POETICAL INSPIRATIONIN OLD NORSE AND
OLD ENGLISH POETRY
By

ANTHONY FAULKESPROFESSOR OF OLD ICELANDICIN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecturein Northern Studies
delivered at University College London
28 November 1997

PUBLISHED FOR THE COLLEGE BY THE
VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCHLONDON© UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 1997
PRINTED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

ISBN: 0 903521 32 6

POETICAL INSPIRATION IN OLD NORSEAND OLD ENGLISH POETRYI

N THE VENERABLE BEDE’S ACCOUNT of the earliest known Anglo-

Saxon poet Caedmon, we are told that Caedmon was an unlettered herdsman who was unable to take part in the evening
entertainment of his fellows because he could not sing. One night
after he had left a party early because of his embarrassment anangel came to him in a dream and told him to sing of creation,and the result is Caedmon’s hymn, a short poem about God’s
creation of the world for men, the most remarkable thing about
which is its complicated verbal and metrical structure. Thereafter Caedmon was found to have a gift for poetry; and it isinteresting to note that his later poems were evidently producedby the learned monks of the monastery retelling to him stories
from the Bible which he is said to have chewed over like a cow
chewing the cud and to have reproduced in poetical languagewith great sweetness (Hist. eccl. IV 24).
From Bede’s account it is clear that the divine gift Caedmon
received was one of expression, the ability to tell existing stories
in verse form, ‘what oft was thought but ne’er so well express’d’.
If he was inspired, it was not the content, but the language that
he was inspired with, as is argued by C. L. Wrenn in ‘The Poetryof Caedmon’ (1946, 286), who suggests that the real miracle ofCaedmon was that an unlettered peasant should become able touse the style and manner of learned court poetry. There is a close
analogue to the story of Caedmon in the Old Icelandic story ofHallbjo≈rn hali in Flateyjarbók (ÍF IX 227–9). His problem wasthat he wanted to compose an elegy for an earlier poet but could
not ﬁnd the words. He fell asleep on the poet’s grave mound andthe dead man came out to him in his dream and gave him theability to compose poetry, instructing him to compose in ascomplex a metrical and verbal style as possible. One interesting3

POETICAL INSPIRATION

similarity between the stories of Caedmon and Hallbjo≈rn is thatwhile both are said to have gone on to compose much other poetry,no further verse by either of them has been recorded.
Stories about individuals receiving inspiration in composing
poetry from supernatural sources are widespread, but what I wantto compare with Bede’s account of Caedmon’s inspiration is what
Snorri Sturluson wrote about poetry in Iceland in the thirteenth
century. Snorri is one of the few writers of medieval Scandinavia
who express clear critical attitudes about the nature of vernacular
poetry, and although he was writing towards the end of the period
when oral skaldic poetry was cultivated in the North, it is likelythat his views about poetry would have been shared by many
poets and their audiences in his time and earlier. He has a mythabout the origin of poetry in his Edda, according to which poeticalinspiration is given to gods and men by Óðinn in the form of an
alcoholic drink brewed from the blood of a person of immense
wisdom created from the spittle produced by two races of gods
to seal their truce after their war together. This drink had to be
recovered by Óðinn after it had been in the possession ﬁrst of
dwarfs and then of giants, and when he escaped with it back to
the other gods he carried it in his stomach while ﬂying in theform of an eagle; he was chased by another eagle and could notprevent some of the liquid from being expelled backwards; thatpart of it was left for rhymesters or poetasters. The rest which he
was able to bring up into containers in Ásgarðr was for the gods,
and for human poets and scholars.
There are many analogues to this story too in the mythology
of various countries, some of them well outside the area ofGermanic culture. Skaldic poets frequently alluded to the story
in their poetry. It seems at ﬁrst sight that this would support theidea of poetry having being seen in medieval Scandinavia as aninspirational activity of which the symptoms were similar to
drunkenness. Thus the seventeenth-century Icelandic poet MagnúsÓlafsson in his essay on Norse poetry published in 1636 speaksof a poet reciting appearing to be vino madens and uses the termskáldvingl or poetica vertigo:
Further, our poetry also has this peculiarity: whereas in ordinary
languages anyone can put together poems in accordance with the4IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

fashion of his country, force the words into some sort of rhythmicalpattern, and by practice achieve some ﬂuency; in ours no one becomesa poet, or can put together even the simplest kind of poem without
great labour, however much he wants to, unless he is especiallygifted with poetic inspiration. And this inspiration, like other natural
passions, affects some more violently and others more gently. Some
produce good poetry after long working out, others pour out allkinds of poems extempore with a more violent kind of impulse, sothat whatever they try to express turns out to be poetry, as thatmost ingenious Roman poet once claimed of his own poetic ﬂuency,
and they ﬁnd verse just as easy as prose. Further, this sort of quality
reveals itself by clear signs straightway at a very early age. Nor
must it be forgotten that this activity of the spirit is hottest at thetime of the new moon, and you would say that an outstanding poetexplaining poetical matters to others, or occupied in delivering poetry,
was under the inﬂuence of drink, was afﬂicted with a rather severe
attack of melancholy, or was seized by some madness; and often
this quality can be detected even in strangers from a certain particularmannerism which we call skáldvingl or poetical delirium.

Magnús Ólafsson, however, was inﬂuenced by Renaissanceattitudes to poetry (and the Roman poet he refers to is Ovid,
Tristia IV x 25), though he may not actually have read
Shakespeare’s words about the poet’s eye in a ﬁne frenzy rollingor the lunatic, the lover and the poet, and I know of no medieval
Icelandic stories of individual poets being inspired either literally
or metaphorically to compose particular poems by draughts ofthe mead of poetry, and although Óðinn is sometimes referred
to by poets (most notably by Egill Skalla-Grímsson) as the giverof the gift of poetic expression, he is never invoked by poets inScandinavia in the way that the Muses were invoked by classicalpoets. What Óðinn’s mead gives is not the inspiration to compose
a poem, but the ability and skill to express oneself in verse (andthe ability to be a scholar). Poets speak of composition andperformance as pouring out Óðinn’s mead, not as drinking it;
Skáldskaparmál verses 4 and 17 by Skáld-Refr are ambiguous,
but verse 18 by Einarr skálaglamm is clear. Refr said this:(4) Often the kind man brought me to the raven-god’s [Óðinn’s]
holy drink [instructed me in poetry].
(17) To you we owe Falr’s cups [the mead of poetry], noble
Slaughter-Gautr [Óðinn].
5POETICAL INSPIRATION

Einarr skálaglamm said this:(18) I shall succeed in bailing the draught of Host-Tyr’s [Óðinn’s]
wine-vessel [the mead of poetry] before the ship-impeller [seaman,i. e. Earl Hákon]—I need no urging to that.

