Kennings

[Ratatosk]

Kennings (understandings) are central to working in Heathenism. The poetic forms of the Eddas, the "occasional" poems sprinkled throughout the sagas and especially the runic poems are written in such a way as to require the listener (nowadays the reader) to ponder and figure out just what the poet is saying.

The typical form is the dróttkvætt which is eight lines, each with six syllables. The lines are rhymed in three ways: alliteration (in bold), half-rhyme and full-rhyme. There are two alliterating sounds in the odd lines and one (the "head-letter") that comes at the start of the even lines. (The sounds italicized are internal rhymes and are either half or full rhyme.)

An example now: (from Chapter 58 of Egil's Saga)
Þél höggr stórt fyr stáli
stafnkvigs á veg jafnan
út með éla meitli
andær jötunn vandar
en svalbúinn selju
sverfr eirar vanr þeiri
Gestils álft með gustum
gandr of stál fyr brandiNow, let's translate that into English.

(Direct translation first)

A file strikes hard before the bow stem
prow + young bull's on the smooth road
out with of sudden hail a chisel
rowing in opposition giant of the mast
and a coldly dressed wood
flies without mercy with it
Gestil's swan with gusts
wolf around the prow before the decorated prow-board.


Ummm, yeah, ok, let's rearrange the order some to get an idea of what we are looking at now.

We can start by putting the words in their logical order in the original Icelandic, so:

Andær jötunn vandar höggr stórt Þél fyr stáli með éla meitli út á jafnan veg stafnkvigs, en svalbúinn selju gandr sverfr eirar vanr of stál þeiri Gestils álft með gustum fyr brandi.Now our direct translation looks more like:

The opposite-rowing giant of the mast strikes hard,
a file before the prow, with a chisel of sudden hail
out on the smooth road of the young prow bull,
and a cold wolf of wood flies mercilessly with it about the prow of
Gestil's swan with gusts before the prow board.

We are getting somewhere - but not quite where we want to be yet. This is where kenning comes in. There are two parts to a kenning: first a thing is called by the name of a thing it is not, and then the second part modifies the first in such a way as to make it poetically appropriate.

So, let's go:

the opposite-rowing giant of the mast strikes hard
giant (enemy) of the mast = wind, opposite-rowing wind = headwind


a file before the prow, with a chisel of sudden hail
chisel of sudden hail = storm

out on the smooth road of the young prow bull,
young prow bull = ship, the smooth road of the ship = the sea

and a cold wolf of wood flies mercilessly with it about the prow of
wolf (enemy) of wood (of which the ship is made) = enemy of the ship = wind

Gestil's swan
Gestil (a sea king)'s swan = ship

with gusts before the prow board.
just what it says.

So we have a poem about a storm at sea.

Whew!

There is a very nice translation I have here next to me and for making it this far I will share:

With it's chisel of snow, the headwind,
scourge of the mast, mightily
hones it's file by the prow
on the path that my sea-bull treads.
In gusts of wind, that chillful
destroyer of timber planes down
the planks before the head
of my sea-king's swan.

[Ratatosk]

Oh, and this one has no meaning beyond poetic beauty. It gets real complicated when there are "deeper" meanings hidden within.

Often you need to discern the kenning of a poem, and then discern the kenning of that kenning. (Especially with things like the Havamal et.al.)

[MythMath]

Wonderful...

It's like Zeppelin, dude...
________________________

Man, how much work does it take, before
these things start to reveal themselves...?

Are you able to 'get the gist' on a casual examination,
or does it take quite a bit just to figure out what you've got...?

[Talkingfox]

Man, how much work does it take, before
these things start to reveal themselves...?

Are you able to 'get the gist' on a casual examination,
or does it take quite a bit just to figure out what you've got...?

I think it depends on the poem and the poet.

For myself, I've been working with this stuff for , it seems like, forever and new personal kenning comes all the time.

I think that once one gets a handle on the form it gets easier. The meter is SO not english tho. Old Icelandic is a fair jawcracker to speak, let alone sing...

[Talkingfox]

I think I need to mention here that anyone who wants to get SERIOUS about runic workings, including sigil work, needs to get pretty familiar with the style of kenning. I've not seen a single modern book that even begins to come anywhere near the depth of the traditional rune poems. They be loaded.

