Hear No Sievers, See No Sievers: Metrics and the Eddic Commentary Tradition

Abstract

This article explores a gradual shift towards metrical and linguistic imprecision in the four major commentaries on the Old Norse Eddic poems produced from the 1930s to today. This trend both affects and reflects the state of Eddic scholarship at large. Many scholars today do not avail themselves of metrical and linguistic criteria in the dating and textual restitution of Eddic poems but approach these issues either with agnosticism or by presenting vague arguments in favour of particular dates or variants. During the last three decades, however, testing along many parameters has placed the essentials of Eduard Sievers’ metrical analysis (1893) beyond reasonable doubt, which means that the gradual abandonment of precise description has taken place in a context where the preconditions for such description were improving. These analytical advances and mainstream Eddic scholarship have yet to meet, and the present article aims to facilitate such a convergence. Furthermore, since the Eddic commentaries will remain indispensable heuristic tools for the foreseeable future, the field of Old Norse philology stands to gain from a concise description of the implicit metrical and linguistic assumptions guiding their analysis.