SOURCE: Hallberg, Peter. “Elements of Imagery in the Poetic Edda.” In Edda: A Collection of Essays, edited by Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason, pp. 47-85. Winnipeg, Can.: University of Manitoba Press, 1983.

[In the following essay, Hallberg surveys and analyzes the various modes of metaphorical language employed in the poetry of the Elder Edda, identifying the aesthetic and thematic functions of mythological and heroic kennings, as well as examining other forms of imagery, epithet, and linguistic parallelism.]

I

The purpose of this paper is to survey various forms of imagery in the Poetic Edda, their distribution among different types of poetry, and their function. This, of course, is not a new topic. The published literature on Eddic poetry has now reached such enormous proportions that no one can hope to absorb and utilize all of it. Many papers, and even books, have dealt specifically with the imagery of Old Norse (ON) poetry. Handbooks and general discussions of the Poetic Edda have treated the topic more or less thoroughly. Commentaries in editions and translations, and articles on individual poems, have elucidated many points. It would therefore be pretentious to aim at presenting anything really new, at least to scholars in the field. Nevertheless, it might not be irrelevant to give a short, comprehensive account in order to reassess the topic, possibly from angles somewhat different from those which have been used before.

It goes without saying that I must here avoid becoming entangled in discussions of intricate linguistic and etymological problems; this would be quite outside the scope of the present discussion and would blur the overall picture.

I have confined myself to the Eddic poetry represented in the Codex Regius. Other poems, such as Baldrs draumar, Grottasoongr, Rígsþula or Vooolospá in scamma, would not have changed the outlines of the discussion or contributed any new material of fundamental interest had they been considered. English translations of lines or stanzas have been taken from Henry Adams Bellows' The Poetic Edda (New York, 1968).

II

I shall have to make some introductory comments on my use of the terms imagery and metaphor. The word ‘imagery’, especially, is rather ambiguous. I denote by imagery any words or phrases involving a comparison, an intermingling or fusion of two clearly different conceptual spheres, that is, metaphors as well as similes.

If, for instance, the head of an individual is called háfiall scarar ‘(high) mountain of the hair of the head’ (Hym [Hymisqviða] 23), this expression involves a comparison between a part of the body, the head, and an element of the landscape, a mountain. Following the widely accepted terminology introduced by I. A. Richards, I call the element which is ‘described’ tenor, and the element which is used for ‘description’ vehicle. Thus, in the case just cited, the concept head is the tenor and the concept mountain the vehicle. But one should be careful to stress the fact that such a neat division tends to blur the real process at work in the metaphor. We are dealing here with more than just a vehicle ‘working on’ and changing aspects of the tenor. There is also a reverse process. In the image háfiall scarar, the concept ‘mountain’ is itself easily affected by the concept ‘head,’ and to some extent becomes ‘personified’ or ‘animated.’ We have a kind of fusion between the two concepts, a characteristic of metaphorical expressions.

A configuration like háfiall scarar immediately calls to mind the concept kenning, the form of imagery regarded as typical of Old Norse poetry, especially skaldic poetry.¹ Not all kennings, however, involve a metaphorical element. If we look again at Hymisqviða, the poem from which háfiall scarar was cited, we find there a considerable number of expressions for its protagonist, the god Thórr: Yggs barn ‘Yggr's child’ (st. 2; Yggr is a name for Óðinn); Sifiar verr ‘Sif's husband’ (sts. 3, 15, 34; Sif is Thórr's wife); faðir Móða ‘Móði's father’ (st. 34; Móði is Thórr's son); Óðins sonr ‘Óðinn's son’ (st. 35). Such paraphrases in Old Norse poetry are traditionally labelled kennings, although they do not imply any comparison at all. Thórr is Óðinn's (Yggr's) son, Sif's husband, Móði's father. He is simply placed within his genealogical relations.

Another kind of comparable paraphrase in the same poem refers instead to Thórr's various activities: his driving the famous chariot drawn by a pair of goats, his defence of gods and men against the giants, his killing of the Miðgarðsormr in the final collapse of the existing world. He is vinr verliða ‘the friend of men’ (st. 11), gýgiar grœtir ‘he who makes the giantess cry’ (st. 14), þurs ráðbani ‘the giant's killer’ (st. 19), hafra dróttinn ‘the master (owner) of goats’ (sts. 20, 31), orms einbani ‘solo killer of the serpent’ (st. 22).

In all these paraphrases there is no appeal to the listener's or reader's imagination, only to his learning, his knowledge of Old Norse mythology. (In many cases, however, the context makes them quite transparent even to an audience ignorant of their background.) They are allusions, not metaphors. But as such they play an important part by widening the frame of reference. By varying the simple name of the god, the many kennings for Thórr in Hymisqviða evoke a wealth of associations which complete the picture of the protagonist, giving a stronger impression of his status and importance. Moreover, they serve, in terms of style, to heighten the diction of this poetry.

These paraphrasing kennings of erudition, then, fall outside my definition of imagery. Consequently they will not be dealt with below. Let it be said, however, that they are very unevenly distributed among the two main categories of Eddic poetry. In the mythological poems they are frequent, occurring on an average in every ninth stanza (out of 611). In the heroic poems, on the other hand, we have a frequency of approximately one instance in every forty-fifth stanza (out of 771). This is rather striking, as the kennings “im engeren Sinne”²—the metaphorical ones—reverse this proportion (see pp. 60-61 below). Half of the examples from the heroic poems—some eight cases—appear in Helgaqviða Hundingsbana I. In nipt Nera ‘Neri's sister’ (st. 4; Neri is otherwise unknown) the norns are evoked, and in Imðar dóttir ‘Imðr's daughter’ (st. 43; Imðr is a name for a giantess) the giants. Fróða friðr ‘Fróði's peace’ (st. 13) of course refers to the story told in Grottasoongr. But elsewhere the paraphrasing ‘genealogical’ kennings remain within the context of heroic society and denote its heroes themselves. Thus Helgi is burr Sigmundar ‘Sigmundr's son’ (st. 6) and bróðir Sinfiootla ‘Sinfiootli's brother’ (st. 8); his beloved Sigrún is Hooogna dóttir ‘Hooogni's daughter’ (st. 17)—expressions easily comprehensible in their context.

III

The demarcation of the imagery of the Poetic Edda is complicated for various reasons. Thus the very character of mythological poetry may make the identification of its metaphorical elements problematic. To a modern reader, an onlooker from without, a poem like Voolospá might appear as one vast image or metaphor for the fate of the world. But what of its author? Did he regard his work as representing authentic myth through and through, or was much of it, even to him, more or less metaphorical? In stanza 5 we read:

Sól varp sunnan, sinni mána,
hendi inni hœgri um himiniooður;
sól þat né vissi, hvar hon sali átti
stioornor þat né visso, hvar þær staði átto,
máni þat né vissi, hvat hann megins átti.
The sun, the sister of the moon, from the south
her right hand cast over heaven's rim;
no knowledge she had where her home should be.

Quite apart from the exact meaning of this passage, the sun is clearly personified as a female creature (ON sól is feminine), physically and mentally comparable to a living being of a higher order. From a ‘modern’ point of view this is, of course, a metaphor—of a kind often met in romantic poetry. But did the author of Voolospá ‘believe’ in this image? I doubt that his conception of the world was that naive. It seems preferable to interpret the passage as a poet's vision—that is as a metaphorical expression. Such an understanding may be supported by another mythological poem, Alvíssmál. It presents a catalogue of different names for a series of natural phenomena. In stanza 16 we get to know that the sun is called by men sól, by gods sunna, by dwarfs Dvalins leici (or leica) ‘Dvalinn's deceiver (or playmate)’ (Dvalinn is a dwarf), by giants eygló ‘everglowing,’ and by elves fagrahvél ‘fair wheel.’ This variation of the vocabulary, where different aspects of the object are exhibited in turn, seems to reveal a rather relativistic view, a clear consciousness that to a considerable degree we decide ourselves what we see in things.

We also encounter semantic problems in a narrower sense when we try to establish—a millenium or so after the Eddic poems were composed—the contemporary ‘meaning’ and connotations of certain words in a special context. To pick out a single example, we meet in Voolospá the word angan in two very similar phrases: a sorceress is said to be angan / illrar brúðar ‘delight of evil women’ (st. 22); at a later point we hear of Óðinn as Friggiar angan ‘Frigg's delight’ (st. 53). We know that the basic sense of angan was ‘odour, scent.’ But how much of this meaning was still present in the cases just cited? If it was fully actualized, we are dealing with a metaphor, a fusion of the tenor ‘delight’ with the vehicle ‘odour.’ On the other hand, angan may well have become more or less stabilized in the sense ‘delight,’ besides its fundamental, etymological meaning. If so, its use in the Voolospá represents a ‘faded’ or ‘dead’ metaphor, although it is still to be regarded as a poetic expression not used in everyday language. It is difficult, and in many cases impossible, to solve such semantic problems because of the unbridgeable gulf of time.

IV

To begin with rather plain and inconspicuous elements of imagery, we may examine the simple or compound adjectives implying a comparison of some kind. In fact, when we have to do with adjectives such as hvass or kaldr, it may sometimes be a matter of taste whether a certain case is to be interpreted as a metaphor, a real ‘transfer’ of the basic word sense, or only as a slight extension of that meaning. Moreover, in some instances the metaphor is certainly to be seen as quite stereotyped; there is hardly any impression of a distinct opposition between tenor and vehicle.

The impression of gold (and silver), an element so important in our aristocratic heroic poetry, is heightened by slightly metaphorical epithets: glóðrauðr ‘glowing red’ (FM [Fáfnismál] 9, 20; Gðr [Guðrúnqviða] II 2; Am [Atlamál] 13) is applied to gold, snæhvítr ‘white as snow’ (AM 70) to silver.

The beauty of women is sometimes referred to by various epithets indicating brightness and implying a comparison with geese, gold, snow, sun: gaglbiartr ‘bright as geese’ (Akv [Atlaviða] 39), gullbiartr ‘bright as gold’ (Hrbl 30; possibly a reference to the woman's jewelry, just as línhvítr ‘white as linen’ in the same stanza, and in stanza 32, may apply not to her complexion but to her clothing, in the latter case with no metaphorical implications), miallhvítr ‘white as snow’ (Alv 7), sólbiartr ‘bright as the sun’ (HH II 45), sólhvítr ‘white as the sun’ (Háv [Helgaqviða Hundingsbana] 97).

More interesting perhaps than such merely ornamental epithets are those which describe mental qualities by a transfer of concrete to abstract. The concept of chilliness is sometimes used to denote various forms of hostility and malevolent attitude. King Atli's messenger speaks to the court of the Giúcungar kaldri rooddo ‘in a cold voice’ (Akv 2). When the Fenrisúlfr is said to have kalda kiapta ‘cold jaws’ (Vm 53), the epithet is cerainly to be understood as referring to the cruelty of that terrible beast, the foe of gods and men. The phrase kooold ráð ‘cold counsel’ (Ls [Locasenna] 51, Vkv [Voolundarqviða] 31) is a colloquial expression in prose, and may be labelled a ‘dead’ metaphor. The same seems to be the case with the compound kaldrifiaðr ‘with cold ribs, malevolent’ (Vm 10), applied to the giant, Óðinn's adversary. More specific for giants and other terrifying creatures is the epithet hrímkaldr ‘cold as hoarfrost’: Vm 21 (the giant Ýmir); Ls 49, 50 (Loki's son); Fm 38 (Reginn).

