Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Qupperneq 189

VI From the tum of the century to Jan de Vries
169
(st. 2.3—4: Heyrdu nu, Loki, hvat ec nu mæli, etc.) recall ballad tech-
nique. In conclusion, de Vries dated Prymskvida to the 12th or even to
the 13th century, a period in which Eddie poetry may have coexisted
with the medieval ballad. The poem is particularly interesting, he con-
cluded, on account of the light it throws on this period of mutual influ-
ence between the old alliterative poetry and the ballad.98
This article is one of the more thorough attempts in Eddie scholarship
at dating a particular poem, and it has contributed profoundly, I think, to
the now widespread opinion that this poem, to which even Edwin Jessen
attributed great antiquity, is very late.99
In his shorter and more general article (1934b), de Vries gives a sur-
vey of different types of dating criteria, linguistic, metric, relative chro-
nological and others, underlining the highly divergent views on the
question, which are easily understandable in view of the serious prob-
lems of principle attached to the various methods of dating. A linguistic
argument such as the presence of words beginning in vr- is ambiguous,
in so far as these consonants may just as well testify to an effort to archa-
ize as to an early date,100 and differences in style cannot always be
explained as differences in date. In most cases arguments based upon
hypotheses of verbal loan from one poem to another are also ambiguous.
Quoting an example from Gudrunarkvida II, where a stanza seems to be
made up of loans from a number of older poems, he rhetorically asks:
“What sort of poet would it be, who pieced together his strophe by pick-
ing one line from Skamma and two others from Gu5runarkvi6a I? Is it in
any way correct to use the echos between various poems in this man-
98 “Het belang van dit gedicht is gelegen in het licht, dat het verspreidt over de periode
van wisselwerking tusschen de oude allitereerende poezie en de ballade” (de Vries 1928:
322).
99 “brymskviba ist das einzige erhaltene epische mythenlied acht volkstiimlichen und an-
tiken gusses” (Jessen 1871: 69). - Erik Noreen (1923: 17, 23, 1926: 79) had some years
earlier argued for a late dating of Prymskvida, a faet which de Vries noted as a pleasant
surprise (de Vries 1928: 253).
100 “Die Gattung der Eddapoesie hat wohl immer als eine altertiimliche gegolten, und es
war gewiB nichts leichter fur einen Dichter des 12. Jahrh. als gerade durch solche alter-
tiimlichen Wortformen einen betriigerischen Schein von Altertiimlichkeit zu erwecken.
Eine absolute Sicherheit konnen derartige Formen also keinesfalls geben, und es bleibt im-
mer zu erwagen, ob nicht eine anscheinend alte Sprachform durch einen antikisierenden
Dichter eingesetzt worden ist” (de Vries 1934b: 255).