[Ci Celli Ddu]

In Wales today unlike many other places, poetry is enjoyed by a mass audience. Poetry competitions are a popular form of entertainment and the leading poets of the nation are both intellectual powerhouses and popular entertainers - Wiki, Welsh Poetry
The Bards are often compared with the Skalds because of their role as keepers of history and seers. Medieval poetry such as the mystical works that were attributed toTaliesin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliesin) as well as the prose of the Mabinogion (http://www.mabinogion.info/) hold many tantilizing glimpses of Druidic lore (the Bards being one of the three Druidic offices in Classical times) but they lack the clarity of the Eddas in terms of cosmology, and in many cases are filled with references to things whose nature can only be speculated. The creation of imagery is comparable to that in the Icelandic poem Ratatosk has used; Welsh poems have their own rules regarding grammar, and very strict and complex rules regarding structure, but no kennings are necessary for someone educated in the literature, except perhaps when trying to decipher the meanings/symbolism of the older more mystical texts. The seer role of the bard is of course long gone, but the use of poetry as magick is evident in Irish and Welsh texts, such as the use of satire:
It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire, glam dicin (Irish), could raise boils on the face of its target - Wiki, Bard
The glam dicin, like the geis*, was only invoked by Druids and was a satirical incantation directed against a particular person which imposed an obligation. In short, it was a curse which could be pronounced for infringement of divine or human laws, treason or murder. Its pronouncement was feared as its victims had put upon them a sense of shame, sickness and death. The person subjected to the glam dicin was rejected by all levels of Celtic society -Peter Ellis, The Druids, 141

* geas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geis) ("vow, taboo," in Irish, known as tynged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tynged) "vow, destiny, fate" in Welsh, both are prohibitions that can also be construed as curses)

The role of seer was still alive in Wales at the time of Giraldus Cambrensis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_of_Wales) (1146-1223), whose writings supply us with a first hand account of the cultural and folkloric practices of Wales and Ireland in the 12th/13th century. The Awenydd (from awen, "muse", "inspiration") as the Welsh seer was known, is somewhat like a Welsh version of the seidr worker, and I suppose from the description given that some form of kenning was necessary to understand his utterences:
There are certain persons in Wales, whom you will find nowhere else, called Awenyddion, or people inspired; when consulted upon any doubtful event, they roar out violently, are rendered beside themselves, and become, as it were, possessed by a spirit. They do not deliver the answer to what is required in a connected manner; but the person who skilfully observes them, will find, after many preambles, and many nugatory and incoherent, though ornamented speeches, the desired explanation conveyed in some turn of a word: they are then roused from their ecstasy, as from a deep sleep, and, as it were, by violence compelled to return to their proper senses. After having answered the questions, they do not recover till violently shaken by other people; nor can they remember the replies they have given. If consulted a second or third time upon the same point, they will make use of expressions totally different; perhaps they speak by the means of fanatic and ignorant spirits. These gifts are usually conferred upon them in dreams: some seem to have sweet milk or honey poured on their lips; others fancy that a written schedule is applied to their mouths and on awaking they publicly declare that they have received this gift. Such is the saying of Esdras, “The Lord said unto me, open thy mouth, and I opened my mouth, and behold a cup full of water, whose colour was like fire; and when I had drank it, my heart brought forth understanding, and wisdom entered into my breast.” They invoke, during their prophecies, the true and living God, and the Holy Trinity, and pray that they may not by their sins be prevented from finding the truth.-Giraldus Cambrensis, Descriptio Cambriae, XVI
Source: The Description of Wales (http://www.authorama.com/description-of-wales-1.html) Chapter XVI

PS This may seem OT, but I was actually asked to make a Celtic-Norse comparison. :)

[Ratatosk]

PS This may seem OT, but I was actually asked to make a Celtic-Norse comparison. :)

Thanks, CCD! I appreciate it! (And I thought you would get a kick out of the structure of these things!):cool:

[Talkingfox]

COOL stuff CCD. The idea of brining down the mighty with words is shared concept in both approaches indeed! Gotta love those poetic traditions!
The word Skald is actually where the common usage verb scald comes from.