Very much like the concept of chilliness, the idea of sharpness may be transferred to mental qualities and states of mind. The word hvass ‘sharp’ is used of the eyes of young Helgi (HH II 2), indicating a leader and hero, and of other warriors as well: Hundingr's sons are hvassir (HH II 11), as are the Huns (Ghv [Guðrúnarhvqt] 12); the epithet testifies to their courage and fighting spirit. When Guðrún tells her sorrows (harmar) in Ghv 17 we find the following triadic series: sá sárastr (when her husband Sigurðr was killed in his bed), then sá grimmastr (when Atli had her brother Gunnarr thrown into the snake pit), ending with sá hvassastr (when the heart was cut out of her brother Hoogni, who laughed as he was executed). Perhaps the choice of the word in the latter case has something to do not only with Guðrún's feelings, but also with its associations of knives and cutting.

An impressive use is made of the adjective blóðugr ‘bloody,’ when Hávamál (st. 37) describes the man who must beg for his daily bread:

blóðuct er hiarta, þeim er biðia scal
                                        sér í mál hvert matar.
his heart is bleeding who needs must beg
                                        when food he fain would have.

Our heart is always blóðugt, in a quite concrete and natural sense. But in the context here the word gets a surprising metaphorical intensity because body and soul are so strongly unified in the expression blóðuct er hiarta.

In a pejorative metaphorical sense the adjective þunnr ‘thin’ appears in the epithet þunngeðr ‘thin of mind’ “med ‘tyndt’ sind, d.v.s. med let sind (ikke: ‘letsindig’), med bibetydning af indskrænkethed.”³ It is Brynhildr (Sg [Sigurðarqviða in Scamma] 41) who characterizes her rival Guðrún as þunngeð kona.

The wolf has a central position in Old Norse mythology and poetry, always with negative connotations, culminating in the Fenrisúlfr. In Reginsmál (st. 11) we hear of a dís úlfhuguð ‘goddess with a wolf's mind, cruel,’ Atlaqviða (st. 8) tells us that Gunnarr's and Hoogni's road to King Atli is ylfskr ‘wolfish, dangerous.’ The appearance of this word, which seems to be a hapax legomenon, is prepared by the gold ring with a wolf's hair wound round it that Guðrún has sent her brothers as a warning. When she is said never to weep for brœðr sína berharða ‘her brothers hard as bears, courageous, tough’ (st. 38), another wild animal dear to the Old Norse imagination is called upon for comparison.

In the mythological poetry we find a few metaphorical adjectives implying the animation of natural phenomena. In Vsp [Voolospá] 27 Yggdrasill, the World Tree, is said to be heiðvanr ‘used to the bright heaven,’ and in Vsp 41 we hear of veðr válynd ‘malevolent weather.’ In Grm [Grímnismál] 41 we find in harðmóðgo ský ‘the callous clouds.’ These few instances, then, belong to Voolospá and Grímnismál, two poems dealing with the creation, existence and destruction of a thoroughly animated world. The epithets just cited are appropriate to such a world. The ‘callous clouds’ become more understandable when we consider that they are created out of the giant Ymir's brain, and the ‘malevolent weather’ is one of the ominous signs which forebode the destruction of the world and the whole of nature.

In several instances of seemingly animating metaphors, we are dealing perhaps rather with a metonymical transfer. Thus, when Thórr is said to swing Mioollni morðgioornum ‘the murderous Mioollnir’ (Hym 36), we may well have to do with a real metaphor: the hammer is seen as an animated being, as weapons sometimes are. But one could also explain the expression as a transfer of the quality ‘murderous’ to the hammer from its owner. Certainly when Guðrún kills the Huns in Atli's residence hendi helfússi ‘with a hand longing for death’ (Akv 41), we have a clear example of metonymical rather than metaphorical transfer. It should be remarked in passing that helfúss probably has a double sense in this context: in her furious vengeance Guðrún is inflicting death on other people, but at the same time she seems to be longing for her own death.⁴

Metaphorical adjectives are not a dominant part of the image pattern in Eddic poetry, but they contribute effectively to that integration of various fields of experience which is a characteristic feature of metaphorical language. Man is seen in the light of surrounding nature. Elements of nature are seen in analogy with living creatures. Thus we have an impression of a creation experienced as a totality.

In much the same way as adjectives, the verbs or verb phrases of everyday language sometimes acquire a metaphorical function in Eddic diction. Of course, here as everywhere we face the problem of distinguishing between a more or less stereotyped metaphorical use of a certain word on the one hand, and a fresher and more ‘poetic’ use on the other. Needless to say, the boundaries must have been rather fluid even to a contemporary audience.

Just as hvass may be an epithet for eyes (cf.p. 51 above), we also hear how young Helgi hvessir augu / sem hildingar ‘gazes sharply as warriors do’ (HH I 6).

Usually the metaphorical transfer has the effect of making something abstract sensual and palpable. Thus the ominous atmosphere in Voolospá is aptly condensed in the phrase lopt allt / lævi blandit ‘all the air mixed with treachery (corruption)’ (st. 25). It is as if the corruption had become a kind of contagious substance penetrating the whole world. In a narrower and more personal context, so to speak, King Atli has a presentiment that he will be stabbed by his wife Guðrún læblooondnum hioor ‘with a sword mixed with treachery’ (Gðr II 38). Loci hints at his intention to make trouble at the æsir's drinking-bout with the threatening words blend ec þeim svá meini miooð ‘I will mix their mead with harm (evil)’ (Ls 3). Later on in the same poem he accuses two of the goddesses of being themselves meini blandin miooc (sts. 32, 56). In Sigrdrífomál the valkyrie teaches Sigurðr, among other things, how to avoid meinblandinn mioðr (st. 8). All these instances of blanda used in a metaphorical function have negative connotations. But in Hávamál we meet with the advice geði skaltu við þann (i.e., vin) blanda ‘you should mix minds with him’ (st. 44).

Harmful words or advice are sometimes said to bíta ‘bite’ the victims (Háv 118, Sg 64). The verb eta ‘eat’ is used not only of the fire (HHv 10), slightly animating that element, but also of sorrow and evil consuming man: sorg etr hiarta (Háv 121), þann eta mein (Háv 151). When Guðrún elegiacally recapitulates her life, she ends by wishing that um hiarta / þiðni sorgir ‘the sorrows might melt around my heart’ (Ghv 20). The verb þiðna seems to allude to the sorrows as cold and frozen things. The metaphor is especially well suited to the context here, as Guðrún has just summoned men to pile up her funeral pyre, that megi brenna brióst / boolvafult eldr ‘the fire might burn my grief-filled breast.’ This very concrete fire provides the background for the ‘melting’ of the sorrows, and gives the whole passage a penetrating intensity.

Some of the metaphorical verb phrases used in Eddic poetry seem to have been well established in colloquial language. Of Guðrún feigning to be loyal to her husband Atli, but at the same time planning to kill him, it is said: léc hon tveim sciooldom ‘she played with two shields’ (Am 74)—one of the many metaphorical expressions involving the word sciooldr. Another phrase of the same kind, but this time from the sphere of animal life rather than from fighting and war, appears when the goddess Scaði threatens Loci, who is aggressively insulting the gods: munattu lengi svá / leica lausom hala ‘thou mayst not long in freedom flourish thy tail’ (Ls 49). According to the dictionaries, ON hali ‘tail’ could apply to various animals. Possibly the phrase just cited alludes to a fox (see Fritzner, hali: dregr melrakkinn eptir sér halann sinn nú ‘now the fox drags his tail behind himself’; this is said of a man with the nickname melrakki ‘fox.’) It would be quite appropriate to associate the cunning Loci with a fox.

There are other and perhaps more unusual examples of how a common verb is applied metaphorically. The phrase úr er þat brunnit ‘there is something burnt out’ (Am 54) is spoken by King Atli of the warriers he has lost in battle. When Guðrún stabs the drunken Atli in his bed, she is said to give the bed blóð at drecca ‘blood to drink’ (Akv 41). Hamðismál opens with the words: Sprutto á tái / tregnar íðir ‘harmful deeds sprang out of the path (or pavement) in front of the house.’ The verb spretta seems to indicate an analogy with growing plants, and thus makes the deeds seem fated, as it were, independent of the will of men. Voolundr's desire for his sword, when King Níðuðr has deprived him of it, is rendered by an expressive metaphor: tenn hánum teygiaz ‘he stretches out his teeth’ (Vkv 17). This phrase, somewhat obscure perhaps, should possibly not be understood literally, as Voolundr snapping like a dog after his weapon, but rather figuratively.

In the sometimes coarse language of Locasenna Loci is warned that if he intends to attack the gods with hróp ‘invectives’ and róg ‘foul slander,’ then á þér muno þau þerra þat ‘they will wipe it off on you’ (st. 4).

Grimly perverted and ironical is the sense of a word with otherwise positive connotations, when Guðrún, about to kill her two little sons by Atli, addresses them with the declaration that she has for a long time desired at lyfia ycr elli ‘to cure you of old age’ (Am 78).

A strong feeling of joy, especially if it may not be expected, as when a dangerous adversary threatens, can be conveyed by the word hugr ‘heart.’ When Thórr, in the humiliating situation where he has to masquerade as a giant's bride, realizes that he will presently get back his formidable hammer, we hear: hló Hlórriða hugr í briósti ‘the heart laughed in Hlórriði's breast’ (Þrk 31). The same phrase is applied to King Atli (Gðr III 10).

If in Voolospá the World Tree is depicted as a living creature by the epithet heiðvanr (cf. p. 52 above), we are told in Grímnismál 35 with an animating metaphor that Yggdrasill drýgir erfiði ‘suffers hardships’ more than men know of.

When reference is made in Hávamál 76 to the fame that deyr aldregi, and to the judgment on a deceased man that aldri deyr (st. 77), the effect of the metaphor deyia is greatly enhanced by the repetitive use in this very context of the same word in its common meaning: Deyr fé, / deyia frændr (sts. 76, 77). The coupling of the ‘basic’ and the metaphorical senses of deyia, and the antithesis between the death of man and the eternity of his reputation, in combination with the compact diction of these stanzas, brings home the message admirably.

Related to birth and death respectively are two other metaphorical verb phrases. When Borgný, under the influence of Oddrún's potent magic songs (bitra galdra), succeeds in giving birth to a girl and a boy, we are told: Knátti mær oc moogr / moldveg sporna (Od [Oddrúnargrátr] 8) ‘a girl and a boy set foot on the earthy path,’ that is, appeared on earth, entered this life. In the quarrel between Atli and Guðrún, where they are mutually alluding to the other partner's death, Guðrún boasts that by a fríðra dauða ‘a finer way of death’ she will fara í liós annat ‘pass into another light’ (Am 87). This phrase has been taken to indicate influence of Christianity.⁵ If that is correct, we seem to have here the only case in Eddic poetry where an element of imagery reveals a Christian impact on its diction.

Sometimes a single noun is used metaphorically; then the relation between the vehicle and its tenor is in most cases quite transparent. Thus, in telling his ominous dreams to Guðrún Atli begins three successive stanzas by referring to the killing of their two sons: Hugða ec hér í túni / teina fallna ‘I thought of plants drooping here in the garden’ (Gðr II 40); Hugða ec mér af hendi / hauca fliúga ‘I thought of hawks flying from my hands’ (st. 41); Hugða ec mér af hendi / hvelpa losna ‘I thought of young dogs escaping my hand’ (st. 42). However, these basic noun images for the boys—teinar, haucar, hvelpar—are expanded by other metaphorical elements related to the vehicles: Atli sees the plants rifnir með rótum ‘plucked out by the roots,’ the hawks fliúga / bráða lausa ‘fly without prey (food),’ and the whelps glaums andvana, / gylli báðir ‘both of them howled deprived of their noisy joy’ (?).

