Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 291
XI Mythological kennings
271
Counting every mention of OSinn in kennings and elsewhere in
skaldic verse, de Vries grouped them into periods, each of half a century,
following Finnur Jonsson’s datings in his edition of skaldic poetry
(1912-15) and, finally, he calculated the occurrences in percentages of
stanzas in each half century. The results were shown in tables and
graphs.
De Vries’s most conspicuous finding is a veritable boom of mytho-
logical kennings in the latter half of the lOth century, followed by an
abrupt slump after the introduction of Christianity in the first half of the
llth century. This decrease is in close accordance with what might be
expected, of course, but more remarkable is a lesser, but clearly recog-
nizable increase in the latter half of the twelfth century, which de Vries
interpreted as evidence for a revival of heathen antiquity, a sort of 12th
century Renaissance.2
According to de Vries, these results are corroborated by a doser in-
spection of the use of different OSinn-heiti, which he split into three
groups:
1) Unambiguous names of OSinn: Fjglnir, Hroptr, Jålkr, Rggnir, SvQlnir,
Vidrir, Vidurr and Pridi.
2) OSinn-heiti that might be taken more or less as appellatives: Gautr,
Prår, Prottr, Pundr and Yggr.
3) Various other heiti.
The first group turns out to be much harder hit by the introduction of
Christianity than the second one, which tends to dominate in the Renais-
sance period of the 12th century, presumably because it was felt to be
less intimately bound to the religious feelings of the past.
De Vries then made a similar investigation of kennings naming other
gods and goddesses. The results are very similar. A group of gods, con-
sisting of Baldr, Freyr and NjgrSr, who in opposition to OSinn and Forr
are usually mentioned by their proper names in poetry, not merely by
heiti, as well as the group of all goddesses, show by and large the same
fluctuations as the mentions of OSinn.
2 “De dalende lijn blijft voortduren tot ongeveer het midden der 12de eeuw, dan treedt
een kleine tijdelijke verhooging in, warvan de verklaring te zoeken is in de herleefde be-
langstelling voor de overleveringen uit den heidenschen tijd” (de Vries 1934a: 53).