When skaldic poets refer to the receiving of Óðinn’s mead, it isgenerally their hearers who do this, not the poets (Skáldskaparmálverses 27, 28, 29). The role of Óðinn is made more complex byreferences to the god Bragi as also being a patron of poetry, though
there are no stories to illustrate in what way he relates to humanpoets. It may be added that there is not a close connection between
poetry and religious ritual expressed in Old Norse poetry, except
perhaps in some eddic verse.
Much—though not all—skaldic poetry is characterised bycomplexity of diction and metre. There are several anecdotes
illustrating the difﬁculties of understanding it (as well as someindicating the difﬁculty of composing it; Snorri refers to this in
Háttatal in the introduction to stanza 17), and some that indicate
attitudes to its complexity. These anecdotes are mostly from thethirteenth century, and so do not necessarily tell us about attitudes
to poetry in the Viking Age, but they are probably contemporary
with Snorri and reinforce the impression gained from his writings.
The puzzle element in Icelandic poetry is dominant; the sameword, ráða, is used of interpreting poetry as of interpreting runes,
riddles and dreams. Snorri in several places in Skáldskaparmál
refers to poetry in terms of concealment. He makes Ægir describea kenning for poetry as vel fólgit í rúnum, ‘concealed well in
runes’; Bragi had just referred to the use of this kenning as vér
felum í rúnum eða í skáldskap svá, ‘we conceal [it] in runes orin poetry thus’ (the basic meaning of the word rún is ‘secret’).
Ægir refers to other kennings as myrkt, ‘obscure’ (Edda Snorra
Sturlusonar 1931, 81–3). Snorri refers to the purpose of
Skáldskaparmál as to help young poets at kunna skilja þat er
hulit er kveðit, ‘to be able to understand what is composed so as
to be concealed’ (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, 86). He also
speaks ironically of the use in poetry of gera oﬂjóst at vant er at
skilja, ‘making too clear so that it is difﬁcult to understand’. His
account of oﬂjóst gives a good idea of how important he thought
the puzzle element in poetry (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, 193):
6

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRYLæti means two things. Noise is called læti, disposition (œði) is
called læti, and œði also means fury. Reiði also has two meanings.
It is called reiði [wrath] when a man is in a bad temper, the gear
(fargervi) of a ship or horse is called reiði. Far also has two meanings.
Fár is anger, far is a ship. People frequently use such vocabulary
so as to compose with concealed meaning, and this is usually called
word-play (oﬂjóst [obvious]). People call it lið [joint] on a person
where the bones meet, lið is a word for ship, lið [troop] is a word
for people. It is also called lið [help] when someone gives anotherassistance (liðsinni). Líð is a word for ale. There is what is calleda hlið [gateway] in an enclosure, and hlið is what people call an
ox, and hlíð is a slope. These distinctions can be made use of in
poetry so as to create word-play which is difﬁcult to understand,
if it is a different distinction of meaning that has to be taken thanthe previous lines seemed before to indicate. Similarly there arealso many other such words where the same term applies to several
things.

Middle English poetry is claimed to have a large element of thedesire for concealment in its purpose and style by A. C. Spearing(Readings in Medieval Poetry 1989, 97). In Gísla saga (ch. 18),
the hero (who is a poet) is depicted as reciting a poem ‘which heshould have kept to himself’. It is overheard by his sister, who‘got the verse by heart from the one hearing, and goes home,and by then she has worked out its meaning.’ In the verse Gísli
has revealed his guilt for the secret killing of her husband (ÍF VI
58–9). There is a comparable riddling confession of guilt in Grettis
saga verse 11 (ch. 16; ÍF VII 47). In Sneglu-Halla þáttr (ÍF IX
263–95), which is even more obviously ﬁctional than Gísla saga,
but which nevertheless must express attitudes and values of thethirteenth century, the hero is depicted as not only a poet but ajoker; he comes to the court of Harold Godwineson and recites
a poem supposedly in his honour. The king and his court are
unable to understand the poem immediately, and when the poetasks for his reward the king orders silver to be poured over hishead so that he can keep as a reward an amount comparable towhat the audience retained of his poem. Halli smears tar over
his hair so that a lot of the silver sticks, and then makes good his
escape, because he knows that eventually the king will realisethat the poem was nonsense. This is clearly a satire on the7POETICAL INSPIRATION

incomprehensibility of Viking poetry; the point does not seemto be the linguistic barrier between Icelanders and Englishmenin the eleventh century, since saga-writers do not seem toacknowledge that there was one. In Gunnlaugs saga it is claimed
that then the same language was spoken in England as in Norway
and Denmark (ÍF III 70).
Two verses supposed to have been spoken by Haraldr harðráði
before the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 have been taken to
demonstrate that king’s preference for elaborate and obscure verse.
The story is told in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (ÍF XXVIII,
187–8). He is said to have left his armour in his ship and is goingto have to ﬁght without it. He states this in a simple, straightforwardand quite expressive verse in the simple metre of eddic poetry.
Then he says, Þetta er illa kveðit ok mun verða at gera aðra vísu
betri, ‘that is badly composed and I shall now make another better
verse’, and utters a rather complex verse in very involved skaldic
style which is really rather difﬁcult to interpret, though there areplenty that are worse.
I now want to look at some examples of skaldic verse and thetechniques used in them, and what Snorri says about them, tosee what impression we can get about what was actually valued
in this poetry when it was composed. Snorri discusses two aspectsof poetry at length in his Edda, vocabulary and metre; he hasvery little to say about other aspects of it such as content. In his
discussion of vocabulary he spends most time on nominal groups
where instead of referring to a person or thing by its normal
name, a poet replaces (or conceals) that name with another, which
may be a poetical term like ‘steed’ for ‘horse’, or a kenning,which has at least two elements, such as when gold is called‘ﬁre of the sea’ or a king ‘distributor of gold’. Many of theseterms are not metaphorical and few can be described as images;
generally they do not focus on the characteristics of individual
persons or things, but convey the general concept of gold object
or ruler and so on without expressing any feature of them either
as individuals or as being in a particular situation. 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 theform of a man’s arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing the8IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

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 contributeto the picture of the action being described.
Among the practical difﬁculties of understanding and translatingsuch verse is the problem of working out the syntactical relationsof words and phrases and knowing how involved and complex
they are supposed to be. In an inﬂected language like Icelandic,
understanding the functions of words depends less on their positionin the sentence than on their grammatical form, so that it is often
possible in verse to depart from the normal word-order without
making the functions of words ambiguous, and skaldic poets use
this facility extensively, so that not only the order of elements inthe sentence is varied, but words belonging together as parts ofa single phrase are often separated or interwoven with parts ofother phrases. In kennings, one element is generally in the genitivecase, and in most words, though indeed not in all, the genitiveis easily recognised and distinct from other forms of the word.
But when there are two kennings juxtaposed, each of whichcontains a genitive, it can sometimes be difﬁcult to see which
genitive belongs with which base-word.
I am afraid I am now going to get rather technical, and I am
sorry if this induces any feeling of poetical vertigo in you, but
it is necessary to go into technicalities to understand the poetry,
and this is believed to be oral poetry which was understood orally
by its original audience. There is a difﬁculty in knowing how topresent skaldic verse for a modern audience, though I am convinced that it is possible to make it meaningful even to thosewith little knowledge of Old Norse. It is common in modern
editions of skaldic verses to present the text in ‘prose word-order’,i. e. to print the verse ﬁrst in its manuscript form and then to rearrange the words so that those that belong to the same phrasecome together. Snorri himself uses this method of explication(i. e. re-ordering the words as prose) with two verses in Háttatal(which is a poem he himself composed), verses 17–18. This ismainly because in these verses he is illustrating refhvo≈rf, wherewords of opposite meanings are juxtaposed though they do notalways have those opposite meanings in the verse as a whole.
His verse 17 and explanation (which is not entirely a re-ordering
9POETICAL INSPIRATIONof the words, but also in part a prose paraphrase) are as follows.
The prose word-ordering is printed in bold type.
Síks glóðar verr sœkir
slétt skarð haﬁ jarðar;hlífgranda rekr hendir
heit ko≈ld loga o≈ldu;
ﬂjótt válkat skilr fylkirfriðlæ—ro≈ðul‹s› sævar
ránsið ræsir sto≈ðvar—reiðr—glaðr fro≈mum meiðum.
. . . Hér eru sýnd í þessi vísu sextán orðto≈k sundrgreinilig, ok eru
ﬂest oﬂjós til rétts mals at fœra, ok skal þá svá upp taka: síks glóð,þat er gull; sœkir gulls, þat er maðr; hann verr skarð jarðar haﬁ
slétt, þat eru Firðir, svá heitir fylki i Nóregi; hlífgrandi, þat er
vápn; hendir loga o≈ldu er maðr, er rekr ko≈ld heit sverðinu, þat er
at hegna ósiðu; ﬂjótt válkat má þat kalla er skjótt ráðit er, þat skilr
hann af ófriðinum; konungr heitir fylkir, ránsið ræsir stoð≈ var sævar
ro≈ðuls fro≈mum meiðum.
. . . Here are demonstrated in this stanza sixteen phrases of contrary
meanings, and most of them have to be turned to their proper meaningby means of word-play, and this is how it is to be understood: ditchglede, i. e. gold; attacker of gold, that is a man; he defends thecleft of land smoothed by the sea, i. e. Firðir, this is the name ofa district in Norway; with shield-harmer, i. e. a weapon; throwerof wave-ﬂame is a man, who drives away cold threats with thesword, that is to punish wickedness; hastily-weighed may be saidof what is unpremeditated, he perceives this from the hostility; aking is called fylkir [leader]; the ruler puts a stop to the plundering
habits of bold sea-sun-trees.

