Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 292

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Part Two
On the basis of this material, de Vries drew far-reaching conclusions
not only for the history of Old Norse religion, but also for the chrono-
logy of Old Norse literature. He asked whether this virtually regular de-
crease and increase in the use of kennings could not be seen as a means
to solve chronological problems.3 In a number of cases, where he had in
his statistics been following Finnur Jonsson’s datings, the results of his
analysis supply arguments for a later dating, and such redatings, de Vries
remarked - unaffected by the blatant circularity of the argument - in its
tum will strengthen the outcome of the statistics.4 Finally, consequences
may be drawn for the dating of Eddie poetry, he maintained. “It is incon-
ceivable that Eddie poems with a mythological content should have
been composed in a period when mythological kennings were anxiously
eschewed in skaldic poetry. In consequence, all poems of gods and hero-
ic poems with a mythological theme must have been written [sic] either
before 1000 or after 1150.”5
De Vries’s book was in the first instance well received by the review-
ers. Some of them underlined that the general argument was well known
in older scholarship from Rudolf Keyser onwards, as was also men-
tioned by de Vries himself (1934a: 75). De Vries’s merit, Lee M. Hol-
lander remarked, is that he “supports and documents these (by no means
altogether novel) observations with a careful and objective statistical
study”. On the other hånd, Hollander found “challenging and new” the
idea that the periodicity found in skaldic poetry also holds in the case of
Eddie poetry.6 On this subject the approval was less unanimous, how-
3 “Mogen wij in deze haast wetmatige daling en rijzing in het gebruik der kenningen niet
een middel zien om in bepaalde gevallen vragen van chronologie op te lossen?” (de Vries
1934a: 83).
4 “[...] en elke strofe, die uit de periode 1000-1150 (waarin zij nu in F. Jonsson’s Skjal-
dedigtning gedateerd is) verplaatst wordt naar de 13de eeuw, zal mijn statistiek bevestigen
en het grafische beeld nog scherper accentueeren” (de Vries 1934a: 84).
5 “Ook voor de Edda-poézie zal men met dezelfde periodiciteit rekening moeten houden.
Het is volkomen ondenkbaar, dat men in de 11 de en 12de eeuw, toen het gebruik van mytho-
logische kenningen angstvallig vermeden werd, toch Eddaliederen zou hebben gedicht met
mythologischen inhoud. Alle godenliederen en van de heldenliederen althans diegene, die
een mythologisch apparaat hebben, zijn of geschreven in den heidenschen tijd voor het jaar
1000, of nadeherleving van de mythologie indeliteratuurna 1150” (de Vries 1934a: 84).
6 Hollander 1935: 90. Cf. Jolivet (1934: 241): “Ceci est établi de la fa?on la plus minuti-
euse å Faide de statistiques et de graphiques.” Stefan Einarsson (1936: 194): “[...] an