Long time since this happened!

Anyway, this is just a post to explain my recent deviations, all entitled Skuldskaparmal, with an Old Norse verse form name afterwards. These were all written for my medieval literature class, and in this note I'm going to post my research paper that goes along with them- fully explaining what goes into each one, what they mean, and all that jazz. Some of them are fairly inaccessible if you don't have an intense knowledge of the Norse mythos.

Here are the poems:

Drottkvaett - [link]
Detthendr - [link]
Refhvorf - [link]
Malahattr - [link]
Galdralag - [link]

Research Paper Final: Skaldic and Eddaic Medieval Poetic Forms

Skuldskaparmál is my attempt at updating the Old Norse forms of poetry into modern day English while maintaining the complexity, terseness, and density of the original forms. While this is of course impossible to do with translations, I believe that it’s entirely possible with completely new material. I call my work Skuldskaparmál as a pun, combining Skaldskaparmal, the name of the center section of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda and one of the most important parts of my research, the name meaning the ‘language of poetry’ in Old Norse, with the name of one of the Norns, Skuld, who represents the future (Hollander 4). Thus I’m trying to bring these forms and the powerful poetics of these ancient people into the future, making the “language of the future.” One of my largest considerations was matching the flow of many modern verse translations, in some cases focusing on matching the simplicity of the rhythm, but also bringing in the vast complexity found in the prose translations and in the explanations of the kennings.

The verse forms I used were taken directly from both Snorri Sturluson’s Edda and the anonymous Poetic Edda, with the former providing mostly instruction and the latter providing examples. Most editions of the Edda, or as it is sometimes called, the Prose Edda, don’t include the last section Háttatal due to the difficulty of translation, though this section was most crucial to my project. I admire Anthony Faulkes in his efforts to translate the piece as, although not perfect, his efforts mirror my own in attempting to bring to light some of the works and constructions of the skalds.

My first poem is a typical dróttkvaett form with two stanzas. Dróttkvaett, meaning “court meter,” was one of the most elaborate forms of skaldic poetry and considered the foundation of all verse-forms (Faulkes 167). Each stanza, and a poem could be any number of stanzas, was eight lines, consisting of four quarter-stanzas. Each quarter-stanza contained its own alliteration, which consisted of a chief stave and two props. The chief stave appears at the beginning of the second line of the quarter-stanza and the props are its alliterating words in the first line of each quarter-stanza. Thus, in the first two lines of my dróttkvaett, the chief stave is ‘while’ and the props are ‘weapons’ and ‘war.’ Although technically the ‘when’ also alliterates, it’s a weaker, less stressed word and unnecessary to the construction of the poem. Stronger is the second quarter-stanza, where chief stave ‘daring’ matches perfectly with ‘dance’ and ‘dine.’ Additionally, it should be noted that in Old Norse, all words that began with a vowel were considered alliterative and it was considered most elegant to have the chief stave and each prop be a different vowel sound, as in the first quarter-stanza of the detthendr (Faulkes 166).

The next part of the dróttkvaett is the internal rhyme or assonance. This part of the poesy is much more difficult to write than alliteration, but you can see my attempts in most lines- the repetition of ‘er’ in line two, or ‘swords’ and ‘wargs’ in line three, or the loose connection of ‘spill’ and ‘well’ in line four. The last quarter-stanza of the first stanza contains probably the best examples of this, where the ‘lay’ sound is repeated in ‘lair’ and ‘laid’ and the ‘en’ in ‘serpent’ and ‘open,’ as well as the ‘ee’ in ‘tree,’ ‘greed,’ and ‘feed.’

The first three poems and the last ones are all considered skaldic poems, while the fourth is considered eddaic. The distinction between these is not always clear; however, there are a few general rules. Historic skaldic poems almost always have authors while eddaic ones are anonymous and skaldic poems use extensive kennings while eddaic poems are much simpler in both theme and form. Skalds such as Egil Skallagrimson composed their drapas (long poems made of dróttkvaett stanzas with occasional refrains) primarily to honor people, both living and dead (Scudder 227). Eddaic poems, found mostly in the Poetic Edda, were typically chronicles of lore or, in the case of Hávamál, gnomic sayings (Hollander ix). I tried to emulate these differences in styles between those skaldic poems within my collection and the eddaic one, although my dróttkvaett is no where near the length of a drapa.

