Kenning

In literature, a kenning is a poetic phrase, a figure of speech, substituted for the usual name of a person or thing. Kennings work in much the same way as epithets and verbal formulae, and were commonly inserted into Old English poetic lines.

In its simplest form, it comprises two terms, one of which (the 'base word'), is made to relate to the other to convey a meaning neither has alone. For example the sea in Old English could be called seġl-rād 'sail-road', swan-rād 'swan-road', bæþ-weġ 'bath-way' or hwæl-weġ 'whale-way'. In line 10 of the epic Beowulf, the sea is called the hronrāde or 'whale-road'.

The word is derived from the Old Norse verb kenna við, "to express [one thing] in terms of [another]", and is prevalent throughout Norse, Anglo-Saxon literature and Celtic literature. Kennings are especially associated with the practice of alliterative verse, where they tend to become traditional fixed formulas. The skalds made such extensive use of kennings that these have come to be regarded as an essential nature of 'skaldic verse'.

A good knowledge of mythology was necessary in order to understand the kennings, which is one of the reasons why Snorri Sturluson composed the Younger Edda as a work of reference for aspiring poets. Here is an example of how important this knowledge was. It was composed by the Norwegian skald Eyvind Finnson (d. ca 990), and he compares the greed of king Harald Gråfell to the generosity of his predecessor Haakon the Good:

Bárum Ullr, of alla

ímunlauks, á hauka

fjöllum Fýrisvalla

fræ Hákonar ævi;

nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða

fáglýjaðra þýja

meldr í móður holdi

mellu dolgs of folginn

Paraphrased, with kennings deciphered, the verse runs: "O warrior, we carried gold on our arms during all of Hakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in the earth."

This could be translated more literally as: "Ullr of war-leek! We carried the seed of Fýrisvellir on the mountains of hawks during all of Hakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden the flour of Fróði's hapless slaves in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess."

War-leek is a kenning for "sword". Ullr of war-leek means "warrior" and refers to king Harald; this kenning follows a convention whereby the name of any god is combined with some male attribute (e.g. war or weaponry) to produce a kenning for "man". The seed of Fýrisvellir means "gold" and refers to a legend retold in Skáldskaparmál and Hrólf Kraki's saga in which King Hrolf and his men scattered gold on the plains (vellir) of the river Fýri south of Gamla Uppsala to delay their pusuers. The mountains of hawks are "arms", a reference to the sport of falconry; this follows a convention in which arms are called the land (or any sort of surface) of the hawk. The flour of Fróði's hapless slaves alludes to the Grottasöng legend and is another kenning for "gold". The flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess is the Earth (Jörd), as she was the mother of Thor, the enemy of the Jotuns.

A list of kennings may be consulted for reference purposes.

A notable peculiarity of kennings is the possibility of constructing complicated kenning strings by means of consecutive substitution. For example, those who are keen in kenning readily know that slaughter dew worm dance is battle, since slaughter dew is blood, blood worm is sword, and sword dance is battle.

Another kind of wordplay is based on the inversion of kennings. For example, if sword dance is battle and spear-din is another kenning for battle, then sword may easily become "spear-din dancer".

The root "ken" is still used in Scandinavian (känna), in German (kennen), in Dutch (kennen) and in Afrikaans (ken), whereas its English use is restricted to Scots and the North of England. In northern Britain it is used in describing what a person knows about something or what they see, especially when seafaring. For instance, if somebody queries the happenings of the North Sea, of a lighthouse resident, the watcher would say he is kenning this or that — "D'ye ken what a kenning is?". The root was applied to the "k" rune, pronounced similarly.

List of kennings