Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xliv. ( 1 899), No. "i. 7 



words in the list occur in Norwegian {e.g., jafnendr^ 

 umpire, a Norse legal term); others may be borrowed from 

 Anglo-Saxon {e.g., o'Saltor/a,- inherited land ; the com- 

 pound is a ima^ Xijonivov in Icelandic ; Anglo-Saxon 

 e'^elfyrf) ; some are apparently borrowed from the Conti- 

 nental Saxons {e.g., plSgr'^ a plough, is neither Norse nor 

 Anglo-Saxon). The editors of the Corpus Pocticum must 

 have been at a loss for arguments before they accepted 

 these good Germanic words as proofs of Celtic influence. 

 Their idea is that the poets of the Edda were writing in 

 the midst of a Celtic civilisation, and used rare words to 

 describe an unfamiliar life. But this argument would apply 

 equally to Anglo-Saxon and Old High German poetry ; 

 and both the things quoted and their names were common 

 in Germanic countries. This remark applies also to the 

 next section. 



III. Local Colour in the Eddie Poems. 



In considering local colour as evidence of the birth- 

 place of the Edda, it is necessary to remember that the 

 Icelanders were a far-travelled race whose wanderings 

 extended from Greenland to Constantinople, and who 

 regarded a sta)--at-home as a man of no mark." We 

 should therefore expect their poetry to show some know- 

 ledge of other countries. Local colour is nevertheless the 

 argument in which both scholars seem to place most con- 

 fidence. They quote as characteristic of the British Isles : 

 I. Peat-digging,'' Rigsmal, 12. It is true that peat-digging 



^ Hdrbar^sIJoQ, 42. 



^ S/gurQarkvi(Sa, III., 62. 



' /ii'gsmdt, 22. 



* Laxdccla Saga, ch. 72. " >ykkir mer maSr vi3 ])at faviss verSa, ef 

 hann kannar ekki viiVara enn her Island" ("A man seems to me little wise, 

 if he knows nothing heyond Iceland here.") 



^ Corpus Pocticum Boreale, p. lix. ; Slu^limga Saga, p. clxxxvi. 



