{"id":4331,"date":"2015-07-16T21:16:37","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T21:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/?p=4331"},"modified":"2015-07-16T21:16:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T21:16:37","slug":"icelandic-kennings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/2015\/07\/16\/icelandic-kennings\/","title":{"rendered":"Icelandic kennings."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"3174534182_37a5b489f4_o\"<\/a>

Oseberg ship by jorn_pettersen at Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

What is “a wave’s horse”? If someone’s talking of “Ymir’s skull”, what are they talking about? What or who is being called Hringan\u00e1<\/em> in the old song H\u00e6ttu a\u00f0 gr\u00e1ta Hringan\u00e1<\/em>? And who is “the possessor of the fallen slain and the owner of Sessr\u00famnir”?<\/p>\n

Kennings, or circumlocutions, form a large part of traditional Icelandic poetry, so important that without a certain amount of cultural knowledge they’re all but impossible to understand. \u00a0Snorri Sturluson saw it best to write down information on\u00a0old gods in Edda as a guide for\u00a0poets to come, though in fact he was a Christian himself, and at the\u00a0last minute too: the skill of composing poetry in the traditional way was fast dying out and the only people who still held the knowledge were almost all in Iceland. This became such an Iceland-specific thing that Medieval Icelanders were often hired in high positions in the European courts to write poetry for (and of)\u00a0the king they served.<\/p>\n

Edda played in this by offering people knowledge that was in danger of being forgotten. Old legends of the Norse gods held so much information that without knowing them many poems were entirely nonsensical. If you came across the description “Flesh of the mother of the enemy of giants” you probably would not immediately think of earth\/soil, unless you knew that the enemy of giants refers to \u00de\u00f3r, whose mother’s name was J\u00f6r\u00f0 – earth. Thus her flesh is the soil.<\/p>\n

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Magnate’s residence at tiss\u00f8 by mararie at Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

Some kennings are easier to understand than others. A “spears’ crash” is a battle, the “wave’s horse” is a ship. Likewise, it you know your sagas and Eddic poems\u00a0you won’t find “Baldur’s bane” too hard to understand: Baldur was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe, the only thing in the world that could harm him. “Ymir’s skull” is the sky, since that’s what \u00d3\u00f0inn and his two brothers used to create the sky. “Hanged god” is none other than \u00d3\u00f0inn, the only one of the Norse gods that actually spent a good while hanging from a tree. “Wolf’s father” and “father of the sea-serpent”… well, when suspicious children are mentioned you know it’s about Loki.<\/p>\n

Then there are kennings that today sound so illogical they border on hilarious. Would you call a sword an “icicle of blood” or a “war-onion”? Or if you’d like to go for a really unnecessarily fancy and long kennings, how does “fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed” sound like if you know that it simply means “a warrior”?<\/p>\n

Kennings can indeed be complicated and occasionally they have several parts that each explain\u00a0another\u00a0part that appears with them, or are used to pinpoint to a specific meaning if the first part can mean several things. An example of the former could be “feeder of war-gull”. War-gull would be the first kenning to crack, and since it refers to birds present at a battle it no doubt means ravens. Ravens come to eat\u00a0on the battlefield, so who is it that feeds them? Yup, this kenning also means “a warrior”. Of the latter kind of kenning we can look at\u00a0“the possessor of the fallen slain and the owner of Sessr\u00famnir”. The first part is a little vague since there are two possessors for the fallen slain, \u00d3\u00f0inn and… someone else.\u00a0Half of the chosen einherjar<\/em> are chosen first, and then the rest continue to Valhalla to feast at \u00d3\u00f0inn’s table\u00a0while the first group stays in Sessr\u00famnir which\u00a0is owned by the goddess Freyja.<\/p>\n

\"2353139829_92c6887a15_b\"<\/a>

Viking trade gold by Arild Finne Nyb\u00f8 at Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kennings were by no means something that Icelanders forgot after the Medieval times. The song I mentioned, H\u00e6ttu a\u00f0 gr\u00e1ta Hringan\u00e1<\/em>, actually uses a kenning!\u00a0Firstly the word hringan\u00e1 is made of two parts: hringa + n\u00e1. The first part translates as “…of rings”, and as for the second we have N\u00e1 that’s actually a name. She’s maybe better known as Gn\u00e1, a servant girl of Frigg, \u00d3\u00f0inn’s wife.<\/p>\n

Anything referring to jewellery or female gods tends to mean\u00a0a woman, usually a wife (regardless of whether she owned such jewellery or not). In this case the composer was rather clever and took into account the fact that Gn\u00e1 was a servant girl, thus selecting this kenning for another servant girl that the song is about – a girl who had to have her toes amputated and was grieving the loss. The composer then wrote this\u00a0song to console her:\u00a0“Don’t cry, Gn\u00e1 of rings, listen to my advice…” and with that proved that\u00a0Icelanders never forgot the kennings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

What is “a wave’s horse”? If someone’s talking of “Ymir’s skull”, what are they talking about? What or who is being called Hringan\u00e1 in the old song H\u00e6ttu a\u00f0 gr\u00e1ta Hringan\u00e1? And who is “the possessor of the fallen slain and the owner of Sessr\u00famnir”? Kennings, or circumlocutions, form a large part of traditional Icelandic…<\/p>\n

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