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Bool< Reviews 257
embodied in it date from the tenth century, and to see their
influence on the V olusp«, composed c. A.D. 1000. Although I
have approached this problem rather differently, it seems that my
conclusions are not far removed from those of Dr Einar and
Sigurour Nordal.
An important chapter (pp. 230-66) is devoted to the homes of
various Eddaic lays. It is commonly agreed that the extant
mythological lays were composed in Scandinavia, predominantly
in Norway and Iceland, although some perhaps among Viking
settlers in the British Isles. Disagreement is chiefly about the
heroic lays, and especially those in which continental heroes are
described, the so-called Fremdstofflieder, Are these native to
Scandinavia, or were they imported from the Continent, translated
or adapted?
It is widely denied that the legends narrated in such lays ever
lived but in verse. Many authorities maintain that the oldest
of these lays (Hamoismdl, Atlakouia, HIQoskvioa, VQlundarkvioa)
are German. This has been supported by detailed analysis of
word-usages, syntax and metrical forms, which are said to betray
"Vest Germanic rather than Norse fea.turos."? Dr Einar does not
accept such views, and suggests that the material is too poor to
allow of the conclusions (p. 241). 'Nards and usages which are
found in the Fremdstoffiieder, but not in other Norse sources, may
once have been current in Norse, and the earlier runic inscriptions
give some support to this. If the lays were translated from
German, the translations must have been made before c. 850,
when alliterative poetry seems to have died in Germany. 31
It is remarkable how different the Norse legends are from the
German. The legend of the battle of Goths and Huns, related in
the Hlooshuiaa, is not known at all in Germany. The Gothic king
Ermanaric (Jormunrekkr) is known well enough in German as in
English, but the legends about him are altogether different, and
the story of Svanhildr and her brothers, in so far as it was known
in Germany at all, may well derive from Norse tradition. Even
the legends of Atli and the Burgundians, which must partially
have originated in Germany, are told so differently by Norse poets
that it is hard to believe that they were translating German
records.
Supported by the researches of others, and especially of
F. Askcberg.s" Dr Einar emphasizes the importance of the
3. H. Kuhn has expressed such views in several brilliant papers, among
which I may mention those in Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und
Literatur LVII (1933), 1 ff., and LXIII (1939), 178 fl.
31 See A. Heusler, Deutsche Versgcschichte I (1925), 1-2.
32 Norden och kontinenten i gammal tid (1944), ch. 3.