ABSTRACT

Everyone who now feels a love of ancient Denmark and our fathers’ commemoration will have seen with joy that the ancient Anglo Saxon poem about Danish deeds, which lay buried for so many centuries in the English bookshelves and which was only just barely saved like a brand from the burning, has appeared from the hand of Mr State-Councillor Thorkelin, with the generous assistance of Mr Privy Councillor Bülow. Many might well lament that the translation is in Latin, and ask how long we shall continue to publish the ancient memorials of the North for foreigners at Denmark’s expense; but this complaint would here have less basis, for such a poem must be published from its first appearance for scholars in all countries, and does not need to appear before the Danish people in its pleasingly poetic shape. On the other hand, it would be appropriate that either the editor or someone else should explain the poem’s contents in our mother tongue, and indicate what we could all at once estimate of its poetic and historic worth; and since the editor had not fulfilled that wish either in Latin or in Danish, I decided to do that as best I could. This was not however so small an undertaking, as I at once noticed that it would do no good to follow the Latin translation, which in many places is openly wrong, and in many more obscure than the text itself, and I had therefore to work directly on the original language. To my great surprise the Litteraturtidende reported on the poem already in its no. 26, and enumerated the contents of nineteen sections, and the rest in no. 27. When I had the paper in my hand, I realised the impossibility of the reviewer, even if he were possessed of the language, being able in so short a time to have read through and pondered the poem as one really should, when one gives a public account of such a remarkable memorial; but how could I be anything

blame is cast on the obscurity of the poem, indeed the poet gets the blame even for having contradicted himself in the accounts of Higelak’s death, disregarding the fact that it is certainly not his fault that the translator and the reviewer mingle events together, and alter the names of the princes-Hrædel, Herebald, Hædkyn, Hardred-to insignificant adjectives. But what sort of behaviour is this? Is this the erudition and the criticism on which people insist so strongly? Is this the way that such memorials of the heathen age shall be made known and referred to in Denmark, and that foreigners shall point the finger at us, as people who praise and damn what we do not understand?