Verse 18 is similar. This sort of effect, where words have to beunderstood in two meanings at once, must have been very difﬁcult
to convey in the pre-literary period. It is doubtful, however, whether
this method of re-ordering the words of a verse into ‘prose’ wordorder could have been used in the pre-literary period (it is onlywith these two verses of Háttatal, and in a less exhaustive way,verses 4–6 of the same poem, that Snorri himself uses it), thougha somewhat similar second explanatory text was apparently
preserved orally alongside the ‘real’ text in the case of Vedic
poems, which are probably much deeper in the oral period of10

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

their culture than any Scandinavian verse is in its (Macdonell
1917, xii–xiii). But it is difﬁcult to see how people could haveunderstood complex skaldic verse without some such assistance,
and in particular how the audience could have been made to realise
which words belonged together in a verse when there is a genuine
possibility of taking them in two ways.
In my explanations I prefer not to re-order the words, since I
think that the word-order not only embodies the structure of theverse, but also to a large extent the meaning, and I think it unlikelythat this procedure would have been used in pre-literary times in
Scandinavia. So I use the resources of the computer to identify
which words belong together and how they can be represented
in English; this method is in fact rather like that of E. A. Kockin his edition in Den Norsk-Isländska Skaldediktningen (1946–9).
The asterisks mark words that have been unavoidably emended.
Translation on its own cannot hope to reproduce much of themeaning or effect of the original. The numbers are the numbersof the verses in Finnur Jónsson’s edition of Edda Snorra
Sturlusonar of 1931.
An example of how words can be taken to belong to different
phrases is found in this verse of Einarr Skúlason describing an
ornamented axe:
(193)Blóðeisu liggr bæðibjargs tveim megin geimasjóðs—á ek søkkva stríði—snær ok eldr—at mæra.

There lies on each side of the blood-ember’s head (the head of thegold-adorned axe) both the purse’s snow and ocean’s ﬁre; I must
praise the punisher of Vikings.

There are two kennings for the decoration on the axe: sjóðs snærand geima eldr—or it might be sjóðs eldr and geima snær. Are
they differentiated as gold and silver, or are they, contrary to ourintuition, just general kennings for precious metal, as is implied
by Snorri’s commentary to verse 194 and the short anonymoustreatise on kennings that Finnur Jónsson called ‘Den lille Skálda’(Edda Snorra Sturlusonar 1931, 256/22: gull má kenna til snæsok íss, ‘gold can be referred to as snow and ice’)? The kenning
11

POETICAL INSPIRATION

søkkva stríði is also ambiguous: søkk can mean ‘gold’, and søkkva
stríði could mean ‘destroyer, i. e. dispenser of gold, generous prince’.
My next example is anonymous:(317)*O≈ rgildi var ek (Eldi‹s›)áls Fjo≈rgynjar (mála)dyggr; sé heiðr ok hreggi(hrynbeðs) ár steðja.

[MS O≈ rgildis]

I was loyal to the liberal payer of Fjo≈rgyn’s eel’s [serpent’s] tinkling
bed, and honour be to the storm of the river-anvil-[rock-]Eldir’s[giant’s] speech.

The two complicated kennings in this verse (referring to the samegenerous man) can be analysed in two quite different ways without
the meaning being much affected, since the basewords (o≈rgildi,
hreggi; both dative, with ek var dyggr and sé ok heiðr) are in thecontext synonymous (‘liberal payer’; ‘storm, destroyer’) and boththe strings of determinants mean ‘gold’: o ≈ rgildi hrynbeðs
Fjo≈rgynjar áls and hreggi ár steðja Eldis mála, or o≈rgildi ársteðja Eldis mála and hreggi hrynbeðs Fjo≈rgynjar áls.
The next example is from Einarr skálaglamm’s Vellekla:(223)

Ne sigbjarka serkir
sómmiðjungum rómu
Hárs við Ho≈gna skúrirhléðut fast of séðir.

The three nouns serkir, (sóm)miðjungum, skúrir are base-words
in kennings for, respectively, mail-coats, warriors, missiles: Nehléðut fast of séðir serkir miðjungum við skúrir, ‘the ﬁrmly-sewn
mail-coats did not defend warriors from missiles.’ The words
which may be determinants in these kennings are sigbjarka, sóm-,
rómu, Hárs, Ho≈gna. There seem to be too many of them, and it
is difﬁcult to see which base-word each belongs with. Presumably
Hog≈ na goes with skúrir, sigbjarka (‘battle birches’, i. e. warriors’’:
it is unusual to refer to men by feminine tree-names) with serkir,
and sómmiðjungum, ‘bow-giants’ is another kenning for warriors.
What do we do with rómu Hárs? Take it as a dative phrase, ‘inÓðinn’s tumult’, i. e. ‘in battle’? But róma means ‘battle’ on its
own. Attaching Hárs or rómu to any of the other kennings results
in redundant elements to the kennings, though it is not certain12

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

that such redundancy was avoided by skaldic poets; there is quite
a lot of it in their work.
In many verses, two parallel statements are juxtaposed orinterwoven; obviously if each has a nominative subject and/or
accusative object, only the meaning of the verb can determine
which subject and object go with which verb, as in this verse inan account of a battle by Óttarr svarti:(340) O≈ rn drekkr undarn,ylgr fær at hræm sylg,
opt rýðr úlfr køpt,ari getr verð þar.

Eagle drinks breakfast
she-wolf gets from corpses drink
often reddens wolf its jaws
eagle gets food there.

The question is, which of the two possible interpretations should
we accept and prefer, and why, taking undarn as object of drekkr(‘drinks breakfast’) and sylg as object of fær (‘gets drink’) or
vice versa (‘drinks liquid, gets breakfast’)? (There are not thesame possibilities in lines 3 and 4.) The ﬁrst, which is syntacticallysimpler, is preferred by E. A. Kock, the second, which issemantically more logical, by Finnur Jónsson. However they aretaken, both phrases refer to the devouring of dead warriors bybirds of prey, but sylg would ﬁt better than undarn as the objectof drekkr, giving interchange of the elements of the two clauses.
Kock’s interpretation makes the quatrain an example of Snorri’sáttmælt, where each line is a separate integral statement. Trying
to understand which interpretation the poet meant raises basic
questions of the meaning of utterances of the kinds that thephilosopher Wittgenstein puzzled over. What does it mean to
say that when I say something I mean this rather than that when
what I have said could mean either? His arguments would support
the idea that skaldic verse too was a game, a social ritual, where
the function of the activity was more important than the meaningor content of the utterances.
There is a similar kind of syntactical ambiguity in this verse
about Þórr ﬁghting a giant from Þjóðólfr of Hvinir’s Haustlo≈ng:(67) Þyrmðit Baldrs of barmi
Baldr’s brother spared not—berg—sólgnum þar dólgi (rocks) the greedy enemy there—hristusk, bjo≈rg ok brustu, (shook, crags also shattered;brann upphiminn—manna. the sky above burned) of men.
13

