A
kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically
circumlocutionCircumlocution is an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech...
, in the form of a
compoundIn linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
(usually two words, often hyphenated) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later
IcelandicIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
and
Anglo-SaxonAnglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...
poetry. For example,
Old Norse poetsOld Norse poetry encompasses a range of verse forms written in Old Norse, during the period from the 8th century to as late as the far end of the 13th century...
might replace
sverð, the regular word for “
swordA sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...
”, with a more abstract compound such as “wound-hoe” (
Egill SkallagrímssonEgill Skallagrímsson was a Viking Age warrior and skald. Egill is one of the great anti-heroes of the Icelandic sagas.-Life:...
:
HöfuðlausnHöfuðlausn or the "Head's Ransom" is a skaldic poem attributed to Egill Skalla-Grímsson in praise of king Eirik Bloodaxe.It is cited in Egils Saga , which claims that he created it in the span of one night. The events in the saga that lead up to the composition and recitation of the poem can be...
8), or a genitive
phraseIn everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
such as
randa íss “ice of shields” (
Einarr SkúlasonEinarr Skúlason was an Icelandic priest and skald. He was the most prominent Norse poet of the 12th century.He was descended from the family of Egill Skallagrímsson, the so called Mýramenn. For most of his life he lived in Norway, with the kings Sigurðr Jórsalafari, Haraldr gilli and the sons of...
: ‘Øxarflokkr’ 9). The term kenning has been applied by modern scholars to similar
figures of speechA figure of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning. It can also be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it, as in idiom, metaphor, simile,...
in other languages too, especially Old English.
Etymology
The word was adopted into English in the 19th century from medieval Icelandic treatises on poetics, in particular the
Prose EddaThe Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...
of
Snorri SturlusonSnorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...
, and derives ultimately from the Old Norse verb
kenna “know, recognise; perceive, feel; show; teach; etc.”, as used in the expression
kenna við “to name after; to express [one thing] in terms of [another]”, “name after; refer to in terms of”, and
kenna til “qualify by, make into a kenning by adding”.
The corresponding Modern English verb
to ken survives only in highly remote English dialects, and also in the language
ScotsScots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
in the form (slight differences between dialects) of
tae ken, other than the derivative existing in the standard language in the set expression
beyond one’s ken, “beyond the scope of one’s knowledge” and in the slightly corrupted form
uncanny, “surreal” or “supernatural”. Old Norse
kenna (
Modern IcelandicIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
kenna,
SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
känna,
DanishDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
kende, Norwegian
kjenne or
kjenna) is
cognateIn linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
with Old English
cennan,
Old FrisianOld Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries in the area between the Rhine and Weser on the European North Sea coast. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland also spoke Old Frisian but no medieval texts of this area are known...
kenna,
kanna,
Old SaxonOld Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is the earliest recorded form of Low German, documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in the Netherlands by Saxon peoples...
(
ant)
kennian (Middle Dutch and
DutchDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
kennen),
Old High GermanThe term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
(
ir-,
in-,
pi-)
chennan (
Middle High GermanMiddle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
and
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
kennen),
GothicGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
kannjan < Proto-Germanic *
kannjanan, originally
causativeIn linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....
of *
kunnanan “to know (how to)”, whence
Modern EnglishModern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
can 'to be able' (from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
root as Modern English
know and Latin-derived
cognition).
Structure
Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive
phraseIn everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
(
báru fákr "wave’s steed" = “ship” (
Þorbjörn hornklofiÞorbjörn Hornklofi was a 9th century Norwegian poet. He was the court poet of King Harald Fairhair.-Bibliography:*Glymdrápa - A drápa on King Harald.*Hrafnsmál/Haraldskvæði - Another poem on King Harald using the málaháttr metre....
:
GlymdrápaGlymdrápa is a skaldic poem composed by Þorbjörn hornklofi toward the end of the 9th century. It recounts several battles waged by Haraldr hárfagri , mostly as he was subduing Norway....
3)) or a compound word (
gjálfr-marr "sea-steed" = “ship” (Anon.:
HervararkviðaHervararkviða is an Old Norse poem from the Hervarar saga, and which is sometimes included in editions of the Poetic Edda....
27)). The simplest kennings consist of a base-word (Modern Icelandic
stofnorð, German
Grundwort) and a determinant (Modern Icelandic
kenniorð, German
Bestimmung) which qualifies, or modifies, the meaning of the base-word. The determinant may be a noun used uninflected as the first element in a compound word, with the base-word constituting the second element of the compound word. Alternatively the determinant may be a noun in the genitive
caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
, placed before or after the base-word, either directly or separated from the base-word by intervening words.