The dróttkvaett begins with a fairly simple kenning of ‘war-snakes,’ which are spears (Faulkes 160). Similarly, the ‘jewel-shelterer’ is a kenning for a shield and the ‘swords dance’ is a battle. A ‘warg’ is another word for a wolf and wolves were often known to feast on the fallen warriors after a battle. The use of multiple kennings for a single idea was commonplace in Old Norse poetry and served as a way of reinforcing and emphasizing a particular idea, in this case a bloody conflict. The next difficult kenning is ‘lants of Glasir,’ which is my take on the commonplace ‘needles of Glasir’ or variation ‘leaves of Glasir,’ both of which reference the grove of Glasir, with foliage always red-golden, standing before the doors of Valhalla in Asgard (Brodeur 145). I changed the ‘needles’ to ‘lants’ in order to internally rhyme better with the ‘and’ at the end of the line. Although there are rather set kennings in Old Norse poetics, the individual poet had great freedom to adapt and create to fit his needs, as throughout the Prose Edda Snorri Sturluson gives examples of the different ways each poet references the sea or gold or Odin. ‘Tears of Freyja’ is another common kenning for gold, as is ‘serpent’s lairs.’ The last line, however, may present some confusion. ‘Tree’ represents ‘man’ in this instance, as tree names were often used to refer to man, such as ‘rowan’ or ‘ash’- in fact, the first man in Norse mythology, Ask, was made from an ash tree. I used ‘tree’ here once again for the beautiful internal rhyme that went with ‘greed’ and ‘feed.’

Ymir was the giant from whose body Midgard, or the land of humans, was created and thus it is customary to refer to the sky as Ymir’s Skull, the land as Ymir’s Flesh, and the sea as Ymir’s Blood (Brodeur 133-135). Interestingly enough, it was also common practice for Old Norse poets to use double kennings, and thus could call the sky the Skull of Búri’s Father, if they wanted to be denser or more enigmatic in their writing. The simple single kenning sufficed for my purposes. In the next line, ‘thought-stone’ is a kenning for ‘heart,’ and in fact ‘thought’ (or even ‘breast’ could be tagged on to ‘corn,’ ‘apple,’ ‘nut,’ or ‘ball,’ as well with the same meaning (Faulkes 154). The kennings through most of the rest of the poem are fairly obvious, except for the second to last line, ‘drink of dwarves.’ The Old Norse poets had a surprising amount of kennings relating to poetry itself and this specific one references how the gift of poetry reached Odin and the people of the world. When the main gods of the Norse pantheon, the Æsir, got into a dispute with a different group of gods, the Vanir, the two formed a peace treaty in the manner of both groups spitting in a kettle and the spit being formed into a man, Kvasir. Kvasir was so wise he knew practically everything and, soon enough, he was killed by two dwarves, Fjalar and Galarr, who let his blood run into two vats and a kettle. They blended the blood with honey to make mead, which was later stolen by Odin and spat upon the earth, thus granting the gift of poetry to man (Brodeur 93). The overall content of the dróttkvaett concerns some of the most common topics in Old Norse poetry -battle, gold, and poetry- but I added modern constructions in terms of theme, setting up a specific pattern and then using an almost sonnet or volta-like turn at the end to make a point about poetry and glory.

The next two poems are interesting variations on the dróttkvaett form. The first, called a detthendr (or ‘falling rhyme’ in direction translation), constricts the second lines in each quarter-stanza to be merely two words long, but still maintaining the six syllable count. Thus the line is made of two three-syllable words still containing an internal rhyme (Faulkes 185, 227). This form I encountered mixed success in, and the only two kennings really necessary to explain are that of ‘sea-flame,’ which is gold, and of calling Fenrir the ‘devourer.’ Fenrir is the gigantic wolf, offspring of Loki, who will, when Ragnarok comes, consume Odin whole (Hollander 11). The second, the refhvörf, or ‘fox-turns,’ form is very unique and fun to play with; it requires that in either each line, each second line, or each fourth line every two words are antithetical to each other (Faulkes 177-179). This requires a good amount of wordplay, stretching of meaning, and sometimes extensive use of kennings. In the second line the word pairs are ‘balefully, hoping’ and ‘death arrives.’ The first demonstrates a break in between the words, a common device in the refhvðrf form, and the second demonstrates a stretch of meaning: dying could be considering as leaving this world and is generally seen as a departure, the antithesis of an arrival. ‘Thought-speeches,’ a kenning I myself created in line four, means an interior monologue. The sixth line contains wordplay I’m most proud of, as ‘goods’ is used as meaning both ‘ossessions’ and as the antithesis to ‘destroy’ or ‘bad,’ and ‘eace’ is a pun with ‘iece,’ being the antithesis of ‘all.’

