Skaldic Poetry
What is skaldic poetry?
For Viking Age kings, reputation was extremely important. Performing acts of valour in battle and rewarding one’s followers were both key aspects of being a successful ruler, both in Scandinavia and in other areas of medieval Europe besides. A positive reputation meant more followers, more allies, and ultimately, more political success. For most European societies between the eighth and eleventh centuries, famous deeds could be captured and spread in writing: saints and kings were commemorated in literary works called vitae—literally, ‘lives’—that could be widely read, and stored for posterity in libraries. In Viking Age Scandinavia there was no manuscript culture, and carving runes into wood and stone did not make for an ideal medium for recording or spreading information. Instead, the recording of famous deeds fell to figures called skalds—or poets.
The skald was a figure who made his living by performing poetry in praise of Scandinavian rulers in their halls. Kings and jarls would pay handsomely for a poem which gave them a good reputation. The Icelandic sagas tell us that some kings gave gold rings and swords in exchange for poems, and others gave ships and even islands for them. The high premium placed on poetry can be accounted for on the basis that, in the absence of writing, catchy poetry was the best way that a ruler’s reputation could be spread and preserved long after his death. In other words, without the work of Old Norse poets, events like famous battles would simply be forgotten. This would have been an alarming prospect for Viking Age kings, whose power and that of their descendants depended in part on their deeds being remembered. It is also largely thanks to the skalds of the Viking Age that we know so much about the events that took place in Scandinavia itself in this period.
The reason why skaldic poetry was seen to be such a good way to preserve information, and why it was therefore worth so much, is quite complicated. Old Norse skaldic praise poetry was composed in a very complicated alliterating metre called dróttkvætt (literally ‘retinue-metre’, in reference to the fact that this poetry was performed before the warriors in the hall). Dróttkvætt is considered one of the most elaborate metres ever to have existed in Western Europe, and so skalds were clearly very talented in the craft of poetic composition. Without going into too much detail, composing in this metre required very precise consideration of syllables, stress, and sound. This meant that skaldic poems would have to be remembered exactly. If words or syllables are changed, then this poetry becomes corrupted—in other words, its metre and possibly its meaning becomes confused.
Kennings
Skalds also filled their poetry with devices called kennings. Put simply, kennings are a sort of riddle. They consist of an object (or base word) which is similar to but not exactly like the solution, and another word (the determinant) which defines the nature of the object and allows a solution to be reached. The best way to explain this is through examples. Viking Age skalds often refer to ships as ‘horses of the sea’, or to shields as ‘moons of battle’. The base words here—‘horse’ in the first kenning and ‘moon’ in the second—are of course not ships and shields on their own, but this can be understood when thinking about the nature of the things which they associated with in the kennings. A horse is a steerable mode of transport which when associated with the determinant ‘sea’ must be a ship, and a moon is a round object that when defined by the determinant ‘battle’ is logically a shield. In fact, we still use some kennings today. A book-worm (which might be expressed in skaldic terms as a ‘worm of books’) is of course not actually a worm, but a person who is defined by how stuck in books they are.
Just as with the complex metrics of skaldic poetry, the words that make up kennings have to stay the same if they are to continue to make proper sense, and this constitutes another way in which skaldic poetry could be self-preserving. Kennings are also a central part of the style of skaldic poetry, and knowing about them is important. Again, the ability of skaldic poetry to preserve information in this way was central to its extreme value in Viking Age Scandinavia. Skalds were well aware that their poetry could survive the test of time thanks to their complicated makeup. In the late-tenth century, the skald Eyvind Finnsson announced in a poem that ‘I have produced once more a poem—praise of the ruler—like a bridge of stones.’ And indeed, skaldic poetry, with its complex metrics, kennings, and ability to last longer than a ruler’s lifetime, might well be likened to a stone bridge.
Dating and preservation
Some 6,000 lines of skaldic poetry are found across Old Norse literature. Most appears in Icelandic sagas and in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, both of which begin to appear in manuscripts from the thirteenth century onwards. Although this poetry only appears in manuscripts from after the Viking Age had ended, it is thought that much of it was composed in the Viking Age, and that it was passed down in oral tradition until it could be committed to vellum by Icelandic scribes. The earliest skald who is mentioned in Old Norse texts is thought to be Bragi Boddason ‘The Old’, a poet who allegedly composed for Ragnar Lothbrok and whose poetry is usually dated to around the year 870. However, the composition of skaldic poetry likely extends back even further than this. It should be said that the dating of skaldic poetry is a notoriously difficult task—skalds never refer to the date on which they compose and deliver their poems. Ancient vocabulary and word-forms in individual poems can allow us to say roughly how old these poems are. The date of skaldic poetry can also be estimated on the basis of the events it mentions. For instance, the poem Knútsdrápa (‘Knut’s praise poem’), composed by Sigvat Thordarson, mentions the Danish conquest of England in 1016, and this allows the poem to be dated to the first half of the eleventh century. It should of course be remembered that these dating criteria are not foolproof. Poets could employ old-fashioned language to give their verse an air of antiquity, or they could compose retrospectively about famous events. Nevertheless, these can be used as reasonably effective tests to date skaldic poetry.
The late ninth-century skaldic poem Glymdrápa, as preserved in the early fourteenth-century manuscript Codex Frisianus. The poem was composed by Thorbjorn hornklofi in honour of King Harald Finehair of Norway. Image sourced from handrit.is.