Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 172

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Part One
of different methods of dating which are still relevant, rejecting some of
them, refining others and proposing some new and original methods.
Being generally sceptical of higher criticism, he preferred a painstaking
analysis of linguistic and metrical detail and took care not to overstate
his conclusions. The presence of old-fashioned features in a poem does
not prove that it is old, but if such phenomena occur in particularly high
concentration in a certain poem, the burden of proof must rest with
whomever believes it to be late (Noreen 1926: 124, 137). In the case of
Lokasenna, Noreen was actually prepared to take on this burden. De-
spite its old-fashioned aspects he thought that it was a relatively late
poem (1915: 5), and he also ascribed Sigrdrifumdl and Svipdagsmål to a
group of archaizing poems (1923: 30-31).
An important and original aspect of Noreen’s criticism is the great
importance he attached to the distinction between poetry in ljodahåttr
and in fornyrdislag, which in his view was even more important than the
distinction between Eddie and skaldic poetry, or between mythological
and heroic poetry (Noreen 1921b: 36-38; 1923: 3-15). Ljodahåttr and
fornyrdislag have different origins, according to Noreen, and only the
latter is subject to influence from skaldic poetry.
We have seen that to Sophus Bugge the correct metrical and linguistic
evaluation of ljodahåttr poetry was essential in establishing the lin-
guistic boundary between Proto-Norse and Old Norse as an Eddie termi-
nus a quo, but a doser examination of Bugge’s rule led Noreen to the
opposite conclusion. He gave a reassessment of this rule in particular in
an article in 1921, the details of which will be discussed in the second
part of the present work (chapter X below). This is also the case for vari-
ous phenomena which may be explained as revealing influence from
skaldic poetry, such as the use of kennings (Noreen 1921b: 34—36; 1926:
137), regular stanza building (1921a: 18) and syllabic verse form (1926:
136).
Other details of dating discussed by Noreen are the unorthodox pres-
ence of two staves in the b-line, which he seems to take as an indica-
tion of early date (1915: 30-34), and the scenic structure of dialogue
poems, where the presence of more than two persons in the scene is
taken as a sign of lateness (1923: 22-23; 1926: 69 ). Noreen’s most im-
portant arguments are, however, mostly of such a technical nature that
they are best treated in our discussion devoted to methodological ques-
tions.