Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2007, Blaðsíða 91

4.2 Editions and monographs
61
Paa eget Ansvar for Historiens Domstol maa jeg da paastaae, at
Gerhard Schønning \sic\, med al sin Læsning, Kundskab, Flid
og Betænksomhed, var aldeles uskikket til at skrive en Norges
Historie, som kunde hædre, gavne eller glæde Folket, og ligesaa
uskikket til ved Grandskning at opklare Oldtidens Dunkelhed;
thi han fattedes hvad dertil er uundværligt: Liv og Aand, og var
desuden lettroende, hvor det gjaldt Islændernes og hans egne
Indfald, vantroe, hvor det gjaldt Andres Vidnesbyrd, høist par-
tisk for hvad han kaldte Norsk, og høist ubillig mod Saxo, hvem
Norges Historiker nødvendig maa have til Ven, om hans Værk
fra første Færd skal lykkes.
(From a sense of my own responsibility before the judgement
seat of history, I must maintain that Gerhard Schøning, despite
all his wide reading, knowledge, diligence and circumspection,
was altogether unsuited to write a history of Norway which
could honour, benefit or delight the nation, and likewise un-
suited to enlighten through research the darkness of times past;
for he lacked what is indispensable to this task: life and spirit,
and was besides credulous with regard to his own ideas and
those of Icelanders, incredulous with regard to other witnesses,
highly bias ed in favour of what he called Norwegian, and highly
unjust towards Saxo, whom a historian of Norway must needs
have as a friend if his work is to succeed from the start.)
(Grundtvig 1818: xlviii)
What supposedly lacked in ‘life and spirit’ in Schøning’s translation
was found to the full in Grundtvig’s own. But it was precisely Grundt-
vig’s ffee and literary translation of the skaldic verses that was subject to
particular criticism from Norwegians. This criticism was voiced from
the publication of the very first fascicles, and he therefore addressed it
head on in the introduction to the completed edition.
It was, however, first and foremost in Norway that interest in Hkr
was to blossom and bear the very ripest fruit in this century, not least in'
the wake of nationalistic ideas. In the 1830S the industrialist and mem-