ABSTRACT

The work of Sophus Bugge (1833-1907) was much praised by other Beowulf scholars, perhaps because, being Norwegian, he provided sometimes welcome resistance to the dominant school of German scholarship, but unlike the Danes wrote for the most part in German. Like other scholars, however (see item 67), he tended to write a string of notes on separate passages without articulating any overall thesis (though see item 99 below and Introduction, p. 60 for his overall influence on the field). Only a brief passage from his ‘Zum Beowulf’, ZDP 4 (1872), 192-224, is accordingly given, in which Bugge may be observed stoutly denying one of Müllenhoff’s most Lachmannian axioms, the theory that opening passages of earlier separate lays could still be recognised. Pp. 202-3.