My fourth poem is the only eddaic poem in my collection and it follows the málaháttr form, which, like most forms used in eddaic poetry, is fairly loose. The málaháttr, or speech-form, is based off the old-story meter, or fornyrdislag, which uses less syllables per line and less alliterative props, as well (Faulkes 218, 228). Deviating from the dróttkvaett, the málaháttr doesn’t necessarily place the chief stave at the beginning of the line, and is used, much like I do, for when characters speak. Much more important to the eddaic poem is the tale surrounding the poem, which I chose to be the tale of Gudrun, whose character is explored through parts of skáldskaparmál and the latter poems of the Poetic Edda. She tricked her first husband, Sigurd, into marrying her with a forgetful potion so that he may forget his love for the valkyrie Brynhild, but this backfires after things go awry. Sigurd ends up murdered by Gudrun’s brothers and one of them, Guttorm, is dead, while Brynhild kills her three year old son, Sigmund, leaving behind only the twin daughter Svanhild, and then wills herself to death. Gudrun soon is married off to Atli, a king loosely based around Attila the Hun, who traps and kills Gudrun’s remaining brothers Hogni and Gunnar. Driven by despair, Gudrun kills her sons by Atli, feeds them to him and, after revealing this horrific deed to the king, burns down the entire court with him inside. She throws herself into the ocean afterward, attempting suicide, but is thrown by the sea into the land of King Jónakr, whom she marries. Later her remaining child by Sigurd, Svanhild, is married to a king who falsely accuses her of being unfaithful and kills her. The málaháttr I wrote is a monologue spoken by Gudrun soon after she murders Atli and moments before she attempts to kill herself in the sea. The poem, like most eddaic poetry, is straightforward with minimal usage of kennings and complex language. The format of these lines follows the typical Anglo-Saxon caesura line break, although that’s not necessarily how they could be written or read, as each of the stanzas would, like the dróttkvaett, be eight lines. The reasons they are so presented is because of the precedent set by certain translators of the Poetic Edda (such as Lee Hollander, the translator I currently use) and for aesthetic reasons.

The final poem in the collection is a galdralag, the ‘magic spell meter’ or ‘incantation meter’ (Faulkes 218). Similar to the ljódaháttr, or ‘song-form’ with its six lines, the galdralag has an extra seventh line that echoes the last, often slightly tweaking it for new meaning (Faulkes 228). This verse form is used in Hávamál in a few instances, and the echo will change a line six such as “heedless of their hides” into a line seven of “heedless of their haunts,” (Hollander 39). The actual content of my galdralag is perhaps not accurate as to what an Old Norse poet would write, but I compare the poetry (Bragi is the god of poetry) to a ship coming into port and the ‘comfort of serpents’ is a typical kenning for summer, while Vindslavr’s son is Vetr, or winter. As things turn to winter or end their voyage so I end this collection of poetry. The last two lines express distance, in that I write as far as the end of the sky, and time, as I write until the night has ended and a new day begins.

This project has been a difficult task to accomplish- how can one bring the words of long-dead authors writing in a distant language from a distant time to modern day? There is a precision and strength to the poetry of the skalds that is extremely hard to mimic or even approach, and the exactness with which every line was written that must have taken years upon years to master. The complicated backstories of each of the kennings would take a lifetime of study or complete inundation in Norse culture to fully understand and remember to the point where the poet has each of them on the tip of his fingers, as these great ones obviously did. Although I could try as hard as I might, I can only get a taste of what skill and craftsmanship went into each eight line dróttkvaett snippet, and a revered appreciation of what geniuses these skalds truly were.