Need list of skaldic kennings

[Vondy]

I'm looking for a fairly comprehensive online list of skaldic kenning from the eddas, sagas, et al. I found the anemic list on wikipedia, but I need something more robust. Does anyone know of such a resource?

[Markdoc]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

Damn. That's a toughie. The definitive sites are Jörmungrund and Septentrionalia, but neither of them will take you very far if you don't speak at least Norse/Danish. I honestly don't think that much of this has been translated into english, ever: it's primarily of interest to academics and those who work in the field can of course read old norse - where translations have been done the bulk of it is into Danish or Bokmål. Probably your best bet is the secondary scholarship section of Septentrionalia, where at least you can find english translations of some works.

 

If all you want however is lists of kennings, devoid of context, then there's the database of Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages. That's the largest English-language collection I know of (and a jolly handy reference to puzzling these things out).

 

Edit: go to "database" and you'll get a list of topics including (on the right side) "kennings."

 

cheers, Mark

[Vondy]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

Damn. That's a toughie. The definitive sites are Jörmungrund and Septentrionalia, but neither of them will take you very far if you don't speak at least Norse/Danish. I honestly don't think that much of this has been translated into english, ever: it's primarily of interest to academics and those who work in the field can of course read old norse - where translations have been done the bulk of it is into Danish or Bokmål. Probably your best bet is the secondary scholarship section of Septentrionalia, where at least you can find english translations of some works.

 

cheers, Mark

 

That's a start. Thanks.

[Markdoc]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

See my edited comment - I was thinking initially of works that contain kennings or scholarly discussions of same - but many (far from all) of them have been gathered in the poetry database.

 

cheers, Mark

[Vondy]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

See my edited comment - I was thinking initially of works that contain kennings or scholarly discussions of same - but many (far from all) of them have been gathered in the poetry database.

 

cheers, Mark

 

That's great. Thanks.

[Markdoc]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

Off topic but interesting (to me anyway ) is the way this kind of word-play persists in West Scandinavian languages. All of them are noun/adjective poor compared to English, or even German. To some extent, this is compensated for by making compound words, but there is also a strong element of punning involved - something you find in kennings. I was thinking about this yesterday: on the way to work, I passed a van belonging to an office-cleaning firm. The company is called "Rengøringsagenter" which means "Cleaning agents" in English. Cleaning agents are things like disinfectant, soap, etc. However the Danish word for these sort of agents is midler and disinfectant, soap, etc are called "rengøringsmidler" in Danish. The word agent is used, but only in the context of secret agent or legal agent - it's an import from English.

 

The reason I mention this is that the company name - to a Danish person - means "Agents who clean, with an inbuilt pun on the english translation". This kind of secondary meaning is highly prevalent here and one reason it's so hard to become fully fluent. It's equivalent to the practice of upper class english gentlemen from centuries past, to making puns that were only comprehensible if you also spoke greek and/or latin. French does this too with French/English puns (probably all languages do) but it's especially prevalent here.

 

Bear that in mind when looking at the kennngs: some of the more incomprehensible one may well be puns.

 

cheers, Mark

[Vondy]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

It works a little differently in modern Hebrew, but word-plays on hebraized foreign loan words are common enough that you have to watch out for dual meaning on a regular basis. On this site I catch a certain subtext in many kennings even in translation, though I have to ponder the context for it to really sink in. The database is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

[AlHazred]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

FWIW, this kind of "language game" is exactly where most fantasy conlangs fail miserably. When Robert Jordan wrote The Wheel of Time books, he made words that sounded and looked right, and (this is the mistake) meant exactly what he wanted them to mean. In Real Life, people play with words all the time, in everyday language and (as Markdoc provided such a great example for) even in foreign languages.

 

While I can't make it through the whole The Lord of the Rings epic in one sitting anymore, I really appreciate the thought Tolkien put into doing this exact thing with his conlangs.

[Vondy]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

FWIW' date=' this kind of "language game" is exactly where most fantasy conlangs fail miserably. When Robert Jordan wrote [i']The Wheel of Time[/i] books, he made words that sounded and looked right, and (this is the mistake) meant exactly what he wanted them to mean. In Real Life, people play with words all the time, in everyday language and (as Markdoc provided such a great example for) even in foreign languages.

 

While I can't make it through the whole The Lord of the Rings epic in one sitting anymore, I really appreciate the thought Tolkien put into doing this exact thing with his conlangs.

 

I was fiddling... "...his fate sealed in the distaff court."

 

No dual meaning, but several potential implications.

[Old Man]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

FWIW' date=' this kind of "language game" is exactly where most fantasy conlangs fail miserably. When Robert Jordan wrote [i']The Wheel of Time[/i] books, he made words that sounded and looked right, and (this is the mistake) meant exactly what he wanted them to mean. In Real Life, people play with words all the time, in everyday language and (as Markdoc provided such a great example for) even in foreign languages.

 

Conlangs are hard, fantasy ones even moreso. I wouldn't fault any author for not achieving a Real Life level of depth with conlangs designed mainly to support a fictional narrative. Tolkien is an outlier, a frickin' professor of Olde English who spent decades developing the conlangs that went into his books.

 

Me, I have a hard enough time grappling with my native tongue; developing multiple fictional tongues is beyond my ken.

 

 

While I can't make it through the whole The Lord of the Rings epic in one sitting anymore, I really appreciate the thought Tolkien put into doing this exact thing with his conlangs.

 

You used to read the entire trilogy in one sitting?

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

I'm looking for a fairly comprehensive online list of skaldic kenning from the eddas' date=' sagas, et al. I found the anemic list on wikipedia, but I need something more robust. Does anyone know of such a resource?[/quote']

 

A friend of mine from college has a Masters in Medieval Lit and is at Pennsic. She's asking around.

[AlHazred]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

You used to read

Fixed that for you.

[Markdoc]

Re: Need list of skaldic kennings

 

You used to read the entire trilogy in one sitting?

 

Actually when I was a kid and could devote a whole day to such pursuits, yeah, I read the whole trilogy in a single sitting. I doubt I am the only one to do so.

 

cheers, Mark