Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 353

Editor’s postscript
333
The problem remains, however, that some of the stumbling blocks en-
countered by Neckel are general difficulties in dating the Eddie
poems, and we will therefore have to discuss them also in the
methodological part of the present work.
As the chapter on the influence from skaldic poetry was not finished,
these two references have been removed from Part One.
The only indication we have as to what the chapter would have in-
cluded is to be found in the text of a paper Professor Fidjestøl gave in
Iceland (Reykjavik, 26 July 1988):
Skaldic poetry may give a point of comparison also for style, I think,
in spite of the contrasting norms usually found in these two branches
of Old Norse poetry. I accept the general assumption that originally
there was, as it were, no stylistic contact between them. They really
appear to represent diametrically opposite stylistic tendencies, linked
to different functions in society - the one anonymous and stylistically
“unmarked”, the other highly self-conscious, seeking a maximum of
metric and stylistic regulation. Some Eddie poems in fornyrdislag are
less “unskaldic” than others, however, and the explanation is prob-
ably that Eddie poetry at a certain moment was exposed to stylistic in-
fluence from skaldic poetry. If so, poems revealing such influence
must postdate this point in time, while poems which do not show any
traces of such an influence, are inaccessible to this criterion of dating
- they may be younger, older or contemporary.
I expect that skaldic influence could be detected in three areas:
firstly in the amount of kennings of a type exelusively characteristic
of skaldic poetry, secondly in a tendency to syllable counting, and
thirdly in a tendency toward regular stanzas of eight lines.
It is possible to give an exact assessment of the strength of these
presumable skaldic influences in different fornyrdislag poems - even
if I have not yet been able to do it - and also of the degree to which
they coincide in the same poems. Having done so, I expect to be able
to isolate a group of poems showing a relatively high score in all these
tests - Hymiskvida being the most obvious candidate - and I would be
pleased to find a reasonably clear demarcation between this group and
the bulk of Eddie poetry. This would give us a group of poems poster-
ior to the supposed period of skaldic influence. The group as such