SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

80 Saga-Book oj the Viking Society
attracts one. People do not try to plumb the depths of
works which let all their treasures float on the surface.
Of the comments of men of later times let one suffice as
an example. These are the words of Julius Hoffory, one
of the most understanding of its expositors: 1
Dass gerade an einem solchen welthistorischen Wendepunkt ein
Dichter von hochstem Range Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und
Zukunft zu einem Alles uberragenden Bilde zusamrnenfasste,
ist fur die Nordlander ein Gluck, wie es keinem anderen Volke
jemals wiederfuhr. Die Voluspa ist nicht nur, wie Mullenhoff
sagte, das grosste Gedicht des Nordens bis auf den heutigen
Tag, sondern ein Werk, das in seiner Art niemals erreicht, noch
weniger ubertroffen worden ist.
One could amass many similar views. Even those
editors who have pulled the poem about like a raw hide or
dissected it with insensitive ingenuity have paid it tribute
by the care with which they did their work.
It would be interesting to know something of how the
poet's contemporaries reacted to the poem and valued it.
But there one can only guess. V olusPd has never been
on everyman's lips as, for instance, Lilja was at a later
date. Otherwise the language of poetry would have
been more strongly marked by it. Nor did the poet
follow either the old tradition or the new, but went his
own way, and this never makes for popular esteem. Yet
the poem may have had its influence, opening the minds
of the heathen to Christian ideas and helping Christians to
be forbearing towards the old faith. For often the most
influential works are not those which are known by most
people, but those which reach the leaders and affect the
course of their action. But even though V oluspd was
kept in the memories of the wisest and most learned men of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was not saved from
damage. The poet stood too high above his age for it to
be safe for him to commit this mysterious poem to its
keeping. Snorri Sturluson's example shows us how
1 J. Hoffory, Eddastudien I (r88g), qI.