Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 328

308
Part Two
The heaviest concentration of ne in one single poem is found outside
both groups, in Vgluspå, where the particle occurs three times in st. 5
and twice in st. 18. In this case, as there can be no question of influence
from West-Germanic, direct influence from Ijodahåttr is postulated in-
stead, on account of the parallelism between the verses in these stanzas,
which for some reason or other is taken as a clear example of influence
from Ijodahåttr.20 This “ad hoc” explanation does not strengthen the
general argument, in my opinion.
In conclusion, I do not believe that Kuhn’s arguments for influence
from West-Germanic via some sort of translation of “foreign” poems,
rather than influence directly from Ijodahåttr poetry, is convincing. A
more fundamental question, however, is whether there is a need for an
explanation in terms of influence at all. Most of the linguistic phenom-
ena in question are extremely rare, at least outside Ijodahåttr poetry;
none of them are found in more than about half of the 16 “foreign”
poems, and they usually occur in some “domestic” poems as well. Fi-
nally, the explanatory models deducing them from some particularity in
West-Germanic languages are too complicated to be convincing. Under
these circumstances it seems more satisfactory to reject the “Fremdstoff-
lieder” hypothesis altogether, in favour of some sort of nuil hypothesis:
we are dealing with phenomena the frequency of which - outside Ijoda-
håttr poetry and some particular poems such as Atlamål, Atlakvida,
Vglundarkvida, Sigurdarkvida in skamma, Hamdismål and Vgluspå — is
so low that no particular explanation is called for.
Although we have found Kuhn’s statistics inconclusive as far as the
“Fremdstofflieder” hypothesis is concemed, this does not mean that his
findings are insignificant in terms of the history of Old Norse poetry in
general. Among other things I think they are important for understand-
ing the style of the poems, but this is a question Kuhn had a tendency to
put in the background, falling back on stylistic explanations mainly
when the explanations based on linguistic history did not work (for re-
marks on style, cf. Kuhn 1933: 15, 29, 36, 46-49 = 1969: 29, 41, 46,
54-56 etc.; the article on negations is introduced as bearing on the his-
tory of style, not of grammar, Kuhn 1936: 431 = 1969: 124). To me it
20 “Der strenge zeilengleichlauf in diesen versen zeigt deutlich den einfluB des lioøa-
hattrs, und aus ihm haben sie auch den gebrauch von ne iibemommen” (Kuhn 1936: 433 =
1969: 125).