Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Síða 294

274
Part Two
mythological poetry in the period between 1000 and 1150 is complete-
ly untenable.8
Kuhn also had some - more or less justified - critical remarks on par-
ticular details in de Vries’s statistics,9 the most important one being that
de Vries put too much trust in Finnur Jonsson’s revised (B-)text.10
In a more substantial article appearing four years later in Zeitschrift
fur deutsches Altertum und deutsche Liter atur (1942), Kuhn largely re-
iterated his criticism, adding a more detailed scrutiny of different fash-
ions in Old Norse kenning-making, where he also distinguished between
kennings of different origin - Iceland, Norway and the British Isles."
Notwithstanding the faet that relatively little skaldic poetry from before
950 is preserved, Kuhn conceded that de Vries was right in pointing out
a remarkable increase in the use of theophorous kennings in the years
preceding the Conversion. But whereas de Vries had interpreted this faet
as resulting from a strong revival of heathen religious feelings, Kuhn
maintained on the contrary that the new possibility of using the proper
name of a major god to denote a human being, e.g. in a kenning like
sverd-Freyr, reveals a more shaky attitude towards the old religion.
Such a kenning might have offended the religious feeling in older times,
Kuhn thought (1942: 138^40 = 1971a: 301-302).
This is a good illustration, I think, of the commonplace that a histori-
cally significant faet cannot be deduced merely from statistics. The heart
of the matter lies in the interpretation of the figures, and very often the
same set of data allows opposite interpretations.
In Kuhn’s opinion heathendom lingered on in Iceland until far into
the Middle Ages. To judge from the scattered remnants of skaldic poetry
8 “Der Tiefstand, den de Vr.s Prozentzahlen in der zweiten Halfte des 11. Jahrhunderts
zeigen, ist zum groBen Teil eine Folge davon, dafi aus diesem Zeitraum fast nur Gedichte
und Strophen aus dem Kreise des norwegischen Konigshofs iiberliefert sind [...] DaB in
der Zeit von etwa 1000 bis 1150 keine mythologischen Eddalieder entstanden sein konn-
ten, [...] ist ein vollkommen unhaltbarer SchluB” (Kuhn 1938: 1494 = 1971a: 261).
9 Kuhn noted eight mentions of Oøinn from 1000-1050 lacking in de Vries’s statistics
(Kuhn 1938: 1496 = 1971a: 262-62). He is right in so far as they are omitted from de
Vries’s “samenvatting” pp. 75-77, but only two of them (PBrun 3.7 and Refr III 4.3) do
not belong to the data on which the statistics are based. The remaining six kennings are
mentioned by de Vries (1934a: 35, 38, 39, 44, 46,47).
10 The same remark appears in Holtsmark 1936: 375.
11 It is to be noted that it is not a question of poets of different nationality, but poetry
aimed at different audiences, the most important one being the Norwegian court.