Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 315

XII Foreign matter poems
295
the quasi totality of poems edited by Heusler and Ranisch in Eddica mi-
nora, which for the most part are preserved in various fornaldarsogur
(about 315 stanzas, according to Kuhn)3 and, finally, skaldic poems in
fornyrdislag from before 1200, pulur excluded (about 120 stanzas; cf.
Kuhn 1933: 26 = 1969: 37). In all, this “domestic” group consists of
about 3380 long lines.
It is worthwhile noting that the “domestic” group is far less homoge-
neous than the “foreign” one. In Codex Regius there are only 6 “domes-
tic” poems (1092 long lines), as against 16 “foreign” poems (2082 long
lines). From the outset there is therefore some likelihood that features
which might be characteristic of the kind of poems found in Codex Re-
gius may appear as typical of “foreign” poems as well. This suspicion
will have to be bome in mind as we proceed to an examination of
Kuhn’s statistics.
A particularly interesting case are the skaldic poems conventionally
called “Eddie praise poems”, i.e. Haraldskvædi, Håkonarmål and Ei-
riksmål, which according to Kuhn are closely associated to the “foreign”
group. These poems are composed in a mixture of fornyrdislag (or
mdlahdttr)4 and Ijodahåttr, but whereas the distinetion “domestic” -
“foreign” in other cases presupposes the previous exelusion of all stan-
zas in Ijodahåttr, in this case the distinetion between the metres seems
irrelevant (cf. Kuhn 1933: 42-43, n. 2 = 1969: 51, n. 91).
Kuhn’s main thesis in these articles is that the “foreign” poetry - apart
from the common origin of their subject matter, indicated by the label of
the group - can be defined by certain linguistic and metric characteris-
tics. The strength of his theory is thus the coincidence of foreign subject
matter and specific grammatical traits. Typically, these characteristics
consist in a loosening with regard to certain grammatical and metrical
rules, discovered by Kuhn, which are still respected by poetry in drott-
kvætt and by the “domestic” poems in fornyrdislag, but are most often
neglected in the Ijodahåttr poetry.
The most important rules are the following:
3 About 120 stanzas in fornyrdislag from the presumably youngest layer of fornaldar-
sogur are excluded from Heusler and Ranisch’s Eddica minora (Heusler and Ranisch
1903: iii), and from Kuhn’s material as well.
4 Following Heusler 1941: 35, Kuhn does not accept Eddie målahåttr as a separate metre,
but includes it in fornyrdislag.