Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Side 211

and Introduction to Part Two
191
ecjrn y^acTCH, no HanSojiee apxaHHecicoro - TaK cKa3aTb,
“floneceHHoro” - cjiob. EcTecTBeHHO, hto cthjib, ctoxeTa, CTpyx-
Typbi necHeti, hx H3biKa h He 3aTparHBato.6
(The Elder Edda, which has reached us in manuscripts from the 13th
century, represents, as is well known, the last phase of an extremely
long existence as an epos throughout the centuries, and this faet rais-
es for us the question of its complicated stratification. In the Eddie
songs deep imprints of the turnabouts and the views of life of the Ger-
manic peoples must have been left, stretching over epoques, whose
origin will have to be sought in the centuries preceding the Great Mi-
grations, and whose end falis in the High Middle Ages. We will try to
approach this problem of “the archaeology of mind” (in its most im-
mediate approximation). I want to distinguish between these strata in
order to attain, if possible, the most archaic - the so to speak “pre-
poetic” - stratum. Naturally, neither style, subject, structure, nor the
language of the poems will be commented on.)
Like Meulengracht Sørensen, Gurevich does not want to touch on the
poems as texts in this connection, but he does not make the distinetion
between content and text, and his point of view seems to imply an ac-
ceptance of the extant poems having a considerable age, making it even
possible to attain a “pre-poetic stratum”. The focus of Gurevich’s inter-
est is not only Atlakvida, considered by most scholars to be old, but also
Lokasenna, which in all probability has a pre-Christian origin, accord-
ing to Gurevich (1979: 79).
Starting from the presupposition that the extant texts bear the imprint
of different phases, Gurevich further sees the possibility of disceming
different reinterpretations of the original themes in the course of the
poems’ later history, thus aiming at a kind of history of reception where
even the interpretations of modern scholars are not exeluded:
C Moeii tohkh 3peHHB, Han6ojibinee 3HaHemte hmciot xax pa3
TaKne CHTyaqHH, Korga nepBOHaManbHaa TeMa, oneBH^naH /yin
jitofleit Ha onpefleneHHOH cragHH con,na.nbHoro h KyjrbTypHoro
Gurevich 1979: 31; cf. the Swedish translation in Gurevich 1978.