Antiquarians and Poets

Abstract

Chapter One examines the influence of Old Norse myth on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poetry in English. Interest in Old Norse material was first fuelled by antiquarians and historians in England and Scandinavia investigating the early history of their respective nations. Old Norse literature was regarded as an important source of such history. The Goths, as ancestors of the northern Europeans, were celebrated as bearers of political liberty, so interest focused on the god Odin as an historical chieftain and lawgiver. But he was also regarded by some as the inventor of runes and poetry, and allusions to him in this role, as well as the first versions of some Old Norse poems, begin to appear in the work of poets such as Dryden and Pope. Old Norse poetry itself begins to be seen as having literary merit, rather than being of merely antiquarian interest.