SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
William Heinesens lyric poetry. Pages 386-91 are taken up with
a bibliography of Matras's learned work. In this volume, then,
we find a wide range of Faroese topics discussed - language,
literature, folklore, ethnography. The whole book bears witness
to the diversity, vitality and freshness of Faroese studies. It is
a fitting tribute to a man who has done so much to promote the
study of the culture of the Faroe Islands.
RICHARD PERKINS
MEDIAEVAL SCANDINAVIA 3. Managing Editor HANS BEKKER­
NIELSEN. Odense University Press, 1970.
This volume contains a great variety of articles, covering
various disciplines. Three articles are concerned with literature.
R. Frank in 'Onomastic play in Korrnakr's verse: the name
Steingeror' shows how an understanding of his kennings on this
name deepens one's appreciation of the poet. In 'A note on the
Atlakvioa, Strophe 16, lines 9-10' Margaret Clunies Ross
explains the meaning of Cuorun's insult to the Hunnish maidens
- servile work is being suggested for these aristocratic ladies.
Niels Age Nielsen's 'Notes on early Runic poetry' is an attempt to
interpret some runic inscriptions from a knowledge of the metres
of lj60ahattr and jornyroislag, in which he suggests that they are
written.
Four articles are of special interest to historians. Of these
easily the most enjoyable is Claiborne W. Thompson's on 'A
Swedish runographer and a headless bishop', for few things are
more delightful than to witness a long-established theory crumble
into dust, together with the reputation of those associated with it.
In this case the identification of Asmundr Karasun, one of the
most famous of the Swedish rune-masters, with an irregular
('acephalus') English bishop called Osmundus, is demolished.
One may feel that the victory is rather easily won, but the history
of the theory is instructive. It began with the statement by an
eighteenth-century Swedish antiquary that Asmundr must have
been more than ordinarily papistical, because of references in his
inscriptions to the Virgin Mary. The ground was thus prepared
for identification, by two nineteenth-century scholars, with
Osmundus, The identification was defended by Otto von Friesen.
In 1907 he wrote that it was "not impossible". In 1913 it was
"more than possible" In 1920 it was "highly probable" and
"hardly to be doubted" This kind of development is only too
familiar, but in von Friesen's defence it should be stated that the
whole process took him some thirteen years. In the present