Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 205

VI From the turn of the century to Jan de Vries
185
the second edition of his Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, however, de
Vries struck a more optimistic note. Since the first edition appeared,
great progress had been made in the dating of anonymous literature, in
particular the Icelandic sagas - obviously a tribute to Einar Olafur
Sveinsson’s Dating the Icelandic Sagas, which had appeared in 1958.
But also the grouping of Eddie poems according to chronology now ap-
peared more attainable than before, he maintained, and in this edition a
new general passage on the methods of dating was introduced, contain-
ing a brief, systematic survey of different criteria.125
Surprisingly enough, in spite of this note of confidence, de Vries to-
tally rearranged the subject matter, making in practice a substantial
withdrawal from his former position in the direction of a “diachronic”
treatment of the literature. Instead of consecutive periods of fifty years,
permitting a continuous “synchronic” evaluation of the different genres
within each period, he now chose periods of 150 years, within which he
gave a “diachronic” treatment of the literature.126 The consequence of
this new arrangement for the Eddie poetry is chiefly that the periods in
which Eddie verse was composed are reduced to two, the classical
period preceding the Conversion, and the postclassical Renaissance
period, with a small number of (heroic) poems being composed in the
intermediate period, and one single poem, Svipdagsmål, in the late
Middle Ages.
A most remarkable faet about the rearrangement, however, is its lack
of consequence for the treatment of the separate poems. Some remarks
conceming the historical development are suppressed and less attention
is paid to the possible chains of evolution from Gothic to Old Norse
poetry. More important is a rearrangement of the first period, where
mythological poetry is now treated before the heroic. The original order
was clearly designed to give a historical account of the development of
125 “Es scheint jetzt weniger aussichtslos, die Eddalieder in chronologische Gruppen ein-
zuteilen” (de Vries 1964: 37).
126 “Die Einrichtung meines Buches håbe ich wesentlich geandert, indem ich die behan-
delte Periode in groBere Zeitabschnitte eingeteilt håbe. In einer Literatur, die sich chrono-
logisch oft nur annåhernd fixieren laBt, fordern Perioden von ftinfzig Jahren zu scharfe
und eben dadurch zu unsichere Grenzen. Wenn ich jetzt einen Trennungsstrich um die Mit-
te des zwolften Jahrhunderts mache, so teile ich in Perioden von etwa anderthalb Jahrhun-
derten ein, die jede filr sich einen eigenen Charakter zeigen. Aber die Grenzen zwischen
Literaturperioden sind immer flieBend und konnen sich iiber Jahrzehnte ausdehnen” (de
Vries 1964: 11).