The wolf is seen as a suitable equivalent for a dangerous man. In Sigrdrífomál we meet the curious word vargdropi ‘wolf's drop, son of an outlaw’; it seems to have become a kind of official term, as it appears in the old code of laws Grágás.⁶ In the Eddic poem the valkyrie warns Sigurðr never to trust such a vargdropi, whose son or father he has killed, for úlfr er í ungom syni ‘there is a wolf in the young son’ (st. 35). Perhaps in this case the strange word itself has inspired this statement. When Brynhildr incites her husband Gunnarr to kill Sigurðr, she does not forget Sigurðr's three-year-old son:

Látom son fara feðr í sinni!
scalat úlf ala ungan lengi;

(Sg 12)

The son shall fare with his father hence,
and let not long the wolf-cub live.

Helgi, who has visited his enemy King Hundingr in disguise, explains to a shepherd when leaving that they have had úlf grán ‘a grey wolf’ (HH II 1) among them. Reginn welcomes Sigurðr gladly because the young man has much courage and there is fangs vón / at frecom úlfi ‘hope of battle (or rather: prey?) from the greedy wolf’ (Rm [Reginsmál] 13). Reginn is probably referring to his foster-son Sigurðr's future killing of the dragon Fáfnir, and hoping for a share of the monster's tremendous gold treasure.

Young Helgi, growing up with his friends, is spoken of as álmr ítrborinn ‘elm of noble descent’ (HH I 9). As is well known, some kind of tree-name very often forms the basis of a kenning for a man; but in a kenning this word has to be qualified by some other noun, that is, álmr skialda ‘elm of shields.’⁷ The difference may seem to be very slight, and of purely formal character. Still, we are probably right in considering kennings a special class of imagery.

Descriptions of men in Eddic poetry not infrequently focus on their eyes, especially to denote strong emotions. To the giant Thrymr, longing to kiss his bride Freyia (i.e., the disguised Thórr who is extremely uneasy about his situation) a deterrent eldr ‘fire’ (Þrk 27) seems to burn from her eyes. Brynhildr's terrible excitement when she sees Sigurðr lying dead of his wounds is also indicated by eldr úr augom (Gðr I 27). When Voolundr has been taken by surprise and fettered, his eyes are compared to ormi þeim inom frána ‘the gleaming snake’ (Vkv 17).

Just as fire can be used as an image for strong emotions in Eddic poetry, so also can coldness. An interesting and somewhat ambiguous example is the description of Brynhildr when she is seized by an unbearable jealousy at the thought of her rival Guðrún with Sigurðr:

Opt gengr hon innan, illz um fyld,
ísa oc ioocla, aptan hvern,
er þau Guðrún ganga á beð
oc hana Sigurðr sveipr í ripti.

(Sg 8)

Oft did she go with grieving heart
on the glacier's ice at even-tide,
when Guthrun then to her bed was gone,
and the bedclothes Sigurth about her laid.

The interpretation of this passage depends in some degree on how the first part of the stanza is understood syntactically. Is the phrase ísa oc ioocla to be seen as connected with fylld, and hence as a kind of apposition to ills? Or is it to be combined instead with gengr? In his translation Bellows apparently has chosen the latter alternative and read gengr ísa oc ioocla. Lexicon Poeticum (íss) explicitly prefers this explanation and rejects the other: “ganga ísa, gå over, færdes på islagte strækninger, Sigsk 8 (her er ísa sikkert acc. pl. og ikke gen. styret af fyld, om Brynhild, hvilket er meningsløst)” (cf. under jookull: “ganga ísa ok Jookla Sigsk 8”). Ólafur Briem comments on the passage in the same way: “some commentators think that ísa ok jookla is in apposition to ills and means coldness of the mind. But according to Icelandic feeling for the language it seems unthinkable to me that gengr does not refer to ísa ok jookla.”⁸ However, Einar Ól. Sveinsson interprets the words ísa ok ioocla as “imagery, a closer description of Brynhildr's violent jealousy;” this would also be in accord with the diction of the poem, which is sometimes “tinged with baroque language.”⁹ Sveinsson does not expressly deal with the syntactical aspects of the passage, but his interpretation seems to imply the reading ills um fylld, / ísa ok ioocla. If he is right—and I think he may well be—we have here a rather drastic image for human emotions. But even if we prefer the more ‘realistic’ combination ganga ísa oc ioocla, Brynhildr's evening promenade has probably been intended by the poet to correspond to her state of mind—though in a more discreet and oblique manner.

Some noun metaphors refer to various human activities. When Guðrún kills her husband Atli in his bed, the deed is commented upon by a grim understatement:

opt var sá leicr betri, þá er þau lint scyldo
optarr um faðmaz fyr ooðlingom.

(Akv 40)

Oft their play was better when both in gladness
each other embraced among princes all.

Ursula Dronke says of this passage: “sá leikr: there is an ironic play on the connotations of the word: ‘love-sport’ (which Guðrún should have offered her husband), and ‘cruel trick’ (which she does offer him).”¹⁰

When Brynhildr addresses Gunnarr just before her death, she uses a colloquial metaphorical phrase from the sphere of navigation to warn him that everything will not run smoothly for him after her death:

muna yðvart far alt í sundi,
þótt ec hafa oondo látið.

(Sg 53)

The ship in harbor home thou hast not,
although my life I now have lost.

Literally í (á) sundi means ‘afloat’: Sigurðr's ship is still not afloat, that is, troubles are waiting for him.

Speaking to Brynhildr, and referring to her fatal influence, a woman says: recr þic alda hver / illrar scepno ‘you are driven by every wave of ill fate’ (Gðr I 24). This seems to be the only occurrence of the word alda in the Poetic Edda.

The mythological poem Alvíssmál affords a special kind of noun metaphor. The frame of the poem presents Ása-Thórr interrogating the dwarf Alvíss ‘He Who Knows All.’ The questions concern various names for twelve different natural phenomena, and in addition, for ale—possibly because of its connections with social and religious rites, or its mythological connotations. In every other stanza the dwarf answers with a list of six expressions used, respectively, by men, gods, giants, dwarfs, and other creatures.¹¹ There have been diverging opinions as to the ‘authenticity’ of these expressions. Do they testify to archaic ideas concerning actually existent, perhaps more or less secret, separate languages within the ordinary language? Or are they rather to be seen as a unique and entertaining exercise in linguistic creativity and playfulness by an individual poet? Arguments for the latter alternative seem to carry most weight.¹² Some of the poetic expressions are regular kennings and will be dealt with below (p. 61). Others, however, are ‘simple’ noun metaphors, sometimes with a qualifying adjective. The sky may be seen as (part of) a kind of residence: fagraræfr ‘fair roof’ (elves) or driúpr salr ‘dripping hall’ (dwarfs), presumably with a reference to rain or dew. A basic metaphor for moon and sun is hvél ‘wheel’: in hell (helio í) they call the moon hverfanda hvél ‘rolling wheel’ (st. 14); the elves name the sun fagrahvél ‘fair wheel’ (st. 16). The wind is animated and characterized by its unsteadiness: váfuðr ‘waverer’ (gods); but mostly by its noise: gneggiuðr ‘neigher’ (ginnregin ‘superior forces’), œpir ‘wailer’ (giants), dynfari ‘roaring traveler’ (elves), hviðuðr ‘the squally one’ (í helio) (st. 20). The dangerous quality of fire is indicated by the metaphor hrooðuðr ‘the swift one’ (helio í) (st. 26). A word among others for night is gríma ‘hood’ (ginnregin) (st. 30), probably because the light of the day is considered to be hidden by the darkness. Characteristically, all these metaphors are marked, more or less, by a mythological, or semi-mythological aspect of the surrounding nature.

V

We now turn to the kind of imagery which is regarded as most typical of Old Norse poetry, that is, the kennings. To define the exact character of the kenning as distinct from other kinds of metaphorical expression is not easy. But one important demarcating feature may be illustrated by an example. A word for ‘sun,’ just cited from Alvíssmál, is fagrahvél. When this word is considered without its context, that is, without its obvious applicability to the sun, one cannot guess its metaphorical sense; it merely denotes a ‘fair wheel’ of some kind. In the expression himins hvél ‘wheel of the heaven, sun,’ on the other hand, the genitive qualifies and restricts the reference of the basic word hvél.¹³ We are dealing here with a kenning, a metaphor complete in itself, so to speak. This does not mean, of course, that a kenning is always univocal. Thus, for instance, even such a simple kenning as himins hvél could, read out of its context, perhaps also be taken to refer to the moon. The kennings often presuppose a certain familiarity on the part of the listener or reader with the whole system and its basic principles. However, the criterion presented above for distinquishing between a regular kenning such as himins hvél and a noun metaphor such as fagrahvél seems to be essential, and indeed not only from a formal point of view. The ‘independent’ or ‘detached’ state of kennings as metaphorical expressions allows them to be handled as a kind of ready-made element in various contexts, often more or less mechanically, with only slight variations of the pattern. This is also the reason why they sometimes appear as strangely inappropriate in their context—at least to a modern audience. It should be noted here that the kennings of the Poetic Edda completely lack the amazing exaggerations which may be found in skaldic poetry, where they are perhaps conditioned to some extent by the difficult dróttkvætt metre with its distorted syntax. We meet no instances of equilibristic performance, where a kenning may be elaborated by ‘dissolving’ the basic qualifying noun into a series of further kennings. Eddic diction limits itself in the main to kennings with two elements—two nouns which very often combine to form a compound. For example, the sword may be named rógþorn ‘thorn of strife’ instead of rógs þorn.

I wish to emphasize once again my intention to leave aside here all instances lacking a metaphorical relation between the elements of the expression, or to the concepts to which they refer. Thus a great many instances traditionally labelled kennings fall outside the limits of this discussion. To the latter class belong many conventional circumlocutions for persons: baugbroti ‘breaker of rings, open-handed man, prince’ (HH I 17), gulls miðlandi ‘distributor of gold, prince’ (Aky 37), hergloootuðr ‘destroyer of armies, warrior, hero’ (Br [Brot af Sigurðarqviða] 13), spillir bauga ‘breaker (and giver) of rings’ (Fm 32), sverða deilir ‘distributor of swords, chieftain, prince, (Akv 36). Such expressions describe the function of the persons in question directly—in a heightened tone, to be sure, but without implying any elements of imagery.

Within the above-mentioned limits one observes a remarkable difference between mythological and heroic poetry. With the exception of two poems, the mythological section of the Edda makes very restricted use of kennings. On the other hand, kennings occur rather frequently in the heroic lays. Thus, in the 611 stanzas of mythological poetry we find some twenty-six examples, or roughly one every twenty-fifth stanza; in the 771 stanzas of heroic poetry there are some 113 instances, or roughly one every seventh stanza. Of course these figures are approximate, as it is difficult in some cases to decide whether or not a particular expression should be classified as a kenning (in the sense in which the term is being used here). The kennings are also very unevenly distributed among the individual poems in the two principal sections. Thus, among the mythological poems, Hymisqviða has by far the highest frequency, with twelve examples (out of a total of twenty-six), or approximately one every third stanza—which is more than twice as many as the average for the heroic poetry. This is only slightly less than in the heroic poem revealing the highest kenning frequency: Helgaqviða Hundingsbana I with its fifty-six stanzas shows some twenty-two cases.