POETICAL INSPIRATION

The interwoven statement here can be taken as berg hristusk,
bjo≈rg ok brustu, or hristusk bjo≈rg ok berg brustu. Both the verbs
and both the nouns are near synonyms, and various orders are
possible, though Kock prefers to take berg with sólgnum so thatthe parenthesis has only one subject. Manna could conceivably
go with upphiminn rather than with dólgi. With these twosuggestions adopted, lines 3 and 4 become integral statements
and there is no parenthesis at all. It is doubtful whether that iswhat a medieval audience would have preferred, and ‘sky of men’is a less normal expression than ‘enemy of men’ (= giant). Are
normal expressions what we should expect in skaldic verse? Is
logic a valid criterion of meaning and authorial intention? What
are the underlying aesthetic preferences, for naturalness and simplicity or for complexity and puzzlement? There are also multiple
possibilities of arranging the kennings in lines 5–8 of this stanza.
There is another example in the description of the death of the
giant Þjazi in Haustlo≈ng:(104) Hófu skjótt en skófu
sko≈pt ginnregin brinna

Began quickly and shaved
shafts mighty powers to burn

Here there are two plural verbs, skófu and hófu brinna, and twoplural nouns, sko≈pt and ginnregin, which could each be either
nominative or accusative. The two statements can be read ‘shafts
quickly began to burn, and the mighty powers shaved them’, or‘they quickly began to burn and the mighty powers shaved shafts’,or sko≈pt could be read both as the subject of the one verb and as
the object of the other, ‘shafts quickly began to burn, and themighty powers shaved shafts’. Skjótt could also, of course be
taken with either clause or with both (the phenomenon of one
word belonging to two separate clauses is discussed below, p. 18).
If there is more than one adverbial phrase in a verse containing
more than one clause, it can be difﬁcult to see which phrase goesin which clause. For instance, Bragi the Old describes Þórr’sﬁshing for the Midgard serpent like this:(42)Vaðr lá Viðris arfa
vilgi slakr er rakðisk,á Eynæﬁs o≈ndri,Jo≈rmungandr at sandi.
14

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

In this verse there are two clauses, the main clause Vaðr Viðris
arfa lá vilgi slakr, ‘Viðrir’s son’s (i. e. Þórr’s) ﬁshing-line lay
by no means slack’ and the subordinate clause er rakðisk Jo≈rmungandr, ‘when Jo≈rmungandr (the Midgard serpent) uncoiled’. The
two adverbial phrases á Eynæﬁs o≈ndri, ‘in Eynæﬁr’s ski (on theboat)’ and at sandi, ‘on the sand’ can each be taken with eitherverb, though as we picture the scene of Þórr’s ﬁshing for the
Midgard serpent the ﬁrst seems to go better with lá and the second
with rakðisk.
(2)

Now [there] is for steed-logs of the sea [i. e. for sea-warriors]
Nú er jódraugum ægiseagle’s ﬂight—and rings, [i. e. birds of prey are gathering,arnar ﬂaug—ok bauga,a battle is taking place]
I think that invitation they will receive
hygg ek at heimboð þiggi
of god of the hanged—over the ﬁeld.
Hangagoðs—of vangi.

[i. e. of Óðinn in
Valhalla]

In this verse attributed to Hávarðr halti the ‘prose word-order’is obtained by exchanging the last two words in the ﬁrst couplet
with the last two in the second. This is required not by the syntax,
for it is grammatically possible to read the words in the originalorder, but by the sense, for bauga will not do as a parallel toeither arnar or ﬂaug, and the adverbial phrase of vangi will not
do with þiggi heimboð Hangagoðs. The battle is taking place on
the ﬁeld, and the warriors will receive Óðinn’s hospitality andplunder. And although the order is required by the verse-form(to provide the hendings), it is difﬁcult to believe that it is thatthat has determined the order, for there are plenty of alternative
words that could have been used to express the meaning. The
poet must have wanted the ‘unnatural’ word-order.
Eysteinn Valdason describes Þórr’s ﬁght with the Midgard sepent
as follows:(47)

So it happened/reacted planks
Svá brá viðr at sýjur
COALFISH made run forward broadSEIÐR rendi fram breiðar
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POETICAL INSPIRATION
EARTH’S; out on the gunwaleJARÐAR; út at borði

Ullr’s stepfather’s (Þórr’s) ﬁsts banged
Ulls mág[s] hnefar skullu.
It is the syntax rather than the kenning that is obscure in thisverse. Brá við could be impersonal, ‘it happened’, or seiðr jarðar
(‘earth’s coalﬁsh’, i. e. the Midgard serpent) could be the subject,‘the serpent reacted’; rendi is causative ‘to make run’ and usuallytakes a dative object, but can also take an accusative object (thengenerally with the object being a liquid, to pour), or be intransitive.
‘So it happened that the earth’s coalﬁsh made the broad planks
run forward’ or ‘so the earth’s coalﬁsh reacted that the broadplanks ran forward’. The meaning of the two interpretations is
not very different, and there seems no way to decide between
them. While there is little support for the use of rendi with anaccusative object, if sýjur is the subject the verb needs to be
emended to rendu. Finnur Jónsson achieves further complexity
by taking the last line and a half as the at-clause, and breiðar
sýjur rendu fram as the second main clause: ‘the earth’s coalﬁshreacted so that out on the gunwale Ullr’s stepfather’s (Þórr’s)
ﬁsts banged; the broad planks ran forward.’ This is the sort ofinterweaving of clauses that Kock condemns as an unnatural andover-academic interpretation, though it certainly can be argued
that the natural meaning of the verse is that the serpent’s reaction
caused Þórr’s ﬁsts to bang on the gunwale, rather than that it
was the cause of the boat moving forward; but Finnur’s version
does involve assuming a most unnatural word-order.
Arnórr jarlaskáld in Þorﬁnnsdrápa says:(297)

Bitu sverð—en þar *þurðu—þunngjo≈r fyrir Mo≈n sunnanRo≈gnvalds kind—und randirramlig fólk—ins gamla.

[MS þurðir]The most obvious interpretation of this would be to take Rog≈ nvalds
ins gamla kind, ‘Ro≈gnvaldr the Old’s descendant’ = Earl Þorﬁnnr
as the object of þunngjor≈ ð sverð bitu, ‘thinly made swords pierced’,
but from the context of the verse we know that it is not about
Earl Þorﬁnnr being wounded, but about his victory. Bitu must16

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

therefore be without an object and kind must be dative of advantage.
‘Thinly made swords pierced for Ro≈gnvaldr the Old’s descendant;
and mighty armies pressed forward under their shields there.’
Would the possibility of a misunderstanding have been understoodas a joke? Fyrir Mo≈n sunnan, ‘to the south of the Isle of Man’
could go with either clause or both, and should perhaps beunderstood with þar.
As well as the separation of words belonging to the same phrase,
there are clear examples of the parts of a compound word being
separated from each other (the classical term for this is tmesis),and even of the separation of the parts of two compound words
within the same half-verse. If the separated ﬁrst elements areplaced before other words than those they belong with, it can be
difﬁcult to be sure which words they are part of, and there areexamples of elements of a pair of compound words being
interchanged.
One of the clearest and most undeniable examples of tmesis is:(101/3–4) Þá var Ið- með jo≈tnum Then was Ið- among the giants-uðr nýkomin sunnan. -uðr newly come from the south.
Iðuðr is a form of the name of Iðunn, the keeper of the gods’
apples of eternal youth, who was abducted by the giant Þjazi.
The two parts of her name, although they exist as separate words,
make no sense separately in this sentence.
Another is:(93/4)

ó- fyr -sko≈mmu

not ago a short [time], i. e. long ago.

