So this is an example, in English, of what I’m trying to do in Old Norse:

Take these terrible old Rikers,

Turn them in and some cash earn, friend,

Use the money, ably manage,

Make a pencil-slingers’ cake then.

I’ve written more and more skaldic poems in Old Norse, without ever stopping to explain what skaldic poetry is (“skáld,” by the way, is Old Norse for “poet”). So here’s a short characterization of skaldic poetry, especially the meter called hrynhenda (which I’m slowly trying to get better and better at imitating), for readers who may not know Old Norse, but wish to know what I’m trying to do. Skaldic poetry has strict requirements for alliteration and rhyme in each line, viz.:

-The meter calls for 4 trochaic syllables (stressed-unstressed) per line, i.e. trochaic tetrameter (this is for hrynhenda only; the more famous dróttkvætt shoots for 6 syllables per line and isn’t strictly trochaic, but does shoot for 3 “lifts” – see below).

-In each line, at least two stressed syllables must be “heavy,” i.e. contain either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two consonants (although a long vowel followed immediately by a short vowel, e.g. búa, doesn’t count as heavy). These “heavy” syllables are referred to in English as “lifts.”

-In each odd line, two lifts must alliterate. The first syllable of the following even line must be a lift, and must alliterate with these two lifts in the preceding odd line.

-In each odd line, two lifts (one of which must be the last) must have consonant-rhyme/ consonance (skothending).

-In each even line, two lifts (one of which must be the last) must have full rhyme (aðalhending).

So here’s an English example of half a hrynhenda stanza, with alliteration bold, skothending italicized, and aðalhending underlined:

Take these terrible old psych books,

Turn them in and some cash earn, friend,

Use the money, ably manage,

Make a book about your baking.

Alright, but as you can see, this doesn’t say much. That’s where heiti and kenningar come in, and turn skaldic poetry into an exercise in riddling – using distantly allusive names (heiti) or metaphors (kenningar) instead of everyday language. The use of this riddling language is both a kind of intellectual play and a tool for fitting words into the strict requirements of alliteration and rhyme that we’ve just looked at above.

For instance, the first line mentions “psych books.” Let’s say that there’s a famous psychology textbook that people refer to as “Riker” after its author William Riker. If we then use “Rikers” to mean “psychology textbooks,” we’re using a heiti for “psychology textbooks,” and this also has consonance with another lift in that line (take: Riker). Real skaldic poems use thousands of documented heiti, especially for gods, weapons, animals, and men and women.

A kenning may be a bit more complicated. Let’s say that in line 4, we want something to rhyme with “bake,” and we want it to mean “book.” Well, “cake” rhymes with “make,” but how can we metaphorically call a book a cake? We have to set up a sort of correspondence, “a book is to X as a cake is to Y,” and then call a book “the cake of X.” In this case, we might say, “a book is to an author as a cake is to a baker, so a book = a cake of authors.* In fact, Old Norse skálds will often pack a kenning within a kenning, for instance calling an “author” a “pencil-slinger” (because slinging is to a sword as writing is to a pencil), and giving us a cake of pencil-slingers. Hence our half of a hrynhenda poem may become:

Take these terrible old Rikers,

Turn them in and some cash earn, friend,

Use the money, ably manage,

Make a pencil-slingers’ cake then.

On this blog, I’ve colored the heiti and kenningar in my Old Norse stanzas red, and I “unpack” them in the English translation like this: “Take these terrible old Rikers (= psychology textbooks), turn them in and earn some cash, friend, use the money, manage ably, make a pencil-slingers’ (= authors’) cake (= book).

Anybody else want to try writing your own now?

*For this way of looking at kennings I am indebted to the essay “On Translating Old English Poetry” in Craig Williamsson’s new translation of Béowulf.