Almost half of the mythological poems have no metaphorical kennings at all: Vafðrúðnismál, Scírnismál, Hárbarðzlióð, Þrymsqviða. Locasenna provides us with a single instance; Ása-Thórr threatens Loci with his hammer: herðaklett / drep ec þér hálsi af ‘thy shoulder-cliff / shall I cleave from thy neck’ (st. 57). In Grímnismál, too, we find a single instance in the mythological personification heiðr brúðr himins ‘radiant bride of heaven,’ for ‘sun’ (st. 39). The remaining kennings are found principally in two poems, Alvíssmál and Hymisqviða, with Voolospá and Hávamál contributing a few instances.

In the fanciful vocabulary of Alvíssmál (cf. p. 58-59 above) we meet some kennings implying an animating of natural phenomena. In the tongue of the dwarfs the sun is Dvalins leici (or leica), a mythological kenning which has been interpreted as ‘deceiver (or playmate) of Dvalinn’ (st. 16). Dvalinn is the name of a dwarf; perhaps this is an allusion to the well-known notion that dwarfs and giants turn into stone if they are surprised by the sunrise. This is in fact what happened to Alvíss in the end. The vanir call the heaven vindofnir ‘weaver of the winds’ (st. 12), and in hell (í helio) they name the clouds hiálmr huliz ‘helmet of disguise’ (st. 18) because they hide the view. In the language of the elves the calm is dagsefi ‘he who calms the day’ (st. 22). To the dwarfs the night appears as draumnioorun ‘goddess of dreams’ (st. 30; Nioorun is the name of a goddess). Of a more profane and typically skaldic character, so to speak, are the following kennings: the sea is álheimr ‘world of the eels’ (st. 24), the wood is hlíðþang ‘seaweed of the hills’ or vallar fax ‘mane of the field (st. 28) and the clouds are vindflot ‘something sailing in the wind’ (st. 18).

In Voolospá the kennings are used sparingly, and they appear there not so much for their own sake, but are integrated into the total vision of the poem. Thus the chaotic conditions anticipating the end of the world are characterized by the expressive word vargoold ‘time of wolves’ (st. 45). This may be understood quite literally as referring to a time when wolves have taken over and raid a world in dissolution. But it probably has a more metaphorical meaning, referring to a world dominated by all kinds of evil forces. It is introduced as the climax of a whole series of compounds with oold, all of them with highly negative connotations:

skeggoold, scálmoold, skildir ro klofnir,
vindoold, vargoold, áðr veroold steypiz.
Axe-time, sword-time, shields are sundered,
wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls.

in fact, vargoold is not a regular kenning, as its basic element, oold, has its normal sense without any metaphorical implications. These are instead transferred to the qualifying noun vargr.

As an element of destruction, fire plays an eminent role in Voolospá. We encounter it in the form of a mythological kenning as Surtar sefi ‘Surtr's relative’ (st. 47). Surtr is a giant, ruler of the southern world of fire, and one of the main adversaries of the gods in the decisive battle. Later on we hear of him coming from the south með sviga lævi ‘with the scourge of branches’ (st. 52). This is one of numerous kennings for fire based on the idea of its harmfulness to tree and wood, and its power to destroy them: birkis ótti ‘horror of the birch,’ ýs angr ‘sorrow of the yew-tree’ (cf. Fáfnismál: lindar vaði ‘the ruin of the linden’ [st. 43]).¹⁴ In most cases such kennings have no special contextual motivation; they are introduced as conventional phrases, with only slight variation. But in Voolospá sviga læ seems to be closely related to the main theme of the poem. In another paper I have argued that in the very culmination of the destruction of the world we have a grandiose picture of the World Tree, the ash Yggdrasill, being devoured by fire:

Geisar eimi við aldrnara,
leicr hár hiti við himin siálfan.
Fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame,
till fire leaps high about heaven itself.

(Bellows' translation [st. 57] is based on the reading oc aldrnari, which appears in some manuscripts and has been adopted by many editors and commentators; I retain the text of Codex Regius: við aldrnara). The kenning aldrnari ‘nourisher of life’ has usually been taken to denote fire. Thus Meissner, referring to a passage in Hávamál (Eldr er beztr / með ýta sonum) speaks of “die schöne und für den Norden characteristische (Háv 68) Kenning aldrnari.”¹⁵ With this interpretation (Bellows: ‘life-feeding flame’), one would read st. 57: ‘Fire (steam) rages with (against) fire.’ But quite apart from the fact that kennings for fire with positive connotations seem to be extremely rare—“Die Bestimmung der Kenning enthält in den meisten Fällen etwas, das durch das Feuer feindlich erfaßt, angegriffen, beschädigt, verzehrt, vernichtet wird”¹⁶—it would be inappropriate to see the fire as ‘nourisher of life’ at the very moment when it swallows the world. Thus I propose to let aldrnari refer to the ash Yggdrasill, which can rightly be said to be the nourisher of the existing world. In fact, it stands as a symbol of life. Moreover, in st. 47 there is a direct statement that the fire will devour the ash-tree. The stanza begins with a picture of the tree and its agony (scelfr Yggdrasils / ascr standandi, / ymr iþ aldna tré ‘the ash Yggdrasill trembles where it stands, the old tree moans’) and ends with the words: aðr Surtar þann (the ash-tree) / sefi of gleypir ‘before Surtr's relative swallows it.’ I thus interpret the words geisar eimi / við aldrnara as the fire raging against the huge world tree, swallowing it and thereby bringing about the end of the world. With this interpretation of aldrnari the kenning sviga lævi would also be integrated into a wider pattern of destruction.¹⁷

In the concluding part of Voolospá, beginning with stanza 59 where the new world is rising out of the sea, we also meet a kenning for the vault of heaven. In an obscure passage reference is made to gods inhabiting vindheim víðan ‘the wide world of the winds’ (st. 63). This kenning too has many counterparts in Old Norse poetry; the sky is very often seen as the site of winds.¹⁸ In Voolospá, however, the metaphor vindheimr seems especially well suited to the wide vista which the poem creates, its all-embracing view over the world.

The kennings in Voolospá just discussed are never confined to details, but always refer to the central eschatological theme and its development. The kennings of Hymisqviða have a completely different character, more in the vein of typical skaldic poetry. In this poem about Ása-Thórr's visit to the giant Hymir we encounter a rather burlesque adventure. The kennings do not refer to elements of earth and heaven, but to the narrative itself in a rather narrow sense. Some of them seem to emphasize the grotesque dimensions of the giants' world, not without a touch of humor. Thus, when Hymir comes back from his hunting we hear that glumðo iooclar ‘icicles rattled’ because var karls, er kom, / kinnscógr frørinn ‘the fellow's chin-forest was frozen, as he came in’ (st. 10). This is the only kenning for a beard listed by Meissner, so there are no comparisons possible.¹⁹ But one must admit that the ‘forest’ creates a suggestion of gigantic dimensions. And when Thórr slaughters one of Hymir's bulls for their evening meal by tearing off its head, the latter is described as hátún horna tveggia ‘the highland of double horns’ (st. 19)—again we have an impression of supernatural size.

Another drastic kenning for head refers to the Midgard Serpent. Thórr, using the bull's head as bait (!), has caught the monster on his hook and bangs his hammer on its háfiall scarar ‘the (high) mountain of the hair (of the head)’ (st. 23). The word scoor is a conventional part of kennings for the head; Meissner lists, for example, scarar haugr ‘hill of the hair (of the head).’²⁰ In connection with the Midgard Serpent, however, the reference to hair may appear inappropriate, as the latter seems most suited to human beings. On the other hand, however, we do not know how men—or this individual poet—imagined the shape of such a monstrous mythical ‘snake’—it is also referred to as fiscr (st. 24); perhaps with some kind of mane?

On the whole, the concept ‘head’ has an important place in the poem. Thus Thórr is incited by Hymir to demonstrate his strength by breaking a certain chalice. However, he does not succeed in his efforts until he gets the advice:

Drep við haus Hymis! hann er harðari,
kostmóðs iootuns, kálki hveriom.

(st. 30)

Smite the skull of Hymir, heavy with food,
for harder it is than ever was glass.

Then at last the chalice breaks, but heill var karli / hiálmstofn ofan ‘whole was the fellow's / helmet-stem’ (st. 31)—with another stock kenning for the head, better suited, it seems, to a warrior of heroic poetry than to a giant.

The adventurous fishing trip is a central part of Hymisqviða, and it is also reflected in its kennings. Just before the two set out on their expedition Hymir refers to himself as kióla valdr ‘steerer of ships’ (st. 19)—a kenning of the paraphrastic kind, employing no metaphorical elements. Then again and again their vessel is described in kennings of a type well-known from skaldic-heroic poetry: hlunngoti ‘stallion of the rollers’ (by which the ship is pulled forward on land) (st. 20), flotbrúsi ‘swimming buck’ (st. 26), looogfácr ‘waterhorse’ (st. 27).

In the last-mentioned stanza there is another kenning, brimsvín ‘swine of the surf,’ which has also been taken by many scholars to refer to the boat. In itself the word might well have that meaning, but the actual context seems to present a more plausible alternative. In the preceding stanza, where the two have landed after their fishing trip, Hymir exhorts Thórr to share the remaining tasks with him and either carry home the two whales which he (Hymir) has caught, or secure the vessel. Then, in stanza 27, we hear how Thórr catches hold of the boat by the stem and pulls it ashore unassisted; then:

einn með árom oc með austscoto
bar hann til bœiar brimsvín iootuns.
Oars and bailer and all he bore
with the surf-swine to the giant's house.

Thus, in a display of strength, Thórr does the whole job, not just half of it. But it is highly improbable that he should carry the ship itself all the way to the house. There is a special reference to oars and bailer; it would be natural for them to be taken home and the vessel left on the shore. The giant's brimsvín surely refers to the whales, his catch. Bellows expressly prefers that interpretation. To Konstantin Reichardt it is “die einzig mögliche.”²¹

The associations with the sea and the adventures on the fishing trip linger on when the kettle which the gods borrow from Hymir is referred to by the giant as oolkióll ‘ale-ship’ (st. 33), and the giants killed by Thórr on his way back to the gods are seen as hraunhvalir ‘stone-whales’ (st. 36), that is, whales inhabiting the mountains.

One wonders whether some kennings in Hymisqviða, elsewhere typical of poems depicting heroic viking life (hiálmstofn, hlunngoti, loogfácr), may not have been introduced here in a vein of parody. In any case, such an intention would not contradict the overall character of this poem.

VI

In the heroic poems of the Edda the kennings not only occur much more frequently than in the mythological poems (cf. p. 60-61 above), but on the whole are also of a more conventional type characteristic of the usage in skaldic dróttkvætt stanzas. As for their tenor, we are here concerned with elements of an aristocratic and heroic human society: prince, warriors, ladies, gold, viking ship, battle, sword, wound, blood, ravens and wolves—all in association with the battlefield.

The kennings for man or warrior are distributed over certain types of connection between tenor and vehicle, all of them well-known from skaldic poetry. Sometimes the man is associated with a god or other mythical figure: geir-Mímir ‘Mímir of the spear’ (HH I 14), geir-Nioorðr ‘Nioorðr of the spear’ (Ghv 8), her-Baldr ‘Baldr of the army’ (Sg 18). The purpose of such kennings, although with continuous usage they have become completely habitual, is of course to heighten the diction and to enoble men by relating them to higher powers.

