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Book Reviews 253
homes are more difficult to answer. Students are often dismayed
to read that one authority dates a lay about A.D. goo, while
another puts it about A.D. 1250, and much of the argument has
been subjective and lacking in substance.
It is improbable that any of the extant lays were composed
before the period of syncope, C. A.D. 700, for if so they would be
impossible to scan, or to read aloud, as Dr Einar observed (p. 207).
A regular ending of the third and sixth lines of the Lf60ahdttr
would be destroyed, for before the syncope gest would be gasti.
Dr Einar concludes tentatively that no extant lay is older than
the ninth century.
Loan-words used in the lays may give some guide to their ages.
If, as many suppose, dreki and kdlkr were borrowed from Old
English, they were probably introduced in the Viking Age.
The word gjalt, since it derives from the Irish geilt (gealt), must
have been introduced in the ninth or tenth century. It must,
however, be admitted that loan-words found in lays of the Edda
can tell us little about their ages.
Word-forms show even less. The use of v before r (vindandin
forna), which occurs occasionally in lays of the Edda, might show
that these lays were composed before the eleventh century, but
might suggest only that they were composed in a dialect other
than Icelandic, in which v was not lost before r.
Sadly little can be learnt from the themes of the mythological
lays or their diction. Some have maintained that such lays were
not composed in the years following the Conversion, say A.D. 1000
to A.D. 1150, and that all the mythological lays must have been
made before the first date or after the second. This conclusion
was based largely on the rarity of pagan allusions in dateable
scaldic poetry of the first Christian generations. But much of the
scaldic poetry of that period which now survives was made for
the Christian kings, Olafr Tryggvason and 6lafr the Saint.
Humbler fragments, such as those of Hofgarl'5a-Refr (c. 1030-40),9
show no lack of pagan allusion.
In some of the Eddaic lays, gods are mocked or derided
affectionately. This can tell nothing about their ages. Even
Greeks of the pagan age could poke fun at their gods, and
Christians at their saints, as Dr Einar observes (p. 217), and it may
be added that atheists were not unknown in the pagan age.
The influence of one poem on another may sometimes suggest
that one is older than the other. Thus, a part of the H dvamdl
• Dr Einar gives a date II40 (p. zI8). I suspect that this is a mechanical
error.
,. I have discussed this question in Mytti and Religion of the North (1964),
z63 ft.
1 0