210 NORDIC BALLADS

near to hand: the oral tradition of his own countrymen. E. T.
Kristensen found many an old ballad still alive in Jutland, still
sung to an ancient melody. With this material and his own expert
knowledge Axel Olrik expanded Grundtvig's work from five to
nine volumes.1

We obtain some Idea of the state of poetry immediately ante-
cedent to the Siser5 by consulting the prose of Saxo Grammaticus.
His Historia Danica was commenced, at the instigation of Arch-
bishop Absalom, about the year 1185, and completed after his
patron's death, about 1208. As sources for his work Saxo drew on
many poetical compilations, some of which he reproduces in Latin
verse. The glance of a historian is directed backwards. We need
not suppose that strictly contemporary verses received a ready wel-
come from Saxo, so that his silence as to the fviserj is not neces-
sarily evidence against them. He certainly does give an inventory
of the older verses bearing on history and mythology which were
accessible to men of his time. The rise of the Viser5 corresponds
with the fundamental change In prosody from alliteration to asso-
nance, and this change must have taken place during the twelfth
century. But much of the older alliterative poetry continued to be
heard, and with such frequency and acceptance that It has been
transformed into 'viser*. It is not necessary to believe that such
ballads are the oldest of their kind. The change could occur at any
date at which the old heroic poems were still remembered. They
are of the oldest lineage, however, and contain embedded in them
archaisms of thought and language.

The poetic Edda circulated freely. The extant Codex Regius is
a somewhat fortuitous collection of such poems, and we have to
take into account not only the pieces contained in that manuscript,
but also others often grouped by critics as Eddica minora. The
mythological poems, however, were already outmoded. Though
highly dramatic, they are not well suited to become narratives, and
their paganism had become an offence. The ballads draw only on
the ThrymskviSa, the most human of all the Eddie mythological
poems. The god is transformed into a heroic farmer, and his
associates might almost be bonders. Names of ritual significance
are not remembered or are confused, and the divine or gigantic
aspects of the action are not underlined. So the ballad of Tord af
Havsgaard (DGF i), well known in Denmark, Sweden, and Nor-
1 See Note G, p. 387.