skaldic poetry

   Of the two chief forms of Old Norse poetry, “Eddic” poetry (the sort found in the POETIC EDDA) was comparatively simple, following the basic conventions of most Germanic verse, like that of OLD ENGLISH. It was anonymous ALLITERATIVE VERSE, was relatively simple in diction, and related traditional mythological material. Skaldic poetry, by contrast, was highly intricate and complex in its structure and diction, composed by identifiable self-conscious literary artists in the employ of Scandinavian kings and princes. Today more than 40,000 lines of skaldic poetry are extant, dating from between 850 and 1400. The names of 250 skaldic poets, mainly Icelandic, have also come down to us. Though it seems likely that skaldic poetry was composed in all Scandinavian countries, only poems composed by Norwegian and, to a much larger extent, Icelandic poets (working in the courts of Norwegian princes) have survived.

   The first known skald was Bragi Boddason, called “the Old” (ca. 835–900). The emergence of the earliest skalds corresponds with the consolidation of royal power in Norway (under King Harald Fairhair) and the concomitant expansion of the royal court. Most of the skaldic poetry that survives was written to celebrate some royal figure. The king needed the skald to commemorate his heritage, his great victories, and his generosity— it was on the skald that his fame depended. In contrast with praise poems, a skald could also produce what was called a ní´? (an insult or derision), which was thought to have particularly dire consequences.

   The predominant form of skaldic verse was the dróttvætt (“heroic meter”—verse appropriate for the drótt, or royal retainers). A stanza in this meter comprised eight lines, each with six syllables. Each line has three stressed syllables and uses internal rhyme. The basic unit of composition is a couplet, in which two syllables of the first line alliterate with the first syllable of the second line. A caesura separates the internal rhyming syllables of each line, and of necessity also separates the alliterating syllables of the first line of each couplet. In addition, there were at least 48 different variations of this verse form, demonstrated in SNORRI STURLUSON’s Háttatal, included as a tour de force in his PROSE EDDA (ca. 1225). In order to conform to this incredibly complex pattern, the syntax of skaldic poetry is often very free, so that segments of different sentences are intertwined in a way that often makes for ambiguity of meaning.

   Rhetorical complexity is also an integral part of skaldic verse. Poets use a great number of heiti (“names”), or synonyms often used only in poetic contexts, for a large number of concepts (the gods, warriors, weapons, animals, ships, the sea) that are common in Norse poetry of the court. Each of these heiti has a slightly different connotation, so that a poet can choose precisely the right term from the 150 heiti for the god Odin that fits his meter, alliteration, internal rhyme, and the sense of his line. Even more challenging is the skaldic use of KENNINGS. The poets do use simple kennings at times— truncated metaphors by which a subject is spoken of as if it were something else (a ship as the “horse of the sea” for example). A kenning generally consists of two terms—a basic term (the horse) and a second term with which the basic term is related in the metaphor (the sea). But in skaldic verse, each individual term of the kenning might be expressed by a kenning—so that if the sea might be called the “swan’s road,” a kenning for a ship might be “horse of the swan’s road”—and so on. And if this does not complicate matters enough, many kennings are based on mythological allusions, so that gold might be called “Sif ’s hair” because of a myth that Loki had cut off all of Sif ’s hair (she was Thor’s wife), and was forced to make her new hair out of gold. Thus, understanding the skaldic poem involved appreciation of its convoluted syntax, puzzling through its riddle-like kennings, and knowing the myth that the kennings alluded to. Only a small portion of Old Norse skaldic poetry has survived, and much of the earlier verse has survived embedded in prose works from the 13th century and later—such as, for example, the poems of the ninth-century Icelandic skaldic poet and warrior Egil Skallagrimsson quoted in the 13thcentury EGIL’S SAGA. There is some debate as to whether these embedded poems are genuine or later compositions by the saga writers themselves, but Snorri Sturluson does assert in the prologue to his HEIMSKRINGLA (ca. 1235) that poems by the skalds of Harald Fairhair were still remembered verbatim. But any comments made by the saga writers about the circumstances of the poems’ compositions are probably not to be trusted, being in general imaginative guesses about the inspiration for each poem. Still, our best knowledge of how skaldic poetry works comes from prose treatises of the 13th century, the best known of which is Snorri’s Prose Edda. Anyone exploring the specific aspects of skaldic poetry should begin with Snorri.

   Bibliography

   ■ Nordal, Gu´?rún. Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.

   ■ Ross,Margaret Clunies. Skáldskaparmál: Snorri Sturluson’s Ars Poetica and Medieval Theories of Language. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1987.

   ■ Sturluson, Snorri. Edda. Edited and translated by Anthony Faulkes. London: Dent, 1987.

   ■ Turville-Petre, E.O.G. Scaldic Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.