SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

110 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
to receive more attention than hitherto: the influence of
the captive Irish in Iceland. We are told by Laxdcela
saga that Melkorka taught her son Olafr the Irish language,
and spoke for a long time to no other person. It is likely
that she would not least have told him about her childhood
faith and of Christian customs. And is Gestr Oddleifsson
not likely to have known something of Christianity, for
instance through his dealings with Olafr the Peacock,
before :Pangbrandr came on the scene? The influences of
Christianity on V oluspa are partly such as make it
probable that the poet had had a long, if unclear,
acquaintance with it. These influences stimulated his
thoughts on the divine powers and on the nature of
existence. They prepared the way for the strong and
sudden effect of the Christian mission proper.
Axel Olrik has tried to separate heathen and Christian
elements in the description of Ragnarok. I append his
division in the note below, not because I agree with it, but
as a specimen of the better kind of criticism." In my
opinion the individual elements are more or less dubious.
What matters most is, as already observed, the character
of the poem and the consistency of its cosmic view. But
both of these will be best comprehended by attaining as
clear an understanding as possible of the poem's origin .
•, Olrik considers the following elements of V iiluspd to be of Christian origin:
(i) The decay of mankind. (ii) The sounding of Gjallarhorn to announce
Ragnarok, (iii) The darkening of the sun and the disappearance of the stars.
(iv) The burning of the world. (v) Gimle, (vi) The Great One (st. 65).
I agree about the last two. Olrik would have looked differently at the third
and fourth if he had assumed that the poem was made in Iceland. The first
and second I consider very dubious. Gjallarhorn may be a fully Norse concept,
even though a similar element occurs in the Bible, and the degeneration of
gods and men as a cause of decay and doom is a mainstay of the poem, part of
the poet's own flesh and bone. The principal biblical passages which have
been regarded as prototypes of V iiluspa are: Matt. xxiv, 7-10, Mark xiii, 12,
Luke xxi, 24 (the degeneration of the last and worst days), Matt. xxiv, 29
("The sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the
stars shall fall from heaven", d. Rev. vi, 12-13: "And the sun became black as
sackcloth and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell onto the
earth"), and II Peter iii, IO ("The heavens shall pass away with a great noise
and the elements shall melt with a fervent heat, the earth also and the works
that are therein shall be burned up"). The new heaven and new earth are
referred to in II Peter iii, 13 and Rev. xxi. For the description of Gimle d.
the new Jerusalem in Rev. xxi. For Niohoggr d. the dragon of Rev. xii.