SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
who differ from him on basic principles. And Bugge is
moderate in comparison with the German mythologist
E. H. Meyer, who edited V oluspa with a commentary in
1889 and traced all its matter to mediaeval Christian
writings. For in this large book (300 pages) I have not
found one single observation which I have thought worth
mentioning in my commentary. It is from beginning to
end a scholarly fable by a man whose learning had made
him mad.P
Many came forward to oppose this line of research.
Victor Rydberg attacked Bang, while Bugge defended him,
and this resulted in Rydberg's producing his great work
Undersiikningar i germanisk mythologi,13 This is written
with great learning and eloquence, but its chief fault is that
the author makes it clear neither to himself nor to his
reader where the learning stops and the eloquence
begins. Another of Bang's opponents was one of the
leaders of the German antiquarians, Karl Miillenhoff.
He edited V oluspa with a translation and a detailed
commentary-! and maintained that the poem was
totally heathen in spirit and matter, that it was composed
in Norway but that its essence was common to all
Germanic poetry (at one point he speaks of "die deutsche
Voluspa"). But there is no point in writing at length
about this essay, for it is, in spite of all differences of
opinion, the basis of my commentary, as of most others
by his successors. For instance, Finnur Jonsson followed
Miillenhoff for the most part in his editions of and
dissertations on the poem - but then Finnur is the man
who has stood most firmly against Bugge's theories and
has advanced the most powerful argments against them.
Two other scholars who have contributed much towards
the elucidation of the poem should be mentioned. Bjorn
,. I shall not waste space describing the views of Meyer and Bugge, for they
are dealt with, as are many of these disputes, in articles by Valtyr
GuOmundsson and Benedikt Grondal in Timarit (1892"3).
i s 2 vols., 1888-9. Published in English as Teutonic mythology (1889).
U Deutsche Altertumskunde V (1883), 1-165.