Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 322

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Part Two
eign” group to a considerably greater degree than in the “domestic” one
- on the one hånd about 240 instances in approx. 2240 lines, and on the
other hånd only 75 instances in approx. 3380 lines. The statistics thus
seem to reveal a real difference between the “foreign” and the “domes-
tic” group, which has to be explained in one way or another.
In a number of categories the actual figures are very small, however,
and the occurrences are unevenly distributed; it is therefore difficult to
have any definite opinion on the statistical significance of the figures.
Only six poems, Atlamål, Atlakvida, Vglundarkvida, Hamdismål,
Gudrunarkvida II - and Vgluspå - show at least two examples in at least
two categories. In poems like Helreid Brynhildar, Gudrunarkvida /,
Oddrunargråtr, Gudrunarkvida III, Hlgdskvida and Gudrunarhvgt there
are not more than one or two stray examples in one or two categories
(apart from possible occurrences under the rules 3-5, where the listings
are incomplete), and in these cases the phenomena in question can hard-
ly be said to have left a marked imprint on the language of the poems.
On the evidence of rules 4 and 7, Vgluspå should be a better candidate
for belonging to the “foreign” group than the majority of the poems
treating Germanic legend.
In so far as Kuhn has chosen as his point of departure the precon-
ceived idea that the poems treating Germanic heroic legend should be
treated as a whole, he is somewhat begging the question, and he does not
seem to be disturbed by the faet that 5 of the 16 poems do not show any
trace whatsoever of the characteristic linguistic features; probably he is
reassured by the faet that these poems are among the shortest texts in the
group. At all events he is definitely not justified in claiming that all these
poems exhibit some characteristics that are to be explained by the Ger-
man origin of their subject matter (Kuhn 1933: 37 = 1969: 46, cf. the
quotation above, p. 155 n. 74).
In conclusion, I do not think that the figures tabulated here prove that
the criterion of content delimits in a convenient way the class of poems
actually characterized by the linguistic features in question, and I doubt
very mueh that the category “foreign” poems could have been inferred
from the observance or non-observance of these rules alone.
The hypothesis will therefore have to be judged more on its internal
likelihood than on the evidence of the figures themselves. In the follow-
ing I shall try to disentangle the rather complicated chronology of these
phenomena as they are seen by Kuhn.