Ó- corresponds to the English preﬁx un- , and like it is not normallyseparated from the word it negates. Both these examples are fromHaustlo≈ng, and it is interesting that some of the most confusingof these syntactical complexities are found in poetry on mythological topics, though I cannot see that there can be any religious
reason for the poet to be obscure in these particular verses. If
there is a connection the poet might be considered more likely
to be parodying priestly language than just using it.
Not all kennings consist of base words with genitives; someconsist of compound words where the ﬁrst half of the compoundreplaces a genitive. Tmesis dividing such compounds is evenmore difﬁcult to understand when the elements of a word are17

POETICAL INSPIRATION

not only separated by more than a line, but are in reverse order.
This example is from Eilífr Guðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa:(78)
There into the forest against the forest’sÞar í mo≈rk fyrir markar
noisily chattering wind [= current] they set
málhvettan byr settu(the slippery wheel-knobs [stones] did not)(ne hvélvo≈lur hálar)ﬁshing-net shooting adders [spears] (sleep)háf- skotnaðra (sváfu).
There they pushed shooting-snakes [spears] in the ﬁshing-net-forest[river] against the talkative [noisy] ﬁshing-net-forest wind [current].
The slippery wheel-knobs [stones] did not lie asleep.

Here, háf- is taken as the ﬁrst element in the compound háfmo≈rk
and at the same time as the ﬁrst element in the compoundháfmarkar (in both cases making a kenning for river, ‘ﬁshingnet-forest’). Words that are to be taken as part of two separatephrases or clauses in Old English poetry are discussed by Bruce
Mitchell in An Invitation to Old English 1995, 70. Bruce Mitchell
spoils his argument for the existence of such constructions byaccusing those who do not accept them of being insensitive, which
is like accusing those who cannot see fairies of being blind; but
according to Roberta Frank in Old Norse Court Poetry 1978,
112, a similar feature occurs in Japanese poetry. There is a further
possible example in Skáldskaparmál in verse 104, quoted above.
In this verse from Úlfr Uggason’s Húsdrápa the parts of thekenning-compound are again separated by two lines:(64)
Helpful in counsel acts gods’Ráðgegninn bregðr ragna
strip of land at Singasteinn
rein- at Singasteini
renowned against mighty sly[MS slœgjum]frægr við ﬁrna *slœgjan
Fárbauti’s son defender
Fárbauta *mo≈g -vári.
[MS mo≈gr]
Here rein goes with vári to make a compound: frægr ráðgegninn
18

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

ragna reinvári, ‘the renowned helpful in counsel defender ofthe god’s strip of land’, i. e. Heimdallr, defender of Bifros≈ t. Tmesis
can be avoided, as Kock points out, by replacing rein with thegenitive reinar (Notationes norrœnæ § 1952), though this makes
the metre less normal.
(260)Fjarðlinna óð fannir
fast vetrliði rastar;
hljóp of *húna -gnípur
hvals *rann- íugtanni.
The winter-survivor [bear] of the current [i. e. the ship] waded fast
the drifts of fjord-serpents [waves]; the greedy-tooth [bear] of themast-head [i. e. the ship] ran over the whale’s house-tops.

This is attributed to Markús Skeggjason and describes a seavoyage. The kennings in the second couplet are húna [MS hvíta]íugtanni and hvals ranngnípur. Emending rann [MS þann] toranns would get rid of the tmesis, but the two kennings remain
with their determinants effectively exchanged. Cf. Frank 1978,
46–7. Another striking example of double tmesis is found in anotherverse of Þórsdrápa:(90). . . salvanið- -Synjar[MS arinbrauti]
sigr hlaut arin- *-bauti.
The subject of sigr hlaut, ‘gained victory’ is a kenning for Þórr,arin-Synjar salvaniðbauti, ‘beater of the frequenter of hearthstone-Syn’s dwelling’, though Kock (Notationes norrœnæ § 467)
makes it into one for giantesses, acc. with the preposition of.
Here again the tmesis (but not the exchange of determinants)
could be avoided by making both salvanið and arin genitive.
There is an instructive example of how the possibility of seeing
maximum complexity in a verse was dealt with in the thirteenth
century in Snorri’s commentary to the next verse, which is
attributed to Víga-Glúmr; this commentary at the same timedemonstrates Snorri’s acknowledgement that the elements ofcompound kennings can be interchanged:(255) Rudda ek sem jarlar
I fought my way like earls—orð *lék á því—forðum I had a reputation for this formerlymeð veðrsto≈fum Viðris
with weather-staves of Viðrir’s
vandar mér til *landa.
wand to win lands.
19

POETICAL INSPIRATIONThe MS has lér in line 2 and handa in line 4. It is difﬁcult toknow which clause forðum, ‘formerly’ goes with, but moresigniﬁcant is that Snorri’s commentary analyses the kenning for
warriors as staﬁr vandar Viðris veðrs, ‘staves of the wand ofViðrir’s weather’ instead of the more obvious staﬁr veðrs Viðris
vandar, ‘staves of the weather of Viðrir’s wand’. Viðrir is a namefor Óðinn, whose weather is battle and whose wand is the sword.
Snorri’s interpretation involves exchanging veðr and vandar. Suchinterchanging of the elements of a complex kenning is certainly
found, however, as in the next verse, which is attributed to Egill
Skalla-Grímsson, who seems not to have been averse to wordplay. This is one of the best-known examples of tmesis:(140) Upp skulum órum sverðum, Aloft shall we make our swordsúlfs tannlituðr, glitra;O stainer of wolves’ teeth, shine;
eigum dáð at drýgja
we have daring deeds to doí dalmiskunn ﬁska.
in the valley-mercy of ﬁsh.
The stainer of wolves’ teeth is the warrior addressed in the verse,
who gives wolves blood to drink from his dead enemies. The
last line has to be read í miskunn dalﬁska, ‘in the mercy of valleyﬁsh’; valley-ﬁsh are snakes, their mercy or grace is the summer
when they come out of hibernation, and this can either beinterpreted as tmesis (dal- separated from -ﬁska) or as transferenceof one of the elements of a kenning from a determinant to thebase-word. This does give a more regular rhythm to the line, but
can hardly be said to be determined by metrical considerations.
An example of a particularly complex verse is this one, which
is another quatrain from Einarr skálaglamm’s Vellekla:(34)

Rushes wave before prince
Eisar *vágr fyrir vísa,
works of Óðinn proﬁt meverk Ro≈gnis mér *hagna,
pounds mead-container’s swellþýtr Óðreris alda
always sea’s against skerry of songs
aldr hafs við ﬂes galdra.

[MS vargr][MS ho≈gna][i. e. teeth]

There seem to be three kennings for poetry here, each of which
20

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

is the subject of a sentence. Vágr (wave), verk (works), alda (wave)
look like base-words, the ﬁrst and last in reference to the meadof poetry. Ro≈gnis (Óðinn’s), Óðreris (the mead-container’s) andhafs (the sea’s) look like determinants. Some commentators haveby emendation produced alternatives to some of these, but they
do not reduce the problems, which arise from the fact that thegenitives do not seem to be closest to the nominatives they go
with. Verk Ro≈gnis (Óðinn’s work) would make a recognisable
kenning for poetry, and so would Óðreris alda (wave of the meadcontainer), but that leaves vágr hafs (or aldrhafs), ‘wave of theancient (?) sea’ which would not. Unless one is prepared to guessat some radical emendation, it is difﬁcult to avoid the conclusionthat fyrir governs not vísa but mér, and the kennings are vágrRo≈gnis (Óðinn’s wave), verk vísa (prince’s work) and alda hafsÓðreris (wave of the sea of the mead-container).
It is interesting that such complexity so frequently occurs inverses that are actually about poetry and composition, and thatthe actual content of this ingenious verse amounts to little morethan ‘I am performing rewarding poetry before the prince’. It isa performative utterance rather than an informative one. It is theritual that is important.
Word-play of various kinds is used by skaldic poets. There isan example of word-play using redundancy or deliberate tautology
in a kenning in a verse of Einarr Skúlason:(335) Hugins fermu bregðr harmi The troubler of Huginn’s foodharmr.
ends his trouble.
The troubler of Huginn’s food (carrion) is the one who eats it,i. e. Huginn himself, the raven; the trouble that he ends by eating
it is his hunger.
One device that Snorri mentions several times is called oﬂjóst,
literally (and ironically) ‘too clear’. Oﬂjóst is a kind of word-playparticularly used for personal names, where the name, or an elementof it, is replaced by a synonym of the word as a common noun,e. g. Foglhildr for Svanhildr. Eilífr Guðrúnarson uses this device ina form reminiscent of crossword-puzzle clues for the name Hákon:(36)