Usually, however, the vehicle is the concept ‘tree,’ either as a general category or as a specific species: boorr skialdar ‘tree of shield’ (Am 30), dólgviðr ‘tree of battle’ (Sd [Sigrdrifomál] 29), hildimeiðr ‘tree of battle’ (Fm 36), hrottameiðr ‘tree of the sword’ (Rm 20; Hrotti is taken to be the name of a sword), brynþings apaldr ‘apple-tree of the meeting of coats of mail’ (Sd 5; a combination of two kennings since brynþing ‘battle’ is itself a kenning), rógapaldr ‘apple-tree of battle’ (HHv [Helgaqviða Hiqrvarðzsonar] 6), vápna hlynr ‘maple-tree of the weapons’ (Sd 20). To this category also belong some kennings for men with stafr ‘staff’ as their basic element: auðstafr ‘staff of wealth’ (Sd 31), hiálmstafr ‘staff of the helmet’ (Rm 22). The frequency of the concept ‘tree’ with reference to man testifies to its central place and positive connotations in the imagination of Old Norse poets.

When a warrior is called varga vinr ‘friend of the wolves’ (HH I 6), we should probably regard this kenning not as an indication of his character, but rather as an allusion to wolves raiding the battlefield for the men he has killed.

The heart and the chest as the site of life and courage have great prominence in the world of heroic poetry. Helgi Hundingsbani is said to have hart móðacarn ‘a hard acorn of mind’ (HH I 53), that is, heart. The comparison of the heart with an acorn is frequent in Old Norse poetry and reflects the notion that a hero was supposed to have a small and very solid heart.²² In Fáfnismál Sigurðr, after having killed the dragon, roasts its heart in order to eat that fioorsegi ‘life-muscle’ (st. 32) and thus acquire its power. Guðrún contemplates her husband Sigurðr's hugborg ‘castle of courage, breast’ (Gðr I 14) pierced by the sword.

A unique kenning appears in Atlamál, which is the more striking as this kind of imagery is extremely rare in that poem. Gunnarr in the snake pit is said to play the harp with his ilqvistir ‘twigs of the sole of the foot, toes’ (st. 66). In the corresponding passage in Atlaqviða (st. 31) he plays the harp with his hands.

The kennings for women combine in a conventional manner the name of a goddess or valkyrie with a word for gold, silver or jewelry—closely corresponding to the kennings for men, with their usual fusion of a god's name with a word for battle or weapon. Atli's sister Oddrún refers to herself as linnvengis Bil ‘Bil of gold’ (Od 33; Bil is a goddess); this is a twofold kenning inasmuch as linnvengi ‘land of the serpent (dragon)’ is itself a circumlocution for ‘gold,’ based on the idea of the dragon Fáfnir lying outstretched over his huge gold treasure. Brynhildr, in her own words, appears as men-Scoogul ‘Scoogul of jewelry’ (Sg 40; Scoogul is a valkyrie). On her way to the realm of the dead she is addressed by a giantess as Vár gulls ‘Vár of gold’ (Hlr [Helreið Brynhildar] 2; Vár is a goddess). Instead of precious metals some other part of an aristocratic woman's garment may enter the kenning, for example, hoor-Gefn ‘Gefn of flax (linen)’ (Fm 43; Gefn is a goddess). Or, as in the case of men, the basic element of the kenning may be a word for wood or tree: moorc menia ‘tree of necklaces’ (Sg 46).

As for the gold, which plays so important and disastrous a part in Eddic heroic poetry, the kennings involving this idea are all related to the origin and fate of the famous treasure of the Niflungs. We have already met with gold as linnvengi. The same associations appear in ormbeð ‘bed of the serpent,’ expanded into eldr ormbeðs ‘fire (glitter) of gold’ (Gðr I 26). Other kennings refer to the treasure as having been buried and lost in the river Rhine: for example, it appears as Rínar málmr ‘metal of the Rhine’ (Sg 16). Instead of the Rhine, some other body of water may be used: lindar logi ‘flame of the creek (well)’ (Rm 1) or Ógnar liómi ‘brilliance of the Ógn’ (HH I 21; Fm 42; Ógn is the name of a river). When Gunnarr speaks of the gold as rógmálmr scatna ‘men's metal of strife’ (Akv 27), he refers, of course, to the feuds and killings to which it has given rise. These kennings for gold as a fatal object form a kind of leitmotif through the heroic poetry of the Edda beginning with Sigurðr's killing of the dragon and capturing of its treasure.

The realm providing most kennings in the heroic lays is that of battle and war. Battle itself is seen as a social assembly qualified by some word for weapons or armor: brynþing ‘assembly of coats of mail’ (Sd 5), hioorstefna (HH I 13) or hioorþing (HH I 50; Ghv 6) ‘session of swords.’ It is brimis dómr ‘court of the sword’ (HH II 22), or an eggleicr ‘game of edges’ (Gðr II 31). Very often the basic word implies a reference to noise or stormy weather; Helgaqviða Hundingsbana I in particular excels in this kind of kenning, which is usually more periphrastic than really metaphorical: dólga dynr ‘noise of battle’ (HH I 20), geira gnýr ‘noise of spears’ (HH I 54), randa rymr ‘crash of shields’ (HH I 17), þrymr álma ‘din of the bows’ (HH I 16), naddél ‘storm of spears’ (Grp 23), veðr grárra geira ‘storm of grey spears’ (HH I 12).

The weapon dominating the battlefield is the sword. It is a benlogi ‘wound-flame’ (HH I 51), a benvoondr ‘wound-staff’ (Br 19), and a rógþorn ‘thorn of strife’ (Akv 29). In the last-mentioned passage (Atli inn ríki / … / sleginn rógþornom) the word rógþorn has also been understood as ‘thorn-tree of strife,’ that is, ‘warrior’ (Atli surrounded by his men). Either interpretation gives very much the same sense, but the former one seems preferable, as the kenning rógs þorn is to be found elsewhere in Old Norse poetry with the meaning ‘sword.’²³ The sword may also be referred to in animating or personifying kennings. It is seen, in the form of a semi-mythological paraphrase, as Fáfnis bani ‘Fáfnir's killer’ (Grp [Grípisspá] 15), and as a blóðormr ‘blood-snake’ (HH I 8). In the latter case the constellation blóðormr búinn is a conspicuous example of how conventionalized such a kenning had become. The epithet búinn ‘decorated’ (e.g., with gold or silver) suits a sword but definitely not a snake; the snake as such seems hardly to have been ‘realized.’ But doubtless swords were often thought of as endowed with a secret, almost supernatural power of their own. This is illustrated very well in Eddic heroic poetry when a valkyrie describes to Helgi Hioorvarðzson an especially splendid sword:

Hringr er i hialti, hugr i miðio,
ógn er í oddi þeim er eiga getr;
illgr með eggio ormr drerfáðr,
enn á valboosto verpr naðr hala.

(HHy 9)

In the hilt is fame [?], in the haft is courage,
in the point is fear for its owner's foes;
on the blade there lies a blood-flecked snake,
and a serpent's tail round the flat is twisted.

Here we have typical references to courage (hugr) and horror (ógn) inhabit-Hvert [tár] fellr blóðuct / á brióst grami. After all, we move here in a terrifying incarnation of hidden power, which suddenly strikes the victim with a deadly sting. These words, spoken by a valkyrie, give one the impression that the idea of the sword was imbued with myth and magic.

Wounds are referred to as dólgspor ‘traces of battle’ (HH II 42), in the phrase dólgspor dreyra ‘battle-traces bleed.’ Blood itself appears as a substance related to wounds, swords, the battlefield and fallen men: hiorlooogr ‘liquid of the sword’ (Fm 14), sárdropi ‘drop of the wound’ (HH II 42), valdoogg ‘dew of the battlefield’ (HH II 44). The word harmdoogg ‘dew of sorrow’ in the following stanza has been taken to refer to tears. One evening Sigrún goes into the grave-mound where her fallen lover Helgi has been buried. He reappears there from the realm of the dead and addresses her:

Ein veldr þú, Sigrún frá Sefafioollum,
er Helgi er harmdoogg sleginn;
Grætr þú, gullvarið, grimmom tárom,
sólbioort, suðrœn, áðr þú sofa gangir.
Hvert fellr blóðuct á brióst grami,
úrsvalt, innfiálgt, ecca þrungit.

(HH II 45)

Thou alone, Sigrun of Sefafjoll,
art cause that Helgi with dew is heavy.
Gold-decked maid, thy tears are grievous,
(sun-bright south-maid, ere thou sleepest).
Each falls like blood on the hero's breast,
(burned-out, cold, and crushed with care).

The harmdoogg covering Helgi seems to correspond closely to Sigrún's tears falling on his breast. On the other hand, harmdoogg repeats in a parallel syntactic pattern the word valdoogg from the preceding stanza where it is associated with Helgi's death and his blóðugri brynio ‘bloody coat of mail’ and clearly indicates blood:

allr er vísi valdoogg sleginn

(st. 44)

er Helgi er harmdoogg sleginn

(st. 45).

A possible solution, a harmonization of the two meanings, may be that Sigrún's tears are thought of as being transformed into blood when they drip onto Helgi's body. This is indeed suggested by the words in stanza 45: Hvert [tár] fellr blóðuct / á brióst grami. After all, we move here in a mythical or semi-mythical sphere.

Wolves and ravens, animals closely connected with the battlefield, both of them feeding on fallen men, are given mythical dimensions when they appear in kennings. The wolves are grey norna ‘hounds of the norns’ (Hm [Hamðismál] 29), Viðris grey ‘Viðrir's (i.e. Óðinn's) hounds’ (HH I 13), gránstóð Gríðar ‘Gríðr's gray horses’ (HH II 25; Gríðr is the name of a giantess), or hrœgífr ‘corpse-trolls’ (Gðr II 29). The raven appears as Óðins haucr ‘Óðinn's hawk’ (HH II 43)—the god's own famous ravens, Huginn and Muninn, are not meant here—and as gagl Gunnar systra ‘goose of Gunnr's sisters’ (HH II 7; Gunnr is name of a valkyrie).

The last-mentioned kenning is integrated into a verb phrase: Sigrún asks Helgi whether he has googl alin / Gunnar systra ‘fed the geese of Gunnr's sisters,’ that is, killed men in battle. Verbal metaphors for killing, very much akin to the noun kennings in that they imply the same concepts, are gleðia Hugin ‘give pleasure to Huginn’ (Rm 18, 26; Fm 26; here Huginn of course stands for ravens in general), gleðia oorno ‘give pleasure to eagles’ (HH I 45; the eagles compete with the ravens as birds of the battlefield), seðia hrafna ‘feed ravens’ (HH I 44), or seðia oorno and seðia œtt ara ‘feed eagles (the race of eagles)’ (HH I 35; HH II 8). The warriors fallen on the battleground are Hugins barr ‘Huginn's barley,’ that is, the raven's food (HH I 54).

