Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Síða 342

322
Part Two
This is in my opinion a rather extreme example of the abstractness of
the Old Germanic line of research, which tended to be less interested in
the poems themselves than in their possible value as far-flung witnesses
from the outmost periphery of the Germanic world, able to testify to the
greatness of the Germanic spirit, “this most changeable and Creative
power in the history of the world.”35 In this perspective the nonexistent
novelistic “Spielmannslied” seems more important than the actual Eddie
poems, being doser to the Creative core of the Germanic spirit. This may
have been mere rhetorical lip service to the spirit of the nineteen-thirties,
but the conclusion seems inevitable that this “great Germanic” point of
view has contributed somewhat to Mohr’s opinion on the origin of these
poems; a “home” on the German border seemed preferable to one far out
in the West Nordic periphery.
These critical remarks should not detract from the valuable sides of a
well conducted investigation. Its lasting result is in my view that it has
specified and made more tangible the relationship between the Eddie
elegy and the ballad, as we know it first and foremost from Denmark.
This relationship is probably significant for the dating of the poems in
question, not in assigning them to any well defined period of time, but in
a more general way placing them - also chronologically - not too far
away from ballad poetry. As mentioned before, de Vries also had in an
article not mentioned by Mohr (de Vries 1928), in the case of Pryms-
kvida, pointed to ballad influence as a criterion of dating. As the origin
of the ballad is shrouded in darkness, the comparison cannot yield very
concrete results, but like arguments drawn from the comparison with
skaldic poetry it may offer a helpful “Archimedean point” in a possibly
coexistent poetic tradition.
In the introduction to his articles Mohr complained that in spite of
several valuable collections of material (Grundtvig, Gering etc.), there
das Nebeneinander von starken, gefiihlssatten Zeilen und dunnstem Wortfullwerk, das
miihsam auf Langzeilenlange ausgezogen wurde, zeigt, daB in Island keine Tradition be-
stand, um die neue Form sprachlich zu bewaltigen. Wir mussen schon in den gelungenen
Zeilen das aus der Fremde Ubernommene, in den lahmen die eigenen Bemiihungen der
islandischen Nachdichter erkennen” (Mohr 1939: 210).
35 “Es wird die Lebensaufgabe noch mancher Menschenalter bleiben, die Wesensziige des
Germanischen, dieser wandelbarsten und schopferischsten Macht in der Weltgeschichte,
zu bestimmen, und man solite sie an keiner Stelle wo sie auftaucht umgehen” (Mohr 1939:
213-14).