Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 330

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Part Two
attached to them. As Kuhn pointed out, Hlgdskvida and Brot af Sig-
urdarkvidu, which are among the “five old poems”, contribute little
to this predominance, and on the evidence of the figures only, Atlamål
has a better claim to be included in the group. The chronological sub-
division does not yield consistent results. Another embarrassing conse-
quence of subdividing the group according to chronology is that Kuhn
had to admit that the process of translating West-Germanic poetry exert-
ed very much the same influence at two different periods of time, prob-
ably two or three centuries apart, which in itself seems rather unlikely.
In the article on negation Kuhn paid more attention to chronological
distinctions, but the results of his subtle analysis tum out to be rather
paradoxical.
As far as I can understand, the chronology of the different negations
envisaged by Kuhn is as follows. In the beginning, sentences could be
negated by ne and -gi (in free use), independent clauses also by -a, -at,
-t. As we have seen, ne and -gi were early lost, but were retained in
Ijodahåttr as an archaic feature. The negation -a, -at, -t tended on the
one hånd to be replaced by the emphatic negation eigi, freygi etc.,
on the other hånd its use was extended to bound clauses. “Domestic”
fornyrdislag stuck to the old restricted use of -a, -at, -t, but in skaldic
poetry -a, -at, -t can be found occasionally in bound clauses from
about 980. In Ijodahåttr it is frequent, but more frequent, apparently,
in younger poetry than in older. In Ijodahåttr ne is thus retained as an
archaism, while negation by -a, -at, -t in bound clauses is introduced
as a modemism.
The use of ne and -gi in “foreign” poetry has already been comment-
ed upon. The introduction of -a, -at, -t in bound clauses, which in
Ijodahåttr did not need any particular explanation, was in “foreign”
poetry seen as the result of a curious dichotomy. It follows from rules 5
and 7 that in bound clauses Old Norse poetry - Ijodahåttr excepted -
had at its disposal only emphatic negations. Although Kuhn admitted
that this was a strange situation, he thought that for a certain period it
was the case also in the spoken language. This curious shortage in the
language must have been particularly strongly felt by the translators of
West-Germanic heroic poetry. Facing a negated West-Germanic bound
clause they were placed in a dilemma whether to translate according to
the linguistic/stylistic rules of fornyrdislag and exchange the normal
negation by an emphatic one, or to translate in a more accurate manner