As an instrument of death the gallows plays an important part in the Old Norse imagination; it is an object of horror and fascination. On their way to King Iormunrecr to take revenge on him, the brothers Hamðir and Soorli pass the place where the king has had his own son Randvér hanged. As we know from the prose introduction to Guðrúnarhvoot, Randvér had been accused of having a love-affair with his father's wife Svanhildr, Hamðir's and Soorli's half-sister, daughter of Guðrún and Sigurðr. The King had Svanhildr trampled to death by horses, and Randvér, as already noted, was hanged. In Hamðismál the gallows on which the brothers find their sister's son (systor sonr) is referred to as vargtré vindkoold ‘wind-cold wolf-tree’ (st. 17), where the adjective, of course, indicates the gloomy surroundings, as does the word vástígar ‘paths of misery’ in the same stanza. In the kenning vargtré the element vargr is taken to mean ‘criminal, felon.’ But, as Ursula Dronke aptly remarks, for a Norse audience “vargtré would certainly arouse associations with vargr = ‘wolf.’. … The custom of hanging a wolf, or (as a substitute for a wolf) a dog, beside a criminal on the gallows may have strengthened the wolfish associations of vargtré.”²⁴ In this same context we find the rather obscure expression troono hvoot ‘crane's incitement.’ I believe that Ursula Dronke may well be right in seeing this phrase as a kenning for the corpse on the gallows, “the dead body which excites the appetite and attack of birds.” The crane, to be sure, “is not a carrion bird, nor is trana commonly used as a heiti for ‘bird’ in general; elsewhere, to denote ‘raven,’ it is qualified by hjaldrs or blóð.” But in “the context of the gallows,” she asserts, “no audience would mistake the implication of trana.”²⁵

The sea as a basic element of viking life is abundantly represented in the kennings of Eddic heroic poetry. The sea itself is seen mythologically when the waves are referred to as Kólgo systir (HH I 28) and Ægis dóttir (HH I 29), where Ægir, is, of course, the god of the sea, and Kólga the wave personified. These two expressions, with their slight variation of a basic idea, are good examples of how stereotyped the coining of kennings for common concepts could be. In their context, however, even such stock kennings appear as less static than they seem to be in themselves. We hear of how saman qvomo / Kólgo systir / oc kilir langir, with a noise as when bioorg eða brim / brotna mundi. In the expression saman qvomo ‘came together’ we have a kind of amplification of the kenning, implying a fight between the sea and the ‘long keels.’ Still more pronounced is the dynamics of the total image, where ógorlig / Ægis dóttir / stagstiórnmoorom / steypa vildi ‘the terrifying Ægir's daughter would overturn the steeds of the sea.’ After all, these kennings are not quite petrified or ‘self-sufficient’; they have been skilfully integrated into the contextual patterns.

The great majority of the kennings for the ship are divided between Helgaqviða I and Reginsmál. In the former poem the sea and the viking life play a dominant part. Ship kennings appear again and again, always based on a comparison with an animal. Sometimes it is an animal in general: giálfrdýr ‘animal of the surge’ (st. 30), brimdýr ‘animal of the breakers’ (st. 50). In the latter example—brimdýr blásvoort / oc búin gulli—the epithet búin gulli ‘adorned with gold,’ which hardly fits an animal, indicates that dýr in this connection has lost most of its basic sense and become a quite conventional poetic expression for a ship. On the other hand, when these brimdýr are said to liggia hér í grindom, the word grind ‘fold’ may possibly involve associations with cattle or sheep, and thus rather enhance the animating aspect of the kenning. In some cases the ship is seen as a special kind of animal, for example, stagstiórnmarr ‘horse steered by stays’ (st. 29). The word seems to imply a comparison between stays and reins, although a ship is certainly not ‘steered’ by its stays. But one should not expect a complete and logical analogy between tenor and vehicle in a kenning, no simple one-to-one correspondence between their elements. As for stagstiórnmoorum, alone filling a short-line in the stanza, it may have been invented and introduced with a view to the powerful alliteration with steypa in the following line. The sound pattern certainly has influenced the choice of many kenning variations, though it is hard to demonstrate in detail the mutual interrelations between sound and sense. In racca hirtir ‘mast-ring harts’ (st. 49), racci is the mast-ring by which the yard of a ship is tied to its mast. In this case racca hirtir aptly alliterates with rár langar ‘long yards’ in the next line.

In Reginsmál four of the five ship kennings animate the ship as a horse. This is the standard combination, and it seems quite appropriate under Old Norse cultural conditions: “dem Isländer ist das Pferd auf dem Lande ein ebenso unentbehrliches Bewegungsmittel wie das Schiff auf der See.”²⁶ The ship kennings of Reginsmál are all concentrated in stanzas 16 and 17, which describe Sigurðr's fleet in a storm. A man (in fact Óðinn) is watching the difficult sailing from a rock, and as the ships pass by he asks:

Hverir ríða þar Ræfils hestom
hávar unnir, haf glymianda?
seglvigg ero sveita stoccin,
munat vágmarar vind um standaz.

(Rm 16)

Who yonder rides on Raevil's steeds,
o'er towering waves and waters wild?
The sail-horses all with sweat are dripping,
nor can the sea-steeds the gale withstand.

We have here the kennings Ræfils hestar ‘Ræfill's horses,’ where Ræfill is the name of a sea king, seglvigg ‘sail-horses,’ and vágmarar ‘wave-horses.’ One can see how the contextual vocabulary has been adapted to the metaphorical element of the kennings: the men ríða Ræfill's horses, and their sail-horses are sveita stoccin ‘all in sweat,’ an epithet which may in its turn be seen as a metaphor for foam. The poet thus enlivens conventional kennings by letting them ‘infiltrate’ the surrounding text.

To Óðinn's question Reginn replies in st. 17:

Hér ero vér Sigurðr á sætriám,
er oss byrr gefinn við bana siálfan;
fellr brattr breki broondum hæri,
hlunnvigg hrapa; hverr spyrr at því?
On the sea-trees here are Sigurth and I,
the storm wind drives us on to our death;
the waves crush down on the forward deck,
and the roller-steeds sink. Who seeks our names?

The kenning sætré ‘sea-tree’ represents a large group, where as “Grundwort wird gewählt ein Ausdruck für Baum, Stock oder der Name eines bestimmten Baumes,”²⁷ probably with a reference to the mast. In the case of hlunnvigg ‘roller-steed’ (hlunn = log with the help of which a ship is dragged overland) one notes how the verb hrapa ‘fall, tumble (down)’ seems to be adapted to the expression brattr breki ‘steep, heavy sea.’ Possibly the adjective brattr has slightly metaphorical implications, indicating a comparison with a precipice. Elements of land and sea are thus interwoven with one another.

The great majority of the kennings in the heroic Eddic poems refer to man himself and his social life, including battle and warfare. But in some cases the tenor is an element of nature. The kennings for the waves in Helgaqviða I have already been mentioned. In the same poem the sky appears as mána salr ‘the moon's hall’ (st. 3), significantly enough in connection with the mythical Norns weaving the web of fate.

In Grípisspá, Grípir's prophecy of Sigurðr's future ends with the following climax, where the kenning sólar sioot ‘the dwelling place of the sun, heaven’ (sioot = plural of set) with its mythological connotations raises the diction to the level of pathos:

Munat mætri maðr á mold koma
und sólar sioot enn þú, Sigurðr, þyccir.

(Grp 52)

A nobler man shall never live
beneath the sun than Sigurth shall seem.

In Reginsmál Sigurðr gets the advice that when going to battle one should not face síð scínandi / systor mána ‘the moon's sister shining late, the sinking sun’ (st. 23), that is, one should turn not to the west but to the east. It is the disguised Óðinn himself who uses this mythological kenning.

The mysterious meeting between Sigrún and Helgi in his grave-mound ends when the morning comes, and Helgi declares that he will now have to ríða / roðnar brautir (ride the reddened paths) to reach fyr vestan / vindhiálms brúar, / áðr Salgofnir / sigrþióð veki ‘west of the bridge of the windhelm, before the cock Salgofnir awakes the victorious people,’ (st. 49), that is, the inhabitants of Valhooll. The kenning vindhiálmr denotes the sky, and its bridge is Bifroost, the rainbow. Thus this elevated imagery appears in a mythological context where the idea of life after death is evoked.

The supernatural fire surrounding Sigrdrífa's dwelling on the mountain in Fáfnismál is indicated by a conventional kenning: lindar váði ‘the lime-tree's harm’ (st. 43) (cf. a corresponding expression in Voolospá: sviga læ ‘scourge of branches,’ p. 62 above). When in Guðrúnarqviða II Guðrún describes the enchanted drink which her mother-in-law has given her, she uses kennings for some of the strange ingredients of the potion. It contains a lyngfiscr ‘heather-fish,’ which is a well-known kenning for ‘snake.’ We also hear of lands Haddingia / ax óskorit (st. 22), a rather obscure expression. The most satisfying explanation, however, seems to be that we have here a twofold kenning: land Haddingia means the sea (Haddingi, or possibly Haddingiar, is a name of sea-kings), and the ax ‘ear’ of the sea the seaweed.²⁸ If this interpretation is correct, the passage provides a sophisticated contrast and balance between the kennings: the snake, a creature of the earth, is here associated with the sea by means of the concept ‘fish,’ whereas the seaweed is associated with the earth by the concept ‘ear.’²⁹ Of course this does not necessarily imply that the contrast ‘fish of the heather’ and ‘ear of the sea’ was consciously calculated by the poet. In the following stanza (23) another ingredient of the drink is called umdoogg arins ‘dew surrounding the hearth,’ which seems to mean ‘(damp) soot and/or ashes.’ The constellation dew/soot—the cool, pure and transparent moisture of the open air against the hot, black and dirty waste from the hearth of the house—is a good example of what extremes may be compressed into a kenning, giving a shock to our experience of normal properties and relations of the world. Perhaps the kennings in these two stanzas of Guðrúnarqviða II are introduced in order to stress the mystery of the magic potion; on the horn in which the drink is presented to Guðrún there are hverskyns stafir / ristnir oc roðnir (runes of every kind, written and reddened).

In a few instances we meet kennings for concepts of abstract or intangible phenomena. Sigrún waiting at the grave-mound for Helgi to come from soolum Óðins ‘Óðinn's halls,’ talks of the evening as the time when drífr drótt ooll / draumþinga til ‘all men are seeking the assembly of dreams’ (HH II 50), that is, sleep. With the kenning draumþing the dreams of men become more or less animated by being seen in analogy with men gathering for a meeting. Another kenning or kenning-like expression for sleep appears in Sigrdrífomál, where the valkyrie tells Sigurðr that Óðinn has up until then prohibited her from waking from sleep; she has not been able to bregða blundstoofom ‘break the heavy spells of sleep,’ (st. 2). (Cf. stanza 1: Hví brá ec svefni?) More precisely blundstafir seems to mean runes by which enchanted sleep is enforced.

Where Atli dreams in Guðrúnarqviða II that hauca fliúga / bráðalausa / boolranna til, (st. 41), the hawks are a metaphor for his and Guðrún's sons (cf. p. 56 above), and boolrann ‘house of misery, evil house’ seems to be a kenning of death. (As we know, the boys will be killed by Guðrún).

VII

The imagery of the Poetic Edda is not confined to the metaphorical transfer of single words or expressions, or to regular kennings. There are other forms too, less condensed, and involving broader parallels and comparisons. They are abundantly represented in Hávamál.

Hávamál has a unique position within the mythological section of Codex Regius, since in its main gnomic parts it is hardly mythological at all. It preaches common sense, a wordly wisdom of how to accommodate oneself to one's fellow-creatures and to a rather tough existence in general. In this respect it has a real counterpart only in Sigrdrífomál (of the heroic section), where the valkyrie in the concluding stanzas (22-37) gives her protégé Sigurðr good advice—though sometimes a little trivial, quite in the manner of Hávamál.

The special character of this didactic poetry is reflected also in its imagery. Experiences of everyday contemporary life are illuminated by parallels more or less close at hand. Sometimes the difference between a basic, realistic meaning and a figurative sense may be small. Thus in stanza 34

Afhvarf mikit er til illz vinar,
                              þótt á brauto búi;
enn til góðs vinar liggia gagnvegir,
                                        þótt hann sé firr farinn.
Crooked and far is the road to a foe,
                              though his house on the highway be;
but wide and straight is the way to a friend,
                                        though far away he fare.