Thus the base-words in these examples are
fákr and
marr “steed”, the determinants
báru “wave’s” and
gjálfr “sea”. The unstated noun the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case:
skip “ship”.
In Old Norse poetry, either component of a kenning (base-word or determinant or both) could consist of an ordinary noun or else a
heitiA heiti is a synonym used in Old Norse poetry in place of the normal word for something...
“poetic synonym”. In the above examples,
fákr and
marr are distinctively poetic
lexemeA lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word. For example, in the English language, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN...
s; the normal word for “horse” in Old Norse
proseProse is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
is
hestr.
Complex kennings
The
skaldThe skald was a member of a group of poets, whose courtly poetry is associated with the courts of Scandinavian and Icelandic leaders during the Viking Age, who composed and performed renditions of aspects of what we now characterise as Old Norse poetry .The most prevalent metre of skaldic poetry is...
s also employed complex kennings in which the determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself made up of a further kenning:
grennir gunn-más “feeder of war-gull” = “feeder of
ravenRaven is the common name given to several larger-bodied members of the genus Corvus—but in Europe and North America the Common Raven is normally implied...
” = “warrior” (
Þorbjörn hornklofiÞorbjörn Hornklofi was a 9th century Norwegian poet. He was the court poet of King Harald Fairhair.-Bibliography:*Glymdrápa - A drápa on King Harald.*Hrafnsmál/Haraldskvæði - Another poem on King Harald using the málaháttr metre....
:
GlymdrápaGlymdrápa is a skaldic poem composed by Þorbjörn hornklofi toward the end of the 9th century. It recounts several battles waged by Haraldr hárfagri , mostly as he was subduing Norway....
6);
eyðendr arnar hungrs “destroyers of eagle’s hunger” = “feeders of eagle” = “warrior” (Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1). Where one kenning is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be
tvíkent “doubly determined, twice modified”.
Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that makes up the determinant is attached uninflected to the front of the base-word of the whole kenning to form a compound word:
mög-fellandi mellu “son-slayer of giantess” = “slayer of sons of giantess” = “slayer of giants” = “the god
ThorIn Norse mythology, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility...
” (
Steinunn RefsdóttirSteinunn Refsdóttir was an Icelandic skaldic poetic active at the end of the 10th century.The daughter of Refr hinn mikill and Finna, "Steinunn was both descended from and married into a powerful family of priest-chieftains "...
:
LausavísaIn Old Norse poetry and later Icelandic poetry, a lausavísa is a single stanza composition, or a set of stanzas unconnected by narrative or thematic continuity....
2).
If the figure comprises more than three elements, it is said to be
rekit “extended”. Kennings of up to seven elements are recorded in skaldic verse. Snorri himself characterises five-element kennings as an acceptable license but cautions against more extreme constructions:
Níunda er þat at reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar, er ór ættum er ef lengra er rekit; en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. “The ninth [license] is extending a kenning to the fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it.” The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in
Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórður Sjáreksson and reads
nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir “fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed”, which simply means "warrior".
Word order and comprehension
Word orderIn linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
in Old Norse is generally freer than in Modern English. This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between a base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word (
tmesisTmesis is a linguistic phenomenon in which a word or set phrase is separated into two parts, with other words occurring between them.-Verbs:...
). Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is usually less than it would be if an English text was subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate
morphologyIn linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
of Old Norse.
Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to the same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an "enemy of gold", "attacker of treasure", "destroyer of arm-rings", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake.
Definitions
Some scholars take the term kenning broadly to include any noun-substitute consisting of two or more elements, including merely descriptive epithets (such as Old Norse
grand viðar “bane of wood” = “fire” (Snorri Sturluson:
SkáldskaparmálThe second part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" is effectively a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined...
36)), while others would restrict it to
metaphorA metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
ical instances (such as Old Norse
sól húsanna “sun of the houses” = “fire” (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), specifically those where “[t]he base-word identifies the referent with something which it is not, except in a specially conceived relation which the poet imagines between it and the sense of the limiting element'” (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Some even exclude naturalistic metaphors such as Old English
forstes bend “bond of frost” = “ice” or
winter-ġewǣde “winter-raiment” = “snow”: “A metaphor is a kenning only if it contains an incongruity between the referent and the meaning of the base-word; in the kenning the limiting word is essential to the figure because without it the incongruity would make any identification impossible” (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Descriptive epithets are a common literary device in many parts of the world, whereas kennings in this restricted sense are a distinctive feature of Old Norse and, to a lesser extent, Old English poetry.
