That's great Llama Nom, I might have guessed you would have
come up with something, but I'll be taking a copy of that and add it to my
notes, a very full reply
--- 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.
"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.)