You will have to, since of words*Verði *þér, alls orða21

[MS verðr ei]

POETICAL INSPIRATION

for us grows about noble kinsman (Earl Hákon)oss grœr of kon *mæran
[MS mærar]on mind-land of mead-container[breast, heart,á sefreinu Sónar
where poetry is stored]
seed, decide upon friendly giftssáð, vingjo≈fum ráða.
There are two kennings in this verse, orða sáð (seed of words =poetry) and sefreinu Sónar (the poet’s breast), though some people
prefer to take them as sáð Sónar (seed of the mead-container)and sefreinu orða (sedge-land of words = breast or tongue). In
addition kon mæran seems to mean Hákon (há- = high, noble,
mærr = famous, glorious, noble; kon = kinsman, son, as well as
being an element in the name Hákon). This kind of oﬂjóst iswhere a word is effectively replaced by a synonym of a homonym.
The same name is split into two parts by tmesis in a verse attributed
to Queen Gunnhildr in Fagrskinna (ÍF XXIX 75).
The name of Óðinn’s consort Jo≈rð (whose name means earth)is frequently replaced by a kenning and instead of talking about
land or country, Óðinn’s wife can be referred to, for example inthis verse from Hallfreðr’s Hákonardrápa about Earl Hákon
winning land:(10)

Sannyrðum spenr sverða
*snarr þiggjandi viggjar*barrhaddaða byrjar*biðkván *und sik Þriðja.

[MS þvarr][MS bjarr haddaða][MS bifkván of]

The keen wind-steed-[ship-]taker [sea-farer, Earl Hákon] lures underhimself [wins] with the true language of swords [battle] the pinehaired deserted wife of Third [Óðinn; his deserted wife is Jo≈rð,
earth, i. e. the land of Norway].

The latent sexual imagery here and in other poems on the same
theme is likely to have been particularly relished by the earl’sfollowers; it is unlikely to have any connection with myths about
the ruler wedding his realm. The gaining of the earl’s land is
described as rape, not marriage. The number of emendations
required in this and other verses in Snorri’s Edda implies that
scribes did not ﬁnd them easy to understand.
Refhvarf is given particular attention in Snorri’s Háttatal,
22

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

though it is not common in earlier poets, and some examples of
his use of this device were mentioned earlier. This is where twowords are juxtaposed which have antithetical meanings, though
in many of his examples the words are used with other meanings
that are not antithetical, e. g. in verse 20:
Hélir hlýr at stáli,haﬁt fellr, en svífr þelli
(ferð dvo≈l ﬁrrisk) harða
fram mót lagar glammi.
Vindr réttr váðir bendir;
vefr rekr á haf snekkjur;veðr þyrr; vísa iðjur
(varar fýsir skip) lýsa.
The bow [/warms] freezes at the prow, the sea [/lifted] falls but thetimber glides hard forwards against [/back] the water’s uproar; thecrew [/movement] is deprived of rest. The direct [/straightens] wind[/twists] bends the sails; the cloth [/folds] drives [/unfolds] thewarships over the sea; the weather [/paces] whistles [rushes]; theship is eager for [/exhorts] harbour [/warns]; the labours reﬂect
glory on the ruler.

Thus in this kind of verse words have to be understood in one
sense in order for the reader or listener to understand the meaning,but in another in order to appreciate the effect of the antithesis.
It is a series of puns.
Substitution of a word by one that is a near synonym occurs innýgervingar. Snorri’s example is in kennings for gold of the type‘ﬁre of the sea’, which according to ch. 33 of Skáldskaparmál
originated with the story of how Ægir, whose name means ‘sea’,used shining gold to illuminate his hall:
So this is the story of the origin of gold being called ﬁre or lightor brightness of Ægir, Rán or Ægir’s daughters, and from such
kennings the practice has now developed of calling gold ﬁre of thesea and of all terms for it, since Ægir and Rán’s names are also
terms for sea, and hence gold is now called ﬁre of lakes or rivers
and of all river-names.

It is in fact now difﬁcult to know whether the kenning type ‘ﬁreof the water’ = gold was originally used with reference to thesea or to a river or, as Snorri maintains, with reference to Ægir.
23

POETICAL INSPIRATION

Elsewhere Snorri uses the term nýgervingar to mean extended
metaphor, and this is effectively used by many poets. His
complicated exempliﬁcation in Háttatal verse 6 gives rise toanother of his detailed interpretations:Sviðr lætr sóknar naðra
slíðrbraut jo≈furr skríða;ótt ferr rógs ór réttum
ramsnákr fetilhamsi;
linnr kná sverða sennu
sveita bekks at leita;
ormr þyrr vals *at varmri
víggjo≈ll sefa stígu.

[MS ór]

The wise prince makes the adders of battle [swords] creep the
scabbard-path [be drawn].
The mighty war-snake goes swiftly from the straight strap-slough[scabbard].
The sword-quarrel serpent can seek the stream of blood.
The worm of the slain rushes along the mind’s paths [men’s breasts]
to the warm war-river [ﬂowing blood].
This is extended metaphor to call a sword a worm and use anappropriate determinant, and call the scabbard its paths and thestraps and ﬁttings its slough. It is in accordance with a worm’s naturethat it glides out of its slough and then often glides to water. Herethe metaphor is so constructed that the worm goes to ﬁnd the streamof blood where it glides along the paths of thought, i. e. men’s
breasts. Metaphor is held to be well composed if the idea that istaken up is maintained throughout the stanza. But if a sword iscalled a worm, and then a ﬁsh or a wand or varied in some otherway, this is called a monstrosity (nykrat) and it is considered a defect.

Nykrat (literally ‘made monstrous’) is thus a kind of mixed
metaphor. The effect of this is very similar to that of refhvarf, inthat it involves conceptual contradictions. Though Snorri condemns
it as unnatural (ok þykkir þat spilla, ‘and it is thought to be ablemish’, Háttatal 6/16) and his nephew Óláfr hvítaskáld in the
Third Grammatical Treatise 80 calls it a lo≈str, ‘fault’, a type ofcacemphaton, ‘improper expression’, many skaldic poets makeeffective use of the device (cf. Frank 1978, 52). Egill SkallaGrímsson in one verse of his Ho≈fuðlausn refers to a sword as
saddle of the whetstone, sun of battle, digger of wounds, blood24

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

strip, sword-strap-ice. In a lausavísa which is one of the best
descriptions of a sea-voyage in all skaldic verse, he calls the shipstem-bull and a sea-king’s swan and the storm the giant of the mastand the wolf of the willow (ÍF II 172; Turville-Petre 1976, 23):
The opposing (literally ‘rowing in the opposite direction’) mastgiant heavily strikes out a ﬁle with the chisel of storms before theprow out on the level stem-bull’s path, and the cold-bringing willowwolf grinds with it mercilessly in gusts Gestill’s swan round thestem in front of the prow.