Snorri’s own usage, however, seems to fit the looser sense: “Snorri uses the term "kenning" to refer to a structural device, whereby a person or object is indicated by a periphrastic description containing two or more terms (which can be a noun with one or more dependent genitives or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures)” (Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv). The term is certainly applied to non-metaphorical phrases in
SkáldskaparmálThe second part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" is effectively a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined...
:
En sú kenning er áðr var ritat, at kalla Krist konung manna, þá kenning má eiga hverr konungr. “And that kenning which was written before, calling Christ the king of men, any king can have that kenning. Likewise in
HáttatalThe Háttatal is the last section of the Prose Edda composed by the Icelandic poet, politician, and historian Snorri Sturluson. Using, for the most part, his own compositions, it exemplifies the types of verse forms used in Old Norse poetry...
:
Þat er kenning at kalla fleinbrak orrostu [...] “It is a kenning to call battle ‘spear-crash’ [...]”.
Snorri’s expression
kend heitiA heiti is a synonym used in Old Norse poetry in place of the normal word for something...
"qualified terms" appears to be synonymous with
kenningar, although Brodeur applies this more specifically to those periphrastic epithets which don’t come under his strict definition of kenning.
Sverdlov approaches the question from a morphological standpoint. Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing (declined) adjective. According to this view, all kennings are formally compounds, notwithstanding widespread tmesis.
Semantics
Kennings could be developed into extended, and sometimes vivid, metaphors:
tröddusk törgur fyr [...] hjalta harðfótum “shields were trodden under the hard feet of the hilt (sword blades)” (
Eyvindr SkáldaspillirEyvindr Finnsson skáldaspillir was a 10th century Norwegian skald. He was the court poet of king Hákon the Good and earl Hákon of Hlaðir. His son Hárekr later became a prominent chieftain in Norway.His preserved works are:...
:
HákonarmálHákonarmál is a skaldic poem which the skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir composed about the fall of the Norwegian king Hákon the Good at the battle of Fitjar and his reception in Valhalla. This poem emulates Eiríksmál and is intended to depict the Christian Hákon as a friend to the pagan gods...
6);
svarraði sárgymir á sverða nesi “wound-sea (=blood) sprayed on headland of swords (=shield)” (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 7). Snorri calls such examples
nýgervingar and exemplifies them in verse 6 of his Háttatal. The effect here seems to depend on an interplay of more or less naturalistic imagery and jarring artifice. But the skalds weren’t averse either to arbitrary, purely decorative, use of kennings: “That is, a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even when it is in the form of a man’s arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the mention of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at all and does not contribute to the picture of the battle being described” (Faulkes (1997), pp. 8–9).
Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms
nykrat “made monstrous” (Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6), and his nephew called the practice
löstr “a fault” (
Óláfr hvítaskáldÓláfr Þórðarson was an Icelandic skald and scholar who was born about 1210 and died in 1259. He is usually called Óláfr hvítaskáld in contrast to a contemporary skald called Óláfr svartaskáld...
: Third Grammatical Treatise 80). In spite of this, it seems that “many poets did not object to and some must have preferred baroque juxtapositions of unlike kennings and neutral or incongruous verbs in their verses” (Foote & Wilson (1970), p. 332). E.g.
heyr jarl Kvasis dreyra “listen, earl, to
KvasirIn Norse mythology, Kvasir was a being born of the saliva of the Æsir and the Vanir, two groups of gods. Extremely wise, Kvasir traveled far and wide, teaching and spreading knowledge. This continued until the dwarfs Fjalar and Galar killed Kvasir and drained him of his blood...
’s blood (=poetry)” (Einarr skálaglamm: Vellekla 1).
Sometimes there is a kind of redundancy whereby the referent of the whole kenning, or a kenning for it, is embedded:
barmi dólg-svölu “brother of hostility-swallow” = “brother of raven” = “raven” (Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1);
blik-meiðendr bauga láðs “gleam-harmers of the land of rings” = “harmers of gleam of arm” = “harmers of ring” = “leaders, nobles, men of social standing (conceived of as generously destroying gold, i.e. giving it away freely)” (Anon.: Líknarbraut 42).
While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on a knowledge of specific
mythsNorse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...
or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically
él-ker “squall-vat” (Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3) or described in mythical terms as
Ymis haus “
YmirIn Norse mythology, Ymir, also called Aurgelmir among the giants themselves, was the founder of the race of frost giants and was later killed by the Borrs.-Etymology:...
’s skull” (
Arnórr jarlaskáldArnórr Þórðarson jarlaskáld was an Icelandic skald, son of Þórðr Kolbeinsson. Arnórr travelled as a merchant and often visited the Orkney Islands where he composed poems for the Earls, receiving his byname. For king Magnus the Good he composed Hrynhenda. He also composed memorial poems for Magnus...
