--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Patricia"
<originalpatricia@...> wrote:

> Do all the poems have a lot of kennings in them please, " the

hawks perch" I have seen used - for the left wrist, - logical - and
the "Goddess of the Arm" for your good (or bad) lady, do the poetry-
people know of this, I seek enlightenment on this point for I love
kennings and like to look for them in translations we are now doing.

> Freya's Tears for Gold is my favourite, and I have seen Humakt's

(sp) Swans for Ravens, but who was Humakt.

As far as Google can tell me, Humakt is a character (the god of
death?) in a roleplaying game called HeroQuest. I don't know if he
has any Norse precursor, but there are lots of kennings for raven
based on the idea that they are the swans, or some other bird, of
Odin, of blood, of battle, of a sea-king, or of a valkyrie.

http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/ugm/kennings/kennings.html

"Goddess of the arm" is a sort of syncopated kenning. The full
version would be "goddess of the fire of the arm [gold]", but this
was such a familar idea the skalds abbreviated it. Kennings for a
woman could be made from the name of any goddess (or a tree with
feminine gender) + something associated with a lady, for example
gold, silver, necklaces, a cloak, or a headdress. Likewise kennings
for a man could consist of a god's name (or a masculine tree) + male
attributes such as a ship or weapon. In either case, the word for
gold, or whatever, could be replaced by yet another kenning:
Freyja's tears, the seed of the Fyrisvellir plains (in Sweden,
because Hrolf Kraki scattered gold there to put off King Adils'
pursuit), or the light of the sea (because Ægir the sea giant's hall
was lit by gold). And of course "sea" could be replaced by river or
lake, or the name of a particular river, or it could be called the
land or field or path of any kind of fish, or the land of one of the
legendary "sea-kings".

Not all poems have a lot of kennings. Old poems in the Eddic
metres, in the Elder Edda and various fornaldarsögur "sagas of
ancient times", usually have only a few kennings, sparingly used,
maybe at a rate similar to Old English verse -- whereas poetry in
the Skaldic metres (such as Ellisifjardrápa would be if I could only
get it right...) is packed with kennings, so many there are often
kennings inside of kennings enough to make you dizzy but also kind
of exhilarating, it is after all the Mead of Poetry.

Within each genre though there´s quite a bit of variation, depending
partly on the subject matter. Eddic poems on heroic themes might
have more opportunity to use kennings from the repetoire of
eulogies, e.g. terms for "chief" such
as 'auðbroti', 'baugbroti', 'menbrjótr' -- "destroyer of"
respectively "wealth", "rings" and "necklaces" (all from
Innsteinskviða in Hálfs saga). Or military
kennings: 'baugröst' "ring-mile [= ring-land = shield]" (merman´s
prophesy in Hálfs saga). There are also alot of circumlocutions
that are just on the borderline of being kennings: 'hers
oddviti' "point-leader of the army" (Grípisspá); 'vinr
víkinga' "friend of vikings" [pirate captain] (Waking of Angantýr).
And a just a few outright metaphorical kennings in these non-Skaldic
verses: 'gjálfrmarar' "see-steeds" [ships] (Waking of
Angantýr); 'skarar fjöll' "mountains of the scalp" [shoulders]
(Innsteinskviða).

One particularly bizarre kenning is "Heimdall's head" for "sword".
Snorri helpfully explains:

Heimdallar höfuð heitir sverð. Svá er sagt, at hann var lostinn
mannshöfði í gegnum. Um þat er kveðit í Heimdallar galdri, ok er
síðan kallat höfuð mjötuðr Heimdallar. Sverð heitir manns mjötuðr.

A sword is called "Heimdall's head". It's said that he was struck
through with a human head. [The poem] Heimdall's Magic Chant tells
about that, and after that the head is called the "bane of
Heimdall". A sword is called "man's bane".

Llama Nom

(Presumably the culprit was Loki, if the head was fatal. The
surrealist choice of weapon certainly seems like his style.)