September 2024:
Free prose and book prose avant la lettre

The discussion concerning the constitution and thus also the authorial status or even authorship of Old Norse-Icelandic literature reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century under the labels of free prose and book prose. While the discussion in the 20th century mainly centred on the origins and the authorship of the Sagas of Icelanders, a similar debate took place much earlier regarding the Eddic texts, i.e. the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda.

Under the subtitle „Über den Verfasser der ältern Edda“ (pp. 37-47) a subsection of the entry „Edda“ (pp. 29-52), for which Ferdinand Wachter was responsible, the Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste edited by Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber (1. Section: A-G, 31. Part: Eckmühl - Ehstland; Brockhaus: Leipzig 1838) states that there are two possible theories regarding the authorship and origin of the Poetic Edda: one assumes that Sæmundur (inn fróði) Sigfússon did not compose the Eddic poems himself, but rather bound orally transmitted stories in verse form and thus preserved them for posterity. The other, however, argues that the poems already existed as Runic inscriptions and that Sæmundur fróði merely transliterated them into Latin alphabet.

Wachter cites Árni Magnússon’s Vita Sæmundi Multiscii with reference to Stephanus Olai, or Stefán Ólafsson, for the first hypothesis, which is reminiscent of the later arguments of the free prose theory. Today, this vita survives in Árni Magnússon’s hand in AM 1029 4to and also in the copies by Jón Ólafsson (Lbs 145 4to) and Jón Sigurðsson (Lbs 349 4to). The vita was edited and published by the Commission for the Arnamagnæan Legacy in 1930 in the second volume of Árni Magnússons Levned og Skrifter. In this Vita, Árni writes: “Sæmundum fabulas poeticas, eatenus non scriptas, sed in ore tantum hominum existentes, ab interitu vindicare volentem, eas carminibus Islandicis a se inclusas, in unicum corpus, eddam scilicet memorata, congessisse.” (p. 95). In this context, Árni Magnússon refers to a commentary by Stephanus Olai on stanza 9 of Völuspá(unpag.), which Stephanus Olai had translated into Latin, and which was later published by Peder Hansen Resen in Copenhagen in 1665.

The second hypothesis, which is in line with the book prose theory, goes back to Gudmundus Andreæ, or Guðmundur Andrésson, who also commented on the verses in the 1665 edition of Völuspá. According to Árni Magnússon, Gudmundus Andreæ states that „Sæmundus tantum, qvi literas Latinas induxit in Islandiam, e literis runicis hæc poemata in literaturam vulgarem (quæ in primis maxome Latinam sapuit) transtulit, literatenus, non compusuit.“ (p. 95) Furthermore, Gudmundus Andreæ mentions in his Lexicon Islandicum, sive Gothicae Runae vel linguae septentrionalis dictionarium published by Resen in 1683: „Idem Sæmundus fabulas poeticas, seu schialdricam hujus nationis mythologiam ex runicis documentis illustratam Latinis characteribus descripsit, magna poetarum utilitate, eundemque; librum Eddam vocavit, cujus initium est hæc Wöluspa.“ (pp. 12-13).

This debate in the 17th century, which was received and commented on by Árni Magnússon in the early 18th century and is still actively communicated in a German-language encyclopaedia in the first half of the 19th century, reveals that there was a long-lasting discussion about the authorship and the compositional history of the Poetic Edda, which was concerned with the question of orality, written (pre-)fixation and the associated codification through the mediation of memory. However, this discourse, which resonated for a long time, seems to have broken off and had no direct influence on what was later supposedly negotiated anew in another literary genre under the keywords of free prose and book prose.