There is also a Nordic trad. of the friendly (or sometimes Not so friendly) f*** you fest.
A well crafted insult was considered a potent weapon. In that vein, usually mid-winter when tempers are short, that particular skill would be trotted out in order to blow steam, bring a laugh to areas that were causing tension and showcase the skill of the the individual. The ability to show self control and NOT lose one's temper over this was also considered praiseworthy.

The Lokesenna of the eddas puts this into a mythological format with Loki going off at a feast about the habits of the other gods...great stuff.

[Ratatosk]

To hear a modern dróttkvætt in Icelandic check this out: YouTube - Love-Poetry-Darri

It does not sound at all like English poetry.

Enjoy!

[Talkingfox]

[quote=MythMath;13386]Wonderful...

It's like Zeppelin, dude...
________________________

Speaking of which...check this out http://www.echelonrana.com/viking.html

too funny

[Ci Celli Ddu]

Superficially, Ive always correlated Loki with the most popular of the old Celtic gods, Lugus (etymology below). He was equated with Mercury by the Romans, but the only references we have as to his character are the Irish texts where he is called Lugh Samildanach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugh) (Samildanach means "multi-talented"). He appears as Lleu Llaw Gyffes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleu) (Llaw Gyffes means "deft hand") in Welsh texts, but Lleu's more of a character things happen to rather than an active protagonist.


The contemporary compilation of etymological lexica at the universities of Leiden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden) and Wales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales) [1] (http://www.wales.ac.uk/documents/external/cawcs/pcl-moe.pdf) [2] (http://www.indo-european.nl/) suggest that this name is derived from Proto-Celtic *Lug-u-s, but this Proto-Celtic lexeme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexeme) exhibits great ambiguity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity) in its semantics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics) both in Proto-Celtic and in Proto-Indo-European.
For many years the name *Lugus was derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk-, "light", and and thus he was considered a sun god (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_deity). This etymology is problematic because Proto-Indo-European (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language) *k did not under any known circumstances become *g- in Proto-Celtic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Celtic_language), but remained *k. The direct descendent of the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk- (‘white light’) in Proto-Celtic is *leuk- as in the name of the Celtic lightning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning) god (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God) Leucetios (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucetios). So if one applies the principles of Occam's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor), *leuk- is not the most plausible etymology (though some have suggested that PIE *leuk had a variant form *leug-, which could indeed have produced a Common Celtic *lug-).
The Proto-Celtic lexeme *Lug-u-s may be related to the initial morpheme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme) in the Proto-Celtic *lug-rā ‘moon’ (sometimes proposed as the proto-form behind Welsh lloer, though Peter Schrijver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schrijver) suggests an alternative etymology for lloer, from Common Celtic *lus-rā, where the root would be cognate with that of Latin luridus [earlier *lus-idus] "pale yellow"). Another possibility is Proto-Indo-European *leug- meaning blackness, dimness, darkness (thought by Pokorny to be the root of the ill-attested Gaulish word lugos ‘raven’), or *leug- ‘swamp, peat-bog’. Proto-Celtic *Lug-u-s may equally be related to Proto-Celtic *lug- meaning "oath, pledging, assurance" on the one hand and "deceive" on the other (derived from Proto-Indo-European (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language) *leugh- ‘avowal, deception’). Juliette Wood interprets his name as deriving from Proto-Celtic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Celtic_language) *lug-, oath, which would support this identification of Mercury as a god of contracts.
The name may also be related to Old Irish lug "lynx", perhaps indicating the existence of a Proto-Celtic root that denoted an animal with "shining eyes", from PIE *leuk- "to shine" (compare Greek lunx "lynx", perhaps from a zero-grade form *luk- with infixed nasal).
This god’s name may also be related to Latin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin) lugubris "mournful, pertaining to mourning," from lugere "to mourn," from a Proto-Indo-European (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language) base *leug- "to break" (cf. Greek lygros "mournful, sad," Sanskrit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit) rujati "breaks, torments," Lettish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettish) lauzit "to break the heart").

[Talkingfox]

Superficially, Ive always correlated Loki with the most popular of the old Celtic gods, Lugus (etymology below). He was equated with Mercury by the Romans, but the only references we have as to his character are the Irish texts where he is called Lugh Samildanach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugh) (Samildanach means "multi-talented"). He appears as Lleu Llaw Gyffes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleu) (Llaw Gyffes means "deft hand") in Welsh texts, but Lleu's more of a character things happen to rather than an active protagonist.