: Magnúsdrápa 19), referring to the idea that the sky was made out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according to certain conventions without reference to a specific story:
rimmu Yggr “
OdinOdin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....
of battle” = “warrior” (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5).
Poets in medieval Iceland even treated
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings complete with allusions to
heathen mythsNorse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...
and aristocratic epithets for saints:
Þrúðr falda “goddess of headdresses” = “
Saint CatherineSaint Catherine of Alexandria, also known as Saint Catherine of the Wheel and The Great Martyr Saint Catherine is, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the pagan emperor Maxentius...
” (Kálfr Hallsson: Kátrínardrápa 4).
Kennings of the type AB, where B routinely has the characteristic A and thus this AB is tautological, tends to mean "like B in that it has the characteristic A", e.g. "shield-Njörðr", tautological because the god Njörðr by nature has his own shield, means "like Njörðr in that he has a shield", i.e. "warrior". A modern English example is "painted Jezebel" as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics.
Ellipsis
A term may be omitted from a well-known kenning:
val-teigs Hildr “hawk-ground’s
valkyrieIn Norse mythology, a valkyrie is one of a host of female figures who decides who dies in battle. Selecting among half of those who die in battle , the valkyries bring their chosen to the afterlife hall of the slain, Valhalla, ruled over by the god Odin...
/goddess” (Haraldr Harðráði: Lausavísa 19). The full expression implied here is “goddess of gleam/fire/adornment of ground/land/seat/perch of hawk” = “goddess of gleam of arm” = “goddess of gold” = “lady” (characterised according to convention as wearing golden jewellery, the arm-kenning being a reference to
falconryFalconry is "the taking of wild quarry in its natural state and habitat by means of a trained raptor". There are two traditional terms used to describe a person involved in falconry: a falconer flies a falcon; an austringer flies a hawk or an eagle...
). The poet relies on listeners’ familiarity with such conventions to carry the meaning.
Old Norse kennings in context
In the following dróttkvætt stanza, the Norwegian
skaldThe skald was a member of a group of poets, whose courtly poetry is associated with the courts of Scandinavian and Icelandic leaders during the Viking Age, who composed and performed renditions of aspects of what we now characterise as Old Norse poetry .The most prevalent metre of skaldic poetry is...
Eyvind Finnson skáldaspillir (d. ca 990) compares the greed of king
Harald GråfellHarald II Greycloak was a king of Norway.Harald Greycloak was the son of Eirik Bloodaxe and a grandson of Harald Fairhair...
to the generosity of his predecessor
Haakon the GoodHaakon I , , given the byname the Good, was the third king of Norway and the youngest son of Harald Fairhair and Thora Mosterstang.-Early life:...
:
- Bárum, Ullr, of alla,
- ímunlauks, á HAUKA
- FJÖLLUM
Fýrisvalla
- fræ Hákonar ævi;
- nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða
- fáglýjaðra þýja
- meldr í móður holdi
- mellu dolgs of folginn
(Eyvindr skáldaspillir:
LausavísaIn Old Norse poetry and later Icelandic poetry, a lausavísa is a single stanza composition, or a set of stanzas unconnected by narrative or thematic continuity....
8).
"
UllrIn early Germanic paganism, *Wulþuz appears to have been a major god, or an epithet of an important god, in prehistoric times....
of war-leek! We carried the seed of
FýrisvellirFyrisvellir, Fyris Wolds or Fyrisvallarna was the marshy plain south of Gamla Uppsala where travellers had to leave the ships and walk to the Temple at Uppsala and the hall of the Swedish king....
on the mountains of hawks during all of Hakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden the flour of
FróðiFróði is the name of a number of legendary Danish kings in various texts including Beowulf, Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and his Ynglinga saga, Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, and the Grottasöngr. A Danish king by this name also appears as a minor character in the Middle High German epic Die...
's hapless slaves in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess."
This might be paraphrased: "O warrior, we carried gold on our arms during all of Hakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in the earth."
ímun-laukr "war-leek" = "sword".
Ullr is the name of a god,
UllrIn early Germanic paganism, *Wulþuz appears to have been a major god, or an epithet of an important god, in prehistoric times....
.
Ullr [...]
ímunlauks "god of sword" = "warrior", perhaps addressing King Harald. This kenning follows a convention whereby the name of any god is combined with some male attribute (e.g. war or weaponry) to produce a kenning for "man".
HAUKA FJÖLL "mountains of hawks" are "arms", a reference to the sport of
falconryFalconry is "the taking of wild quarry in its natural state and habitat by means of a trained raptor". There are two traditional terms used to describe a person involved in falconry: a falconer flies a falcon; an austringer flies a hawk or an eagle...
