sword, known from the 6th and 7th cen-
tury. Stjema confined himself to the conclusion that the poems in ques-
tion mirror a historical period anterior to the Viking Age, namely the
time around 600.63 Stjerna’s article was published in a Festschrift for the
Swedish keeper of national antiquities (riksantikvar), Oscar Montelius,
who in a conference some years later went a step further than Stjema
had done, in deducing from the same observation that these poems not
only refer to a particular period, but that they were probably composed
in the period itself, which on archaeological grounds was to be set to the
6th century, in his opinion.64
63 “Detta år ett bindande bevis darfor, att i Helgediktningen vissa partier återspegla
forhållanden från tiden omkring år 600, således århundraden aldre an hvad man på endast
filologiska grunder år bojd att antaga” (Stjerna 1903: 120).
64 “Jag år ofvertygad om, att detta forhållande berattigar oss att saga: De nu nåmnda
Eddasångema - och troligen åfven andra - åro efter all sannolikhet diktade på 500-talet,