Afhvarf ‘roundabout way’ and gagnvegir ‘short cuts’ come near to describing a real situation in terms of local neighborhood, although it seems obvious that they should be understood here in a transferred sense, indicating the attitude to one's ‘good’ and ‘bad’ friends respectively. There is a similar reference to the ‘way’ between friends, only a little more detailed, in the section of the poem usually labelled Loddfáfnismál. We are advised to visit a good friend frequently, þvíat hrísi vex / oc hávo grasi / vegr, er vætki trøðr ‘for a path that nobody treads will become grassed with scrubs and long grass,’ (st. 119).

Human abilities and experiences are compared with things and situations from everyday social life. Thus, in the famous stanzas on mannvit ‘intelligence, wisdom,’ this capacity is said to be a better byrðr ‘burden, load’ (st. 10) than anything else. Drunkenness, ofdrykkia ools, is the worst vegnest ‘bag of provisions’ (st. 11) we can carry on our way. Wisdom is also metaphorically integrated into the overriding concept of friendship: we can never get óbrigðra vin ‘a more faithful friend’ (st. 6) than our own mannvit. On the other hand, wealth is not only sem augabragð ‘like a (scornfully) winking eye’; it is valtastr vina ‘the least reliable of friends’ (st. 78).

The hearts of women are not to be trusted, we learn, as they are shaped á hverfanda hvéli ‘on a revolving wheel’ (st. 84). The love of deceitful women is not easy to deal with. This idea is eloquently expounded in a series of comparisons with more or less desperate undertakings. One can as well try to rein on slippery ice a two-year-old, fiery and ill-tamed horse, which has not been shod; or navigate a ship without rudder in a raging gale; or catch a reindeer on a thawing mountain if one is lame (st. 90).

Sometimes nature (mostly animal) is used for comparison. Cattle know when to stop grazing and head for home, but a foolish man never knows when to stop eating (st. 21). The advice to rise early if one wants to get another man's property or life is followed up by a picture from wild animal life: Sialdan liggiandi úlfr / lær um getr ‘Seldom (Never) does a lying wolf acquire a piece of meat’ (st. 58). Formally we have here—as in the case of the cattle and the foolish man—a plain juxtaposition of the corresponding elements. The comparison is not expressly stated by a connecting word such as as or like. But the effect is nevertheless that of a transfer of meaning, an interchange between two spheres, with man as tenor and animal as vehicle.

In stanza 62, on the other hand, the connection is formally established. We first get a picture of a lonely eagle coming to the seashore, stretching out its neck towards aldinn mar ‘the old sea,’ and spying about for food: svá er maðr ‘such is a man’ who comes to visit a company where he has formælendr fáa ‘few supporters.’

Just as realistic and plain as other comparisons in Hávamál, although more pathetic, is the well-known image of the pine tree withering away þorpi à ‘on a bare hill’ (?), where neither its bark nor its needles are able to shelter it. The second half of the stanza reads:

Svá er maðr, sá er mangi ann,
                                        hvat scal hann lengi lifa?

(st. 50)

It is like a man whom no one loves,—
                                                  why should his life be long?

A suggestive but somewhat obscure constellation of man and nature is provided by the half-stanza:

Lítilla sanda, lítilla sæva
                                        lítil ero geð guma;

(st. 53/1-3)

A little sand has a little sea,
                                        and small are the minds of men.

As the syntactic pattern is not transparent here, various interpretations have been proposed. The alternatives are mainly two. Either we can take the words at their face value, so to speak: “men of (living on) a ‘small’ sandy coast where there are ‘small’ bodies of water, tend to have ‘small’ minds.” Or, metaphorically, “minds of men are ‘small’ like ‘small’ coasts and ‘small’ bodies of water.” It is hard to decide which reading is better. In the former case the words apply to a certain kind of men; in the latter case they apply to men in general. In fact, the second half-stanza seems to support the former interpretation:

því allir menn urdot iafnspakir,
                                        hálb er oold hvar.

(st. 53/4-6)

“For all men did not become equally wise; divided (imperfect) is mankind everywhere” (reading hálf for hálb). In either case, however, there is a connection between man and nature, implying a kind of ‘transfer’ from one sphere to the other.

Fire is an element which appears often in Eddic poetry, with the ragnarooć-vision of Voolospá as a grandiose culmination. In Hávamál we encounter fire in metaphorical expressions for relations between men. Love burns eldi heitari ‘hotter than fire’ for five days among ‘bad friends,’ but slocnar ‘dies down’ (st. 51) when the sixth day comes. Stanza 57 begins with the following lines:

Brandr af brandi brenn, unz brunninn er,
                                        funi qveykiz af funa;
A brand from a brand is kindled and burned,
                                        and fire from fire begotten.

This surprisingly intense image is used to introduce the sober assertion that “a man becomes wise by talking with other men, but stupid by retreating from the company of others” (enn til dœlscr af dul). It seems significant that this poem, where social relations and friendship play such an important part, should choose fire—hot, swift, and unstable—as an analogy for those relations.

The comparisons in Hávamál, then, are dealing with man in general; on the whole they have a didactic and rationalistic-intellectual character, in harmony with the rather sceptical mood of the poem. Occasional instances of a similar kind are to be found elsewhere in Eddic poetry. Sometimes they are clearly proverbial. Referring to Reginn's slyness, one of the birds in Fáfnismál says: þar er mér úlfs vón, / er ec eyro séc ‘I can expect a wolf, when I catch sight of a wolf's ear,’ (st. 35). When in his quarrel with Hárbarðr (Óðinn) Thórr reproaches his adversary with the words illum huga / launaðir þú þá góðar giafir, he gets the answer: þat hefir eic, / er af annarri scefr ‘the oak has what it shaves from another,’ (Hrbl [Hárbarðzlìóð] 22). This is taken to denote a man who profits (wrongfully) from others; Bellows assumes that the force of the proverb is much like that of the English ‘to the victor belong the spoils’ (p. 129). In the same poem Thórr assures Hárbarðr of his trustworthiness:

Emcat ec sá hælbítr sem húðscór forn á vár.

(Hrbl 35)

No heel-biter am I, in truth, like an old leather shoe in spring.

In hælbítr, Bellows sees an “effective parallel to our ‘back-biter’” (p. 132); but rather than a slanderer this word means perhaps more generally “en der skader i stedet for at gavne.”³⁰

On their way to Ioormunrecr in order to take revenge, Hamðir and Soorli meet their half-brother Erpr and ask him rather contemptuously how he can help them. Erpr answers—in oblique narration—that he will help them sem fótr ooðrum ‘as one foot helps the other,’ apparently “a proverbial analogy” meaning that “one limb helps another as brother helps brother, and brother needs brother as one limb needs the other.”³¹ The brothers don't—or won't—understand, as their reply shows:

Hvat megi fótr fœti veita,
né holdgróin hoond annarri?

(Hm 13)

How may a foot its fellow aid,
or a flesh-grown hand another help?

Instead, they kill their half-brother. But they will regret the deed. In the decisive battle they realize that with his help they would not only have been able to wound Iormunrecr, but to kill him:

Af væri nú haufuð, ef Erpr lifði,
bróðir occarr inn booðfrœcni, er við á braut vágom

(Hm 28)

His head were now off if Erpr were living,
the brother so keen whom we killed on our road.

A stanza in Guðrún's conversation with Atli in Atlamál, after he has had her brothers Gunnarr and Hoogni killed, runs thus:

Kostom drepr qvenna karla ofríki,
í kné gengr hnefi, ef qvistir þverra,
tré tecr at hníga, ef høggr tág undan;
nú máttu einn, Atli, oollo hér ráða.

(Am 73)

Lines 5 and 6, where we see the image of the tree which bends over if its root is cut through, show a clear parallel to Guðrún's situation. The two preceeding lines, however, which obviously also refer to her loneliness, are rather obscure and have been a matter of dispute. Usually the word hnefi has been taken to denote a tree or part of a tree, a meaning otherwise unknown. Then we would have here a slight variation of the comparison in lines 5 and 6. Ursula Dronke has recently proposed another solution. She lets hnefi have “its usual sense, ‘king-piece’ in hneftafl, a form of chess”; then “the phrase í kné gengr ‘surrenders’ would be appropriate.” In that case, “the qvistir might denote the minor pieces which guard the hnefi and postpone his ‘surrender,’ less and less effectively as their numbers dwindle—þverra—through capture.” She assumes “that in a primitive set of chess-men the lesser pieces might be small, casually shaped bits of wood or twig, intended perhaps to fit into a board with holes for the pieces; these pieces might sometimes familiarly be called what they are, qvistir.” This interpretation seems attractive, although Ursula Dronke admits herself “that the use of qvistir in a rare sense would be confusing when a straightforward reference to a tree follows.”³²

There is another kind of comparison in Eddic poetry, very different from the more proverbial or general ones. All of its instances are found in the heroic lays and refer to a few protagonists, men and women, giving an individual picture of them. They appear in direct speech only, and are always spoken by women.

In Helgaviða Hundingsbana II 37 and 38, Helgi's beloved, the valkyrie Sigrún, praises the dead hero in a famous passage:

Svá hafði Helgi hrœdda gorva
fiándr sína alla oc frœndr þeira,
sem fyr úlfi óðar rynni
geitr af fialli, geisca fullar.
Svá bar Helgi af hildingom
sem ítrscapaðr ascr af þyrni
eða sá dýrkálfr, dooggo slunginn,
er øfri ferr oollom dýrom
oc horn glóa við himin siálfan.
Such the fear that Helgi's foes
ever felt, and all their kin,
as makes the goats with terror mad
run from the wolf among the rocks.
Helgi rose above heroes all
like the lofty ash above lowly thorns,
or the noble stag, with dew besprinkled,
bearing his head above all beasts,
and his horns gleam bright to heaven itself.

There is a remarkable heightening effect in the diction here from the contemptuous comparison of Helgi's enemies with frightened goats, to the image of the hero as a young stag, whose horns “gleam bright to heaven itself.” The epithets ítrscapaðr ‘beautifully, nobly shaped,’ and dooggo slunginn ‘with dew besprinkled’ contribute to the impression of an aristocratic, almost superhuman or mythological world. It is as if Helgi in the culminating phrase of the eulogy were transformed into a being of celestial attributes.

In Gudrúnarqviða I and II respectively we find the following very similar panegyrics by Guðrún upon her dead husband; still elements of nature dominate as vehicles for the comparison:

Svá var minn Sigurðr hiá sonom Giúca,
sem væri geirlaucr ór grasi vaxinn,
eða væri biartr steinn á band dreginn,
iarcnasteinn yfir ooðlingom.

(Gðr I 18)

Svá var Sigurðr uf sonom Giúca,
sem væri grœnn laucr ór grasi vaxinn,
eða hioortr hábeinn um hvoossum dýrom,
eða gull glóðrautt af grá silfri.

(Gðr II 2)

So was my Sigurth o'er Gjuki's sons
as the spear-leek grown above the grass,
or the jewel bright borne on the band,
the precious stone that princes wear.
So Sigurth rose o'er Gjuki's sons
as the leek grows green above the grass,
or the stag o'er all the beasts doth stand,
or as glow-red gold above silver gray.