. This follows a convention in which arms are called the land (or any sort of surface) of the hawk.
Fýrisvalla fræ "seed of
FýrisvellirFyrisvellir, Fyris Wolds or Fyrisvallarna was the marshy plain south of Gamla Uppsala where travellers had to leave the ships and walk to the Temple at Uppsala and the hall of the Swedish king....
" = "gold". This is an allusion to a legend retold in
SkáldskaparmálThe second part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" is effectively a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined...
and
Hrólf KrakiHrólfr Kraki, Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage was a legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition. His name would in his own language have been *Hrōþiwulfaz .Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene...
's saga in which King Hrolf and his men scattered gold on the plains (
vellir) of the river Fýri south of
Gamla UppsalaGamla Uppsala is a parish and a village outside Uppsala in Sweden. It had 16,231 inhabitants in 1991.As early as the 3rd century AD and the 4th century AD and onwards, it was an important religious, economic and political centre...
to delay their pursuers.
Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr "flour of Fróði's hapless slaves" alludes to the Grottasöng legend and is another kenning for "gold".
móður hold mellu dolgs "flesh of mother of enemy of giantess" is the Earth (Jörd), personified as a goddess who was the mother of
ThorIn Norse mythology, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility...
, the enemy of the Jotuns.
Old English and other kennings
The practice of forming kennings has traditionally been seen as a common Germanic inheritance, but this has been disputed since, among the early Germanic languages, their use is largely restricted to Old Norse and Old English poetry. A possible early kenning for "gold" (
walha-kurna "Roman/Gallic grain") is attested in the Ancient Nordic runic inscription on the
Tjurkö (I)-C bracteateThe Tjurkö Bracteates, listed by Rundata as DR BR75 and DR BR76, are two bracteates found on Tjurkö, Eastern Hundred, Blekinge, Sweden, bearing Elder Futhark runic inscriptions, in Proto-Norse.-Description:...
. Kennings are virtually absent from the surviving corpus of continental West Germanic verse; the
Old SaxonOld Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is the earliest recorded form of Low German, documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in the Netherlands by Saxon peoples...
HeliandThe Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means saviour in Old Saxon , and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the life of Jesus in the alliterative verse style of a Germanic saga...
contains only one example:
lîk-hamo “body-raiment” = “body” (Heliand 3453 b), a compound which, in any case, is normal in West Germanic and North Germanic prose (Old English
līchama,
Old High GermanThe term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
lîchamo,
lîchinamo,
Old IcelandicOld Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
líkamr,
líkami,
Old SwedishOld Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
līkhamber,
SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
lekamen,
DanishDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
and
Norwegian BokmålBokmål is one of two official Norwegian written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk. Bokmål is used by 85–90% of the population in Norway, and is the standard most commonly taught to foreign students of the Norwegian language....
legeme,
Norwegian NynorskNynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
lekam).
Old English kennings are all of the simple type, possessing just two elements, e.g. for “sea”:
seġl-rād “sail-road” (
BeowulfBeowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...
1429 b),
swan-rād “swan-road” (Beowulf 200 a),
bæð-weġ “bath-way” (Andreas 513 a),
hron-rād “whale-road” (Beowulf 10),
hwæl-weġ “whale-way” (The Seafarer 63 a). Most Old English examples take the form of compound words in which the first element is uninflected: "heofon-candel" “sky-candle” = “the sun” (Exodus 115 b). Kennings consisting of a genitive phrase occur too, but rarely:
heofones ġim “sky’s jewel” = “the sun” (The Phoenix 183).
Old English poets often place a series of synonyms in apposition, and these may include kennings (loosely or strictly defined) as well as the literal referent:
Hrōðgar maþelode, helm Scyldinga [...] “Hrothgar, helm (=protector, lord) of the
ScyldingOld English Scylding and Old Norse Skjöldung , meaning in both languages "People of Scyld/Skjöld" refers to members of a legendary royal family of Danes and sometimes to their people. The name is explained in many text by the descent of this family from an eponymous king Scyld/Skjöld...
s, said [...]” (Beowulf 456).
See also
- Elegant variation
Elegant variation is a phrase coined by Henry Watson Fowler referring to the unnecessary use of synonyms to denote a single thing. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage he says:...
- Heiti
A heiti is a synonym used in Old Norse poetry in place of the normal word for something...
- List of kennings
- Metonymy
Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...
- Synecdoche
Synecdoche , meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which a term is used in one of the following ways:* Part of something is used to refer to the whole thing , or...
External links