ABSTRACT

For the significance of Dahlmann’s political career, and his relationship to Outzen in item 11 above, see Introduction pp. 17-19. In the work excerpted here, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, 2 vols, Altona 1822, Dahlmann, at this time Professor of History at Kiel, clearly has his eye on contemporary politics. On pp. 250-3 of vol. 1 he lays stress on the difference between Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian languages, rejecting Thorkelin’s assertion of their unity and mentioning in a note on p. 251 his edition of the ‘highly important, but just as mysterious Anglo-Saxon poem published by him under the title De Danorum Rebus Gestis’. Beowulf is footnoted again on p. 432. Later, in an extensive commentary on the Ohthere and Wulfstan passages in Alfred’s Orosius, Dahlmann seeks to show that the lands from which the Angles emigrated were in contemporary Schleswig, and that the Danes were not the only incomers to the area. Followers of Ludwig the Pious might for example have crossed the Eider into South Jutland, or Schleiland, or Silland. Pp. 439-41.