The example in the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 131 is a verse
from Jómsvíkinga saga in which a cudgel is referred to by four
different kennings, though they do not actually conﬂict. There
are other good examples in Einarr skálaglamm’s Vellekla(Skáldskaparmál verses 18, 27–8; see Foote and Wilson 1970,
365–6) and Þjóðólfr’s Haustlo≈ng (Skáldskaparmál verse 92; see
Marold 1983, 191; 1993, 291–7; Frank 1978, 46–8, 157–8).
In this lecture I have tried to give an impression of the various
kinds of complexity that are to be found in skaldic verse, and of
how difﬁcult this makes the verses to understand. It seems that
this complexity was one of the most highly valued aspects ofskaldic art. If we were not sure for other reasons that most skaldic
verse was composed and received orally in preliterary times, thestyle and manner of the verse would suggest that it was literary
and meant to be read, as it clearly was by the time Snorri’s Edda
came to be written, as his treatment and discussion of it shows.
Snorri was a very literary poet and scholar. If skaldic poetry was
really composed and performed orally before that time, Viking
poets were able to call upon a very high order of verbal ingenuity
and skill indeed. Of course it is often argued that in an oral society,such skill, and the power of verbal memory that goes with it,
was more developed anyway than it is in literate societies, andthere may be something in this. There are nowadays people who
can play chess without a chessboard and probably people who
can solve crossword puzzles without using pen and paper.
Composition and comprehension of a skaldic verse without having
it on the page in front of one is not a more difﬁcult achievement
than these. But the picture this gives of the Viking is of a reallyrather intellectual type, far from the wild inspired ﬁgure evoked
25

POETICAL INSPIRATION

by Carlyle (in his work On Heroes), and I do not of course wantto suggest that Vikings were incapable of high intellectual activity.
Actually I think that the Viking was really rather an intellectual
chap and thought of things that would astonish you. And Viking
poets were probably more skilled in verbal expression, in spiteof being less well educated in a formal sense, than Anglo-Saxon
poets, and even than early Welsh and Irish poets, perhaps eventhan Provençal poets, while being less idiosyncratic and crazythan the writers of Hisperica famina.
Consider these examples of complex interweaving of sentences.
The ﬁrst is from Halldórr skvaldri’s Útfarardrápa:(379)

You were able there their
Ér knáttuð þar þeira
(you were never [shield’s—þú vart aldrigi (skjaldar
ﬁre thundered though homes] of victory*leygr þaut of sjo≈t) sigri
bereft) treasure to divide.
sviptr—gørsimum skipta.

The pattern here is abcba, with nesting of three statements eachof 5–6 words. Shield’s ﬁre is a kenning for sword. (This verse islacking in the Codex Regius; the Utrecht MS has laugr in line 3.)
From Kormakr’s Sigurðardrápa:(292)

Heyri sonr á Sýrar
sannreynis fentanna
O≈RR greppa *lætk uppi
jast-Rín Haralds mína.

[MS lætr]Let the son of Haraldr’s true trier [friend] listen; I cause to be heard
my yeast-Rhine of the men of the Sýr of fen-teeth.

The kenning for the poem (the teeth of the fen are rocks, the Sýr ofrocks is a giantess, whose men are giants; their yeast-liquid is themead of poetry) is a complex one made more complex by theinterweaving of its elements with the rest of the sentence. O≈ rr,‘generous’, being nominative, could go with sonr or with ek; Kockprefers to make it the ﬁrst half of the compound or≈ greppa. If theﬁrst possibility is adopted, the syntactical pattern becomes abababab.
26

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

Another example from Haustlo≈ng:(66)

Did all, but (of Ullr)
Knáttu o≈ll, EN Ullar
from end to end (because of the stepfather)
ENDILÁG fyrir mágiground was battered by hail
GRUND VAR GRÁPI HRUNDIN,
the hawk’s sanctuaries [the skies] burn*ginnunga vé *brinna[MS ginnjunga vé hrinna]

The word en seems to link the two clauses, though Ullar fyrir
mági, ‘because of Þórr’) seems most likely to belong to the ﬁrst(‘all the hawk’s sanctuaries did burn’), leaving en isolated. Endilág
most naturally goes with grund, giving a pattern of elements
abababa. Here too it might be possible to think of Ullar fyrir
mági as belonging with both clauses or with the whole statement,
rather than choosing between them.
The twelfth-century Icelandic poet Einarr Skúlason seems tohave particularly liked certain kinds of complexity in his verse,
and in these two examples he is describing an ornate weapon;
the ornateness of the article described seems to be mirrored—
though not actually described—in the ornateness of the verse:(147) Hor≈ n’s glorious child can I[Ho≈rn = Freyja; her child isHróðrbarni kná ek Hor≈ nar Hnoss = treasure, the precious axe]
(we got a valuable treasure) possess,—hlutum dýran grip—stýra,ocean’s ﬁre rests on damager[ocean’s ﬁre = gold;
brandr þrymr gjálfr‹s› á grandi damager of shield = axe]
gold-wrapped of shield;
gullvíﬁðu *hlífar;[MS hlíðar]seed (bears her mother’s)-sáðs—berr sinnar móður—BATTLE-SWAN’S granted me [battle-swan’s feeder = the ruler,
SVANS unni mér GUNNAR who feeds ravens by ﬁghting battles]
FEEDER of Fróði’s servants[seed of Fróði’s servants is the
fóstr- GŒÐANDI Fróða— gold ground by Fenja and Menja]
27

POETICAL INSPIRATION(Freyr’s niece eyelashes’ rain). [Freyr’s niece = Hnoss, theFreys nipt brá driptir. precious axe; her mother’s eyelashes’
rain is the golden tears shed by Freyja,
i. e. the gold adornment on the axe]

Gullvíﬁðu in line 4 could go with hróðrbarni (it would ﬁt
semantically with this word; it is babies you wrap up rather
than axes) or grandi. In line 5 -sáðs is supposed to be the second
element of the compound fóstrsáðs, though Kock seeks tosimplify the structure by reading fóstrgœðandi as one word andtaking the kenning for gold as Fróða sáðs. This verse seems to
me to be one that is virtually impossible to understand without
writing it down and re-ordering the words. Freyja’s daughter
Hnoss is twice referred to without being named in this verse; ineach case what is meant is hnoss as a common noun, meaninga treasure, referring to the axe. This is what is described above
as oﬂjóst.
Snorri himself uses constructions of great complexity in Háttatal 98:
Veit ek verðari
þá er vell gefa,
bro≈ndum beita
ok búa snekkjurhæra hróðrar
en heimdrega—
unga jo≈fra—
en auðspo≈ruð.
I know of young princes that brandish swords and set up warships
who are worthier of higher praise than a stay-at-home, ones whogive gold than one sparing of wealth.

