1100-talets pseudonyma skaldediktning: En kritisk granskning

i denna artikel diskuteras ett antagande som har blivit allt vanligare inom skaldediktsforskningen från mitten av 1900-talet och framåt, nämligen att det under 1100-talet skall ha komponerats åtskillig poesi i de skalders namn som hade levat på 900-talet. Detta antagande förutsätter, åtminstone implicit, att sagorna hade antagit den prosimetriska form vi känner från 1200- talet redan hundra år tidigare. i denna studie granskas här så många tillgängliga indicier som möjligt för att bedöma om skaldediktsprosimetrum verkligen var en vanlig form på 1100-talet, och de visar sig alla peka mot att så inte var fallet. Formen tycks snarare ha utvecklats under påverkan av eddadiktsprosimetrum i perioden runt och framför allt efter 1200. antagandet om pseudonym 1100-talsdiktning motsägs därmed av den litterära utvecklingen och detta leder till frågan om vilka kriterier som har använts för att uppställa en hypotes. Dessa befinns bjuda på åtskilliga problem, och det föreslås att företräde istället bör ges åt mät- och falsifierbara kriterier

Character, Provenance, and Use of the Icelandic Fifth Grammatical Treatise

This article argues that the short textual fragment today called the Fifth Grammatical Treatise (below 5GT) represents a kind of hybrid within Icelandic poetics, occupying a middle ground between the nativizing treatises, such as Snorri’s Edda, and the Latinate ones, such as 3GT and 4GT. Like Snorri’s Edda, 5GT uses vernacular rather than Latin terminology and it is not arranged according to principles canonized within the grammatical tradition, but the concept it treats are alien to the vernacular tradition and belong in the sphere of Latin learning. The article also contends that the combined evidence of manuscript context and features within the text itself suggest that its author is Óláfr Þórðarson, nephew of Snorri Sturluson, or someone very close to him, and that Óláfr drew on 5GT in his composition of 3GT. This contextualization sheds further light on how 5GT fits into the evolving tradition of Icelandic poetics, not least because Óláfr is the person who took this tradition from a nativizing to a Latinate mode in 3GT. The attribution of 5GT to his intellectual milieu thus enables us to get close to the individuals who, after Snorri, developed the discourse on vernacular poetics in the thirteenth century. The translation of Latin texts that Óláfr undertook in 3GT may appear as the most straightforward way of transferring Latin learning into the vernacular. The intermediate, hybrid solution of 5GT, however, suggests that the nativizing mode held such a strong position in Icelandic intellectual circles that translation was the most, rather than the least, challenging solution for transforming local poetics into a theoretical discourse recognizable by European standards

Kan fornisländskans rúnar betyda “bokstäver”?

This article argues that Old Norse rúnar cannot have the unqualified meaning ‘letters’, but only ‘runes’ or, rarely, ‘another type of script than the ordinary’. The mean­ing ‘letters’ in dictionaries and translations is derived from Latin, which has no word for ‘runes’, and where the natural translation of rúnar is therefore litterae ‘letters’. When Latin translations were subsequently reverted into the vernacular, the additional meaning ‘letters’ entered scholarly literature on the subject. This is true not only of Old Norse, but also of Old English and Old High German. This obser­vation can provide us with more secure readings of some textual passages and, more importantly, allows us to follow the expression of attitudes towards runes in Iceland in the period c. 1150–1350