Of course these stanzas depend on each other, directly or indirectly. The first half-stanzas are practically identical. And in the fifth lines biartr steinn and hioortr hábeinn are so similar orthographically that one wonders whether the change—in one direction or the other—has been introduced by a copyist's misreading of the manuscript he was copying. The prose version of Voolsunga saga has: “svá bar hann af oollum moonnum sem gull af járni eða laukr af ooðrum groosum eða hjoortr af ooðrum dýrum”³³—which seems to be based on a stanza very similar to that of Gðr II. But whether on that point I or II represents the original text it is impossible to decide. The appearance of hioortr hábeinn ‘high-legged stag’ in II reminds one of the young stag in Helgaqviða Hundingsbana. II. However, such an element may have become a kind of poetic topos in the imagery for an aristocratic hero. It can hardly tell us anything of a direct influence of one poem on another.

In connection with her praise of Sigurðr Guðrún also refers to her own loneliness. While Sigurðr was living she had appeared to men, she says, as higher than Óðinn's valkyries, but:

nú em ec svá lítil sem lauf sé
opt í ioolstrom at ioofur dauðan.

(Gðr I 19)

As little now as the leaf I am
on the willow hanging; my hero is dead.

This comparison has a more elaborate counterpart in Hamðismál, where Guðrún's complaint refers to a later stage of her life, when she has also lost her daughter Svanhildr and exhorts her sons Hamðir and Soorli to avenge their sister:

Einstœð em ec orðin sem oosp í holti,
fallin at frœndom sem fura at qvisti,
vaðin at vilia sem viðr at laufi,
þá er in qvistscœða kømr um dag varman.

(Hm 5)

Lonely am I as the forest aspen,
of kindred bare as the fir of its boughs,
my joys are all lost as the leaves of the tree
when the scather of twigs from the warm day turns.

As for the feminine epithet in qvistscœða ‘harmful to the twigs,’ its connection with a given thing or person cannot be understood from the context. Ursula Dronke, among other scholars, adopts Sophus Bugge's interpretation ‘the branch-harming woman,’ as it “would often be the woman's task to strip the foliage and dry it in the summer heat.”³⁴ This guess at least seems to be preferable to its competitors, such as: axe, sun, storm.

In Guðrúnarhvoot as well Guðrún is in an elegiac mood and remembers Svanhildr:

svá var Svanhildr í sal mínom,
sem væri sœmleitr sólar geisli.

(Ghv 15)

So did Svanhild seem in my hall
as the ray of the sun is fair to see.

Svanhildr is once more referred to by Brynhildr in Sigurðarqviða in scamma. In her long soliloquy when she is about to die, she predicts the future of her sister-in-law and former rival Guðrún, who will bear a daughter:

sú mun hvítari enn inn heiði dagr
Svanhildr, vera, sólar geisla.

(Sg 55)

Brighter far than the fairest day
Svanhild shall be, or the beams of the sun.

It is striking to find here the same reference to sólar geisli as in Guðrúnarhvoot. This is hardly a fortuitous occurrence. And as Sigurðarqviða in scamma is usually held to be among the youngest lays in the Poetic Edda, one would be inclined to suppose that it has borrowed the image of Svanhildr from Guðrúnarhvoot.³⁵

It is tempting to see this kind of imagery, all of it in the mouths of women, as belonging to a later stage of Eddic heroic poetry, where the interest was more centered on individual psychology and feeling than on pure action. But it seems to argue against this supposition that a typical elegiac comparison (einstœð em ec orðin etc.) appears in Hamðismál, commonly considered to be one of the oldest heroic poems—at least in its ‘core.’ It is necessary to make this latter reservation, for Hamðismál is in poor condition; it may well have been thoroughly revised, various elements may have been introduced very late. And although the brilliant metaphorical description of Helgi is to be found in Helgaqviða II and not in its counterpart I, which is supposed to be a younger poem, one cannot be sure of the relative age of different elements in these poems.³⁶ Lays on the same topic and in the same metrical form may well have influenced each other—and even had stanzas or parts of stanzas mutually exchanged—at any stage of their oral or written tradition. On the whole the chronological interrelationships within the heroic poetry are for the most part too complicated to allow for definite conclusions. The position of the ‘individual,’ ‘elegiac’ comparisons in the development of Eddic poetic diction cannot be decided with any certainty.

VIII

‘Elements of imagery’ in works of art should of course not be seen in isolation. Their aesthetic quality and implications are developed only in a poetic context. Sound patterns, versification, vocabulary, composition and so on, in an individual poem or a class of poems,—all these levels and factors function as a very complex whole and contribute to the literary meaning of the imagery. These aspects, however, have had to be largely neglected here; they would have called for detailed analyses far beyond the scope of the present discussion. Instead I hope that my survey, which has presented the material in a fairly exhaustive way, has given an overall impression of how essential the elements of imagery are in the fabric of Eddic poetry—from the simplest metaphorical applications of separate words to highly elaborate comparisons.

The general function of poetic imagery is to widen the frame of reference and synthesize our experience of the world. Different spheres of reality and imagination are projected upon and illuminate one another. In the Poetic Edda this is the case to a remarkable degree. Mythology and human life intermingle. Not only do gods and valkyries appear from time to time among men, giving them advice and directing the course of events, in the kennings men are also seen as gods, women as goddesses or valkyries. The supernatural creatures of myth have their counterparts in the social life of men. The wolf of all wolves, the Fenrisúlfr, is a kind of archetype of the wolves invading the battlefield, and of wolfish features in men. The terror of the Miðgarðsormr and the dragon Fáfnir may be evoked when the sword is seen as a serpent. The ravens watching for corpses on the battlefield are sometimes metaphorically related to Óðinn's famous ravens. When men are depicted in kennings as trees a connection is established between man and nature; but perhaps there also looms in the background the idea of the tree of all trees, the ash Yggdrasill.

In the Poetic Edda we meet a world that is animated. Celestial bodies, sun and moon, but also man-made objects such as ships and swords, are invested with a life of their own. On the other hand, sun and moon, and precious metals, may illuminate the beauty and the character of living women. The image of man constantly draws on references to animal life. Man and his activities are compared to bears, eagles, hawks, horses, wolves and so on.

Thus the imagery of Eddic poetry in a way dissolves the strict limits between myth, nature, things, and man. It reflects a total, synthetic vision of the world.

Notes

1. For a full account and systematic classification of Old Norse kennings, see Rudolf Meissner's well-known work Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik (Bonn and Leipzig, 1921).

2. Ibid., p. 27.

3. On the sense of þunngeðr: Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquae Linguae Septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog, new ed. by Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen, 1913-16).

4. For the ‘double sense’ of helfúss, see The Poetic Edda: Vol. I Heroic Poems, Ed. Ursula Dronke (Oxford, 1969), p. 72.

5. See Eddukvæði, Ed. Ólafur Briem (Reykjavík, 1968), p. 458.

6. On vargdropi, see Egilsson, Lexicon Poeticum.

7. On álmr skialda, cf. ibid. (álmr); and Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, p. 266.

8. Eddukvæði, p. 371.

9. Íslenzkar bókmenntir í fornöld, I (Reykjavík, 1962), pp. 519-20.

10. Heroic Poems I, p. 72.

11. A recent discussion of the vocabulary in Alvíssmál can be found in Lennart Moberg's paper “The Languages of Alvíssmál,” SVBS, 18 (1973), pp. 299-323.

12. See Moberg, “The Languages of Alvíssmál,” p. 323: “Alvíssmál is first and foremost a virtuoso performance. The poet shows off his rich vocabulary and his powers of expression.”

13. For a discussion of the kenning as a ‘Grundwort’ in combination with a ‘Bestimmung,’ see Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, pp. 2-3.

14. For kennings for fire as a menace to trees, see Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, pp. 100-01.

15. Ibid., p. 102.

16. Ibid., p. 100.

17. For a fuller discussion of the kenning aldrnari see my article, “Världsträdet och världsbranden: Ett motiv i Völuspá, ANF, 67 (1952), pp. 145-55.

18. For ‘the sky as the site of winds,’ see Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, pp. 105-06.

19. Ibid., p. 132.

20. Ibid., p. 127.

21. “Hymiskviða. Interpretation. Wortschatz. Alter,” Beitr, 57 (Halle, 1933), pp. 136-37.

22. For the ‘heart as an acorn,’ see Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, p. 138. In Fóstbrœðra saga it is said that the hero Thorgeirr's heart is harla lítit ‘very small,’ and we are told that some people assume that minni sé hugprúðra manna hjoortu en huglaussa ‘the hearts of brave men are smaller than those of cowardly men’ (Íslenzk fornrit VI, Vestfirðinga sögur, [1943], p. 210).

23. For a discussion of the sense of the kenning rógþorn see Dronke, Heroic Poems I, p. 63.

24. Ibid., p. 232.

25. Ibid., p. 233.

26. Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, p. 208.

27. Ibid., p. 221.

28. For the interpretation of lands Haddingia ax see Briem, Eddukvæði, p. 401.

29. It should be noted that the preceding stanza (21) of the poem speaks of the potion as mixed with iarðar magni, / svalkooldum sæ ‘magic earth, / ice-cold sea,’ and thus expressly emphasizes the opposition earth / sea. (The Codex Regius reading urðar magni is surely an error for iarðar magni; see Neckel/Kuhn, p. 227.

30. Egilsson, Lexicon Poeticum: hælbítr.

31. Dronke, Heroic Poems I, p. 199.

32. Ibid., p. 133-34.

33. Voolsunga saga ok Ragnars saga Loðbrókar, ed. Magnus Olsen (Copenhagen, 1906-08), p. 85.

34. Dronke, Heroic Poems I, p. 227.

35. On the age of Sigurðarqviða in scamma, see Sveinsson, Íslenzkar bókmenntir í fornöld, p. 492.

36. On the age of Helgaqviða I and II, see Sveinsson, Íslenzkar bókmenntir í fornöld, pp. 440-41.

Abbreviations

AnM: Annuale Mediaevale (Duquesne University)

ANF: Arkiv för nordisk Filologi

ANO: Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie

APS: Acta Philologica Scandinavica

AR: Vries, J. de, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1956-7.

Archiv: Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen

AUS: Annales Universitatis Saraviensis (Universität des Saarlandes)

Beitr: Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur

DA: Dissertation Abstracts

DAI: Dissertation Abstracts International

FMAS: Frühmittelalterliche Studien

GR: Germanic Review

GRM: Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift

HES: Harvard English Studies

HSCP: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

ÍF Íslenzk fornrit

JAF: Journal of American Folklore

JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology

JFI: Journal of the Folklore Institute (Indiana University)

KHL: Kulturhistorisk leksikon för nordisk middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid

MÆ: Medium Ævum

MGH: Monumenta Germaniae Historica

MM: Maal og Minne

Neophil: Neophilologus

NM: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen

NoB: Namn och Bygd

PL: Migne, Patrologia Latina

PQ: Philological Quarterly

PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association

SN: Studia Neophilologica

SnE: Jónsson, Finnur, ed. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Copenhagen, 1931

SS: Scandinavian Studies

SBVS: Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research

TAPA: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association

ZfdA: Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur

ZfdPh: Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie

Poems

Akv Atlaqviða

Alv Alvíssmál

Am Atlamál

Br Brot af Sigurðarqviðo

Fm Fáfnismál

Gðr (I,II,III) Guðrúnarqviða

Ghv Guðrúnarhvoot

Grm Grímnismál

Grp Grípisspá

Háv Hávamál

HH (I,II) Helgaqviða Hundingsbana

HHv Helgaqviða Hioorvarðzsonar

Hlr Helreið Brynhildar

Hm Hamðismál

Hrbl Hárbarðzlióð

Hym Hymisqviða

Ls Locasenna

Od Oddrúnargrátr

Rm Reginsmál

Sd Sigrdrífomál

Sg Sigurðarqviða in scamma

Vkv Voolundarqviða

Vm Vafðrúðnismál

Þrk Þrymsqviða