I've seen that correlation as well...but not often. More often I see Odin/Lugh/Mercury thing. Personally I think it's a stretch. I see more correlations between Frejr and Lugh than Loki/Odin and Lugh. But that's just me.

I'm STILL trying to noodle out the Odin/Mercury thing. I find the alignment superficial at best.
Loki tends to be more fluid in the antagonistic / protagonsitic most of the time and a better match for the Mercurial thing.

Just out of curiosity are there any Celtic texts that address the destruction of the world?

[Ci Celli Ddu]

I've seen that correlation as well...but not often. More often I see Odin/Lugh/Mercury thing. Personally I think it's a stretch. I see more correlations between Frejr and Lugh than Loki/Odin and Lugh. But that's just me.

I'm STILL trying to noodle out the Odin/Mercury thing. I find the alignment superficial at best.
Loki tends to be more fluid in the antagonistic / protagonsitic most of the time and a better match for the Mercurial thing.

Just out of curiosity are there any Celtic texts that address the destruction of the world?


When it comes to "correlating", what I mean really is tracing the gods (like Lleu and Loki) back to an older source: it's always interesting to speculate on the movement of cults in prehistory. Another example on that count is the solar Belenus who possibly shares the same source as Apollo and Baal.
When it comes to more practical attempts to correlate deities from different cultures, I don't think any alignments can be anything but superficial. Just look at the example of the Romans in Gaul: they couldn't manage to make any real sense correlation-wise and they had hands-on access to both cultures!

Destruction of the world? Not exactly. There's Arthur's final battle at Camlan, then there's the destruction of Ireland (in Welsh texts) where all the population is wiped out except 5 mothers and 5 sons who subsequently repopulate it (an obvious slur). In Irish texts you have a series of Invasions.

[Talkingfox]

Destruction of the world? Not exactly. There's Arthur's final battle at Camlan, then there's the destruction of Ireland (in Welsh texts) where all the population is wiped out except 5 mothers and 5 sons who subsequently repopulate it (an obvious slur). In Irish texts you have a series of Invasions.


Hmmm that's what I thought...had to ask though. I'm working with Ragnarok Sagas at the moment (the Voluspa mostly) and was wondering if there was any cross over. I'm actually finding more similarities with the Eddas and the Vedas than with Celtic Texts. Maybe a function of relative isolation post-migration?

[Ci Celli Ddu]

Hmmm that's what I thought...had to ask though. I'm working with Ragnarok Sagas at the moment (the Voluspa mostly) and was wondering if there was any cross over. I'm actually finding more similarities with the Eddas and the Vedas than with Celtic Texts. Maybe a function of relative isolation post-migration?

The Celts of Western Europe have always pretty much been part of the Mediterranean sphere of influences, and DNA surveys has shown that although the Celtic languages are Indo-European, as a people we predate Indo-Europeans by thousands of years. Even the Celtic languages themselves are much more closely related to both Greek and Latin than to the Germanic languages.

[Talkingfox]

The Celts of Western Europe have always pretty much been part of the Mediterranean sphere of influences, and DNA surveys has shown that although the Celtic languages are Indo-European, as a people we predate Indo-Europeans by thousands of years. Even the Celtic languages themselves are much more closely related to both Greek and Latin than to the Germanic languages.

:yes: Yeah I had found that info too in tying to trace the origins of Scandahoovian myth and language.

What I was speaking to is the relative isolation of the Scandinavians until fairly late in the European scheme of things, and the relation of a seeming Edda/Veda similarity to that. Just a stab in the dark here....

[Talkingfox]

The typical form is the dróttkvætt which is eight lines, each with six syllables. The lines are rhymed in three ways: alliteration (in bold), half-rhyme and full-rhyme. There are two alliterating sounds in the odd lines and one (the "head-letter") that comes at the start of the even lines. (The sounds italicized are internal rhymes and are either half or full rhyme.)


Musically this times out to a (mostly) 6/8 time signature.

Here's a modern version of this in action. The secondary pulses of the hurdy gurdy and her vocal emphasis hit the alliterative requirements of the dróttkvætt

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Had a chance to see this live ....WHEW! Garmarna means Hellhounds in Norsk.