Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Side 329

XII Foreign matter poems
309
seems probable that the distinction between independent and bound
clauses, for instance, which may have developed in poetry on the basis
of some stress distinction in the spoken language, may have functioned,
particularly in drottkvætt, as a means of making more explicit the sen-
tence structure, thus giving the listener a clue to the interpretation of the
stanza. But because Kuhn’s analysis was directed in the first instance to-
wards questions of linguistic history, linked with the “Fremdstofflieder”
hypothesis, problems like these were not brought to the fore.
For the same reason the potential significance of his study for the
chronology of Old Norse poetry is somewhat blurred.
We find in these articles a mixture of what de Vries might have called
the “synchronic” and the “diachronic” point of view. The core of the
matter is a question of “diachrony” - evolution of stress pattems in the
Germanic languages and so on - and their repercussions in Germanic
poetry. However, the categories on which the hypotheses are tested are
not established in terms of chronology, but in terms of typological crite-
ria such as metre or the ultimate origin of the subject matter. Since the
chronology of Eddie poetry is not known, this is to a certain extent in-
evitable, and in the treatment of skaldic poetry, which is datable, Kuhn
has actually made several valuable observations concerning the chro-
nology of grammatical or stylistic features, in particular concerning the
poetry of the 14th century and the new style found in Lilja (Kuhn 1933:
36, 46, 1939: 182 = 1969: 46, 54, 488 etc.). But as a whole, the categor-
isation does not correspond to the nature of the questions that are posed.
Occasionally different chronological groups within a category were
considered, however. Following Heusler, Kuhn repeatedly referred to
Atlakviåa, Brot af Sigurdarkvidu, Hamdismål, HlQdskvida and VqI-
undarkvida (here given in alphabetical order) as the “five old poems”
in the foreign group, as opposed to the “younger Sigurbr-poetry”, and
he pointed out that deviations from the old rules tend to be concen-
trated in this group of five. That is also the reason why I have put
them at the top of Table 24 above. These poems thus count for 20 of
the 34 deviations from rule 1 (Kuhn 1933: 37 = 1969: 47), for 5 of 9
in the case of rule 2 (Kuhn 1933: 46 = 1969: 54) and for 12 of 18 in
the case of rule 3 (Kuhn 1933: 55 = 1969: 61). Finally, the three di-
stances of the type å gerdum sér feira, mentioned above (p. 307),
belong to this group.
These results are not devoid of interest, but there are some problems