Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 190
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Part One
ner?”101 His conclusion is in the first instance rather negative. The ar-
guments mostly fail to convince, he says, and the scholar has in the last
instance nothing he can rely upon but his more or less subjective judge-
ment. Until now it looks like nobody has succeeded in giving an un-
ambiguous dating to a large number of Eddie poems exelusively on the
basis of their formal elements.102
Bearing this conclusion in mind, it is rather surprising to realize that
de Vries in the years to follow was to write the most ambitious histori-
cally based survey of Old Norse literature ever attempted. His article
(1934b) ended on a somewhat more optimistic note, however, based on
the results of his own book on the use of mythological kennings
(1934a). In this book he noted a rapid decline in the use of mythological
kennings in skaldic poetry after the introduction of Christianity. As
might be expected, mythological kennings are sparse in the period
1000-1150, but then there is an inerease, due to a sort of mythological
renaissance that may be observed in a skaldic poem like Håttalykill,
which both in its subject matter and in its collection of old metres shows
a lively interest in Old Norse antiquity. It is tempting to postulate a sim-
ilar curve in the history of Eddie poetry. If hardly any of the skalds dared
use the rather innocent mythological kennings in the period between
1000 and 1150, it is virtually unthinkable that anybody should venture to
compose fresh Eddie poems in which the gods played a role, de Vries
maintained. Consequently, for such Eddie poems there exists a clear-cut
alternative: either before 1000 or after 1150, or, in other words, either
poems rooted in heathen faith or in a playful enthusiasm for the past.
I believe that this ingenious hypothesis is of paramount importance
for de Vries’s subsequent attempt at a “synchronic” treatment of Eddie
poetry in his history of literature, and I find it worthwhile to examine its
arguments more carefully in a separate chapter (cf. chapter XI below).
101 “[...] was war das fur ein Dichter, der eine Strophe zusammenflickte, indem er eine
Zeile aus der Skamma und zwei andere aus dem ersten GuSrunliede entlehnte? Ist es iiber-
haupt richtig, die Anklange zwischen den verschiedenen Liedem in dieser Weise zu ver-
wenden?” (de Vries 1934b: 258).
102 “Die verschiedenen Argumente fur eine Datierung der Eddalieder sind, wie diese Skiz-
ze dartut, nichts weniger als iiberzeugend. Es ist schlieBlich das mehr oder weniger subjek-
tive Urteil jedes Forschers, das in letzter Instanz die Entscheidung herbeibringen muB [...]
es scheint mir bis jetzt nicht gelungen, eine groBere Anzahl von Eddaliedern ausschlieBlich
auf Grund ihrer formalen Elemente unzweideutig zu datieren” (de Vries 1934b: 258).