Here line 6 is parallel to lines 3–4 and line 8 to line 2. The ‘prose
word-order’ would probably read the lines in the order 1, 7, 2,
8; 3, 4, 5, 6. (Finnur Jónsson in Skjaldedigtning B II 87 takes
them in the order 1a, 7, 2a, 3, 4, 1b, 5, 6, 2b, 8.)
A device which seems very literary, and may be derived fromsome foreign model, is that of vers rapportés. This verse isattributed to Þórðr Særeksson, and Snorri quotes it simply toillustrate the kenning for Njo≈rðr in line 6; he makes no commenton its form:28

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY(59)Varð sjálf sonar— Became herself of her son—nama snotr una— Did not come to love—
Kjalarr of tamði— Kjallarr (Óðinn) tamed—kváðut Hamði—It is said that Hamðir did not——Goðrún bani—Guðrún the slayer—goðbrúðr Vani—the bride of the gods the Vanr
—heldr vel mara —rather well horses—ho≈rleik spara.
—bow-warfare hold back.
Here it is the meaning of the words and our knowledge of thestories referred to, rather than the grammar, that requires us totake the four statements as consisting of lines 1+5, 2+6, 3+7
and 4+8. The pattern is thus abcdabcd.
Finnur Jónsson in his great comprehensive edition of skaldic
verse offered interpretations that frequently choose the mostcomplicated ways of interpreting it even when simpler analyses
are easy to see. E. A. Kock compiled a huge set of notes (Notationesnorrœnæ) on the interpretations of skaldic verses, in which hefrequently took issue with Finnur Jónsson for not choosing simpler
solutions, accusing his interpretations of being ‘desk interpretations’ rather than ones that would be natural to oral poets,and a rather ill-tempered dispute then took place between thetwo scholars. Many of Kock’s interpretations, however, in spiteof being syntactically simpler, actually involve doing much more
violence to the natural meanings of words and to natural grammar
than is involved in Finnur’s tortuous word-order, though neither
he nor anyone else has been able to deduce any grammatical or
metrical rules to explain the apparently arbitrary structure ofinterwoven sentences in skaldic verse. Neither Hans Kuhn’s‘Sentence Particle Law’ nor his theory about the caesura (1983,
89–97, 188–206) help very much, though they go some way
towards it. And Finnur seems to me to have more feeling andintuition for the Old Norse language than Kock. From an
examination of the complex and unnatural effects that are
undoubtedly sometimes really used by Viking poets, and from
Snorri’s comments on them, it looks as though these poets did
prefer complex meanings and effects to simple natural speech.
Nevertheless, I am doubtful about whether Viking poets everintended verses to have more than one interpretation (as for29

POETICAL INSPIRATION

instance in verse 193 quoted earlier), and whether that kind of
ambiguity was part of the acknowledged skill in the activity;
oﬂjóst uses words with double meanings, and the meaning isoften concealed, or turns out to be other than at ﬁrst seemed
implied, but the verse as a whole only ever means one thing.
There could always, of course, have been disagreements in theaudience about how a particular verse ought to be read, but it
seems that both poets and audiences wanted complexity.
Snorri speaks of the need for kennings to be in accordancewith nature (Skáldskaparmál ch. 33: ‘This is all considered
acceptable when it is in accordance with genuine similarity andthe nature of things [með líkindum ok eðli]’). But skaldic verse
is in its essence unnatural, in diction, word-order, and grammar,
and in ch. 33 Snorri is talking about word-substitution, notmetaphor or images. The parallel with Viking art, particularly
the interlace ornament that was popular throughout the Viking
Age, has often been made. The Vikings’ visual art, like theirverbal art, contains representations of objects in the real world,but stylised and made complex to such an extent that it becomesvery difﬁcult to interpret, and the real nature of what is depicted
seems to be deliberately concealed rather than revealed by theart. The reason for this, as with the use of runes, seems to berelated not to the desire to be esoteric and hieroglyphic for religious
or social or any other reasons, but to an aesthetic preference forcomplexity and puzzlement. Skaldic poetry seems to have beena restricted code to an even less extent than Anglo-Saxon or Old
French poetry, which was probably conﬁned to the aristocraticor religious ranks in society, whereas poetry seems to have beenan almost universal activity among the Vikings, both as composers
and audiences.
I have already mentioned Carlyle’s notorious but unfortunately
inﬂuential lectures On heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in
history (1841). He valued Old Norse poetry for its visionary
qualities, and describes Óðinn as the originator of Old Norse
poetry in this way in his ﬁrst lecture:
Strong sons of Nature; and here was not only a wild Captain andFighter; discerning with his wild ﬂashing eyes what to do, with hiswild lion-heart daring and doing it; but a Poet too, all that we mean30

IN OLD NORSE AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY

by a Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker and Inventor,—as the truly
Great Man ever is. A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul andthought of him ﬁrst of all. This Odin, in his rude semi-articulateway, had a word to speak. A great heart laid open to take in thisgreat Universe, and man’s Life here, and utter a great word about
it. A Hero, as I say, in his own rude manner; a wise, gifted, noblehearted man. And now, if we still admire such a man beyond allothers, what must these wild Norse souls, ﬁrst awakened into thinking,have made of him! To them, as yet without names for it, he wasnoble and noblest; Hero, Prophet, God; Wuotan, the greatest of all.
Thought is Thought, however it speak or spell itself. Intrinsically,
I conjecture, this Odin must have been of the same sort of stuff as
the greatest kind of men. A great thought in the wild deep heart ofhim! The rough words he articulated, are they not the rudimentalroots of those English words we still use? He worked so, in that
obscure element. But he was as a light kindled in it; a light of Intellect,rude Nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet; aHero, as I say: and he had to shine there, and make his obscureelement a little lighter,—as is still the task of us all.

That is, he regarded the obscurity of Old Norse verse as a resultof its primitiveness. I regard the Vikings’ techniques of verse
composition as inspired, not what they say; and their obscurity
as arising from sophisticated rhetorical complexity. If I wanted
to ﬁnd something to set against the Viking’s reputation as raider,rapist and pillager to demonstrate how civilised and intelligent
he really was, I would choose ﬁrst not his trading activities, noreven his navigational and organisational skills, nor yet his artistry
and craftsmanship except perhaps in shipbuilding, but his verbal
skills. I frequently ﬁnd it necessary to remind myself, in the words
of a better scholar than myself, that in our reading of medieval
literature we must always try to praise the right things for theright reasons. In accordance with that, I think we should praiseskaldic poets for their highly developed verbal skill rather thanfor their perceptions of their world or for their inspiration or
imagination. And in any case I believe that verbal skill is much
more to their credit than anything else they might be said to haveachieved. In the words of Bragi the Old (verse 300b): hagsmiðr
bragar—hvat er skáld nema þat? (skilful craftsman of verse—
what is a poet but that?)
31

POETICAL INSPIRATIONREFERENCES
Carlyle, T. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. London
1841. [Cited from the Centenary Edition, 1898]
Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen 1931.
Finnur Jónsson (ed.). Den norsk-islandske Skjaldedigtning. København
1912–15.
Foote, P. and Wilson, D. M. The Viking Achievement. London 1970.
Frank, R. Old Norse Court Poetry: The Dróttkvætt Stanza. Ithaca 1978.
ÍF = Íslenzk fornrit I ff. Reykjavík 1933– .
Kock, E. A. (ed.). Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. Lund 1946–9.
Kock, E. A. Notationes norrœnae. Lund 1923–46.
Kuhn, Hans. Das Dróttkvætt. Heidelberg 1983.
Macdonell, A. A. A Vedic Reader for Students. Madras 1917.
Magnús Ólafsson, De poesi nostra discursus. In Anthony Faulkes (ed.).
Two versions of Snorra Edda from the 17th Century I, 408–15.
Reykjavík 1979.
Marold, Edith. Kenningkunst: Ein Beitrag zu einer Poetik der Skaldendichtung. Berlin 1983.
Marold, Edith. ‘Nýgerving und Nykrat’. Twenty-eight papers presented
to Hans Bekker-Nielsen on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday 28
April 1993. Odense 1993, 283–302.
Mitchell, B. An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England.
Oxford 1995.
The Saga of Gisli. Trans. G. Johnston. London 1963.
Snorri Sturluson. Edda: Háttatal. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. Oxford 1991.
Spearing. A. C. Readings in Medieval Poetry. Cambridge 1989.
The Third and Fourth Grammatical Treatises. In Björn Magnússon Ólsen
(ed.). Den Tredje og Fjærde Grammatiske Afhandling i Snorres Edda.
København 1884.
Turville-Petre, E. O. G. Scaldic Poetry. Oxford 1976.
Wrenn, C. L. ‘The Poetry of Caedmon’. Proceedings of the British
Academy 1946, 277–95.

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