skaldic poetry

One of the two main branches of old Norse verse; the other is the poetry of the Edda. It is normally occasional, and attributed to named poets, or skalds, of Icelandic or (before about 1000) Norwegian origin; among them are Egill Skallagrímsson and Sighvatr Thórdarsson.

Skaldic poetry flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, but is preserved mainly within prose texts of the 13th century onwards. Much of it is court poetry in the extended form of the drápa (eulogy with refrains) or flokkr (‘group’) in praise of Scandinavian rulers, their battles and voyages. The remainder consists mainly of individual, supposedly extempore, verses (lausavísur) occasioned by personal conflicts, loves, travels, and humorous incidents.

The extended forms are also used in the pre-Christian era for mythological subjects and, after the 12th century, for Christian themes.

Some five-sixths of skaldic poetry is in the dróttkvætt (‘court metre’). This is a unique Scandinavian development of the early Germanic alliterative metre, which has eight-line stanzas with six-syllable lines linked into couplets by complex patterns of internal rhyme and alliteration. World order and diction are often highly elaborate. Especially characteristic is the kenning, a poetic circumlocution replacing a noun; for example, ‘tree / god of the sword’ for ‘man, warrior’ or ‘horse / deer of the wave’ for ‘ship’.