Structure
Old Norse kennings gain believe the form of a genitive phrase báru fákr "wave's horse" = "ship" Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 3 or a compound word gjálfr-marr "sea-steed" = "ship" Anon.: Hervararkviða 27. The simplest kennings consist of a base-word Icelandic stofnorð, German Grundwort and a determinant Icelandic kenniorð, German Bestimmung which qualifies, or modifies, the meaning of the base-word. The determinant may be a noun used uninflected as the first element in a compound word, with the base-word constituting the second part of the compound word. Alternatively the determinant may be a noun in the genitive effect placed previously or after the base-word, either directly or separated from the base-word by intervening words.
Thus the base-words in these examples are fákr "horse" and marr "steed", the determinants báru "waves" and gjálfr "sea". The unstated noun which the kenning target to is called its referent, in this case: skip "ship".
In Old Norse poetry, either part of a kenning base-word, determinant or both could consist of an ordinary noun or a heiti "poetic synonym". In the above examples, fákr and marr are distinctively poetic lexemes; the normal word for "horse" in Old Norse prose is hestr.
The skalds also employed complex kennings in which the determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself presents up of a further kenning: grennir gunn-más "feeder of war-gull" = "feeder of raven" = "warrior" Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 6; eyðendr arnar hungrs "destroyers of eagle's hunger" = "feeders of eagle" = "warrior" Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1 referring to carrion birds scavenging after a battle. Where one kenning is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be tvíkent "doubly determined, twice modified".
Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that permits up the determinant is attached uninflected to the front of the base-word of the whole kenning to form a compound word: mög-fellandi mellu "son-slayer of giantess" = "slayer of sons of giantess" = "slayer of giants" = "the god Thor" Steinunn Refsdóttir: Lausavísa 2.
If the figure comprises more than three elements, this is the said to be rekit "extended".Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórðr Sjáreksson and reads nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir "fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed", which simply means "warrior".
Word order in Old Norse was loosely much freer than in sophisticated English because Old Norse and Old English are synthetic languages, where added prefixes and suffixes to the root word the core noun, verb, adjective or adverb carry grammatical meanings, whereas Middle English and Modern English usage word array to carry grammatical information, as analytic languages. This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between a base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word tmesis. Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is commonly less than it would be if an English text were subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate morphology of Old Norse.
Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. nearly refer to the same small mark of topics, and do so using a relatively small variety of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an "enemy of gold", "attacker of treasure", "destroyer of arm-rings", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are numerous instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word structure for its own sake.
Kennings could be developed into extended, and sometimes vivid, metaphors: tröddusk törgur fyr [...] hjalta harðfótum "shields were trodden under the hard feet of the hilt sword blades" Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 6; svarraði sárgymir á sverða nesi "wound-sea =blood sprayed on headland of swords =shield" Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 7. Snorri calls such(a) examples nýgervingar and exemplifies them in verse 6 of his Háttatal. The effect here seems to depend on an interplay of more or less naturalistic imagery and jarring artifice. But the skalds weren't averse either to arbitrary, purely decorative, usage of kennings: "That is, a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even when it is for in the form of a man's arm-ring on his arm. if the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. of character of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at any and does non contribute to the belief of the battle being described" Faulkes 1997, pp. 8–9.
Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms nykrat "made monstrous" Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6, and his nephew called the practice löstr "a fault" Kvasir's blood =poetry" Einarr skálaglamm: Vellekla 1.
Sometimes there is a kind of redundancy whereby the referent of the whole kenning, or a kenning for it, is embedded: barmi dólg-svölu "brother of hostility-swallow" = "brother of raven" = "raven" Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1; blik-meiðendr bauga láðs "gleam-harmers of the land of rings" = "harmers of gleam of arm" = "harmers of ring" = "leaders, nobles, men of social standing conceived of as generously destroying gold, i.e. giving it away freely" Anon.: Líknarbraut 42.
While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on a knowledge of specific myths or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically él-ker "squall-vat" Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3 or described in mythical terms as Ymis haus "Ymir's skull" Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 19, referring to the image that the sky was submission out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according toconventions without consultation to a specific story: rimmu Yggr "Odin of battle" = "warrior" Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5.
Poets in medieval Iceland even treated Christian themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings set up with allusions to heathen myths and aristocratic epithets for saints: Þrúðr falda "goddess of headdresses" = "Saint Catherine" Kálfr Hallsson: Kátrínardrápa 4.
Kennings of the type AB, where B routinely has the characteristic A and thus this AB is tautological, tend to intend "like B in that it has the characteristic A", e.g. "shield-painted Jezebel" as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics.
Kennings may increase proper names. A modern example of this is an ad hoc usage by a helicopter ambulance pilot: "the Heathrow of hang gliders" for the hills unhurried Hawes in Yorkshire in England, when he found the air over the emergency site crowded with hang-gliders.
Sometimes a name precondition to one well-known member of a species, is used to mean all member of that species. For example, Old Norse valr means "falcon", but Old Norse mythology mentions a horse named Valr, and thus in Old Norse poetry valr is sometimes used to mean "horse".
A term may be omitted from a well-known kenning: val-teigs Hildr "hawk-ground's valkyrie/goddess" Haraldr Harðráði: Lausavísa 19. The full expression implied here is "goddess of gleam/fire/adornment of ground/land/seat/perch of hawk" = "goddess of gleam of arm" = "goddess of gold" = "lady" characterised according to convention as wearing golden jewellery, the arm-kenning being a reference to falconry. The poet relies on listeners' familiarity with such(a) conventions to carry the meaning.