Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1981, Page 190

198
A note on Lilja
Páll Bárðarson (fl346), archbishop of Nidaros — not forgetting
their senior, Bishop Erlendr of Kirkjubøur (fl308), sometime canon
and scholasticus of the cathedral church of Bergen.32) Acquaintance
with the Poetria nova in such a milieu would ncnt be surprising, no
more so than the typically Icelandic way in which Eysteinn main-
tains his vernacular independence.33)
Eysteinn successfully adopts claritas as his poetic programme. Can
we now see clearer than before the pressures that moved him?
Churchmen periodically react against language and style that seem
to obscure the Christian message, and Eysteinn in his way could
echo St Augustine’s melius est reprehendant nos grammatici, quam
non intellegant populi.3i) He could also point to the respectable
stylistic recommendations of a modern, not to say fashionable,
authority on rhetoric like Geoffrey of Vinsauf. There is a third
factor to consider. It is noteworthy that this new plain style only
established itself in religious verse in Iceland. Scaldic diction was
so vigorous there that Eysteinn is constrained to give a something
more than perfunctory salute to the tradition he is deserting, and
in other kinds of poetry it continued to flourish. It would be hard
to argue that there was any technical need for the new simplicity,
whatever the subject-matter, in poetry made for Icelandic audi-
ences. It seems reasonable to believe however that Eysteinn wished
his poem to be appreciated by Norwegians as well as Icelanders;
and that in achieving his stil novo, Eysteinn was not only meeting
the theoretical demands of the preacher and the rhetorician, he was
also meeting the practical demands of his Norwegian brother clerics
who were no longer at home in the scaldic tradition and under-
standably impatient of hulin fornyrði. Should we perhaps begin to
speculate on the influence of Elgeseter on the history of Icelandic
poetry?
There is a flicker of Geistesgeschichte here; but little flames can
throw big shadows, and distort them. Someone may soon catch a
mouse big enough to swallow my mouse, and it will be some time yet
before we trace all possible routes in the vqlundarhús of Eysteinn’s
Veltalenhed. It remains a marvellous maze from which none of us is
fúss í brott.