>> djúp ok Danskra vápna
>>
>> skínn á skildi mínnum
>>
>> vígreifr með Áleifi

> True. Although I'm not sure what you mean

with the second line.


Oopsh, that should have been: "skínn á skildi mínum." Or is the
2nd 'n' of 'skínn' taken as part of the next syllable?

> rekin bitu stál - á Stikla-

Well, it's certainly a very poor rhyme with
the modern pronunciation but I suppose it might
have worked when it was composed.


How? Or did you mean it might have had completely different words
originally? I guess the modern pronunciation would also make the
rhythm weird in a line like this, since it depends on the
distinction between long and short vowels.

> I understand Kristján and Gade hate each

others' guts.

Cool. We should invite them to a skaldic duel.

> It is what Snorri called a 'nýgjörving'.

What's that?

>> There's a nice Old Irish metre which has this rhyme scheme between
>> the end of one line and the beginning of the next. And as far as I
>> can tell the earlier Irish poetry liked as much alliteration as

they

>> could get.

> What bad taste the Irish have! ;)

Ah I like it though, but then I agree with Salvador Dalí who
said "good taste" has nothing to do with art... Even bigger
difference between Old Irish and Old Norse prose. The Irish stuff,
judging by what I've read in translation, can be massively mannered,
rich, ritualistic, vivid, verbose, incantatory, poly-hued, playful,
surreal and sprung. Oh, and it has a lot of adjectives. Black
blood-butterflies wouldn't be out of place there. But the Old Norse
prose, the little of it I've met so far, has its more taciturn
charms. But it can have a great run-away rhythm at times too, like
the bit where the berserks arrive for their island duel in Hervarar
saga, or later where the Huns turn up, or the slyly humourous
opening chapters of Hrólfs saga kraka. I think the writer of Göngu-
Hrólfs saga gets a bit carried away at times, and I didn´t really
get into the story of that one, although there´s a funny bit which
Ralph O´Connor quotes in his Viking Histories and Romances, where
England has just been alluded to in the saga, and the author feels
obliged to take time out from the story to give us a geographical
rundown of the country, its principle towns and major exports, etc.,
etc.

>
> Agreed. I'm never sure about the best way myself.
> When I have a whole sentence inserted I think it's nice
> to isolate it with some punctuation but commas after
> every other word don't really help the reader much.

Ralph O´Connor has a rather ingenious method, which is a bit hard to
explain, but if you imagine the words of each line widely spaced,
and then connecting lines going joining up words in different lines
that go together. Did that make sense? It works surprisingly well,
at least with the stanza he choses as his example. Your eye follows
the lines, but is still dimly aware of the neighbouring words, so
you feel like you´re reading it both ways at the same time and
actually understanding a bit!

> Ah, sorry :) We tend to use native forms of the names
> of European royalty.

I guess in their raw forms it would be hard to know how to inflect
them. I must confess I did have to look up the exact family
relationship. I wasn´t quite sure if she was the queen´s daughter
or sister. They all tend to merge in my mind into a big regal blur.

>
>
> > Incidentally, is 'námumaðr' an old word?
>
> Funny that you should ask. I've been playing
> a computer game from Microsoft - Age of Mythology -
> where you can play the Norse. They've got some
> Icelanders to read phrases so when you click on
> a peasant he goes: "Tilbúinn!" or "Hver er þar?"
> When you tell him to hunt he says "Veiðimaður!"
> and when you tell him to mine gold he says "Grjótsveinn!".

Tilbúinn. Tilbúinn. Samþykkt. Tilbúinn. Árás! Já.

LN