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A kenning (Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech, a figuratively-phrased compound term that is used in place of a simple single-word noun. For instance, the Old English kenning (hron rade) means , as does swanrād ().
A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant. So in whale's road, road is the base-word, and whale's is the determinant. This is the same structure as in the modern English term skyscraper; the base-word here would be scraper, and the determinant sky. In some languages, kennings can recurse, with one element of the kenning being replaced by another kenning.
Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English alliterative verse. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including rímur) for centuries, together with the closely related heiti. Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do the parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side. The lack of grammatical cases in modern English makes this aspect of kennings difficult to translate. Kennings are now rarely used in English, but are still used in the Germanic language family.
Thus the base-words in these examples are fákr and marr , the determinants báru and gjálfr . The unstated noun which the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case: skip .
The base-word of the kenning íss rauðra randa ( SWORD, Einarr Skúlason: Øxarflokkr 9) is íss () and the determinant is rǫnd (). The referent is .
In Old Norse poetry, either component 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 ; the normal word for in Old Norse prose is hestr.
Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that makes 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 = = = (Steinunn Refsdóttir: Lausavísa 2).
If the figure comprises more than three elements, it is said to be rekit "extended". Kennings of up to seven elements are recorded in skaldic verse. Snorri himself characterises five-element kennings as an acceptable license but cautions against more extreme constructions: Níunda er þat at reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar, er ór ættum er ef lengra er rekit; en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. "The ninth license is extending a kenning to the fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it."Faulkes 1991, 8:29–31; Faulkes 1987, 172. The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórðr Sjáreksson and reads nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir , which simply means .
Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to the same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set 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 ring", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional,Faulkes (1997), pp. 11–17, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake.Faulkes (1997), p. 15.
Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms nykrat (Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6), and his nephew called the practice löstr (Óláfr hvítaskáld: Third Grammatical Treatise 80).Faulkes (1997), pp. 24–25. In spite of this, it seems that "many poets did not object to and some must have preferred baroque juxtapositions of unlike kennings and neutral or incongruous verbs in their verses" (Foote & Wilson (1970), p. 332). E.g. heyr jarl Kvasis dreyra (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 = = (Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1); blik-meiðendr bauga láðs = = = (Anon.: Líknarbraut 42).
While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on a knowledge of specific Norse mythology or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically él-ker (Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3) or described in mythical terms as Ymis haus (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 19), referring to the idea that the sky was made out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according to certain conventions without reference to a specific story: rimmu Yggr = (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5).
Poets in medieval Iceland even treated Christian themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings complete with allusions to Norse mythology and aristocratic epithets for saints: Þrúðr falda = '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 mean "like B in that it has the characteristic A", e.g. , tautological because the god Njörðr by nature has his own shield, means , i.e. . A modern English example is "painted Jezebel" as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics.
Kennings may include proper names. A modern example of this is an ad hoc usage by a helicopter ambulance pilot: "the Heathrow of " for the hills behind Hawes in Yorkshire in England, when he found the air over the emergency site crowded with hang-gliders.the Really (TV channel) television program Helicopter Heroes
Sometimes a name given to one well-known member of a species is used to mean any member of that species. For example, Old Norse valr means , but Old Norse mythology mentions a horse named Valr, and thus in Old Norse poetry valr is sometimes used to mean .
Snorri's own usage, however, seems to fit the looser sense: "Snorri uses the term 'kenning' to refer to a structural device, whereby a person or object is indicated by a periphrastic description containing two or more terms (which can be a noun with one or more dependent or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures)" (Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv). The term is certainly applied to non-metaphorical phrases in Skáldskaparmál: En sú kenning er áðr var ritat, at kalla Krist konung manna, þá kenning má eiga hverr konungr. Faulkes (1998 a), p. 78/17, 22. Likewise in Háttatal: Þat er kenning at kalla fleinbrak orrostu ... .
Snorri's expression kend heiti appears to be synonymous with kenningar,Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv.Faulkes (1999), p. 5/9. although Brodeur applies this more specifically to those periphrastic epithets which do not come under his strict definition of kenning.Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253.
Sverdlov approaches the question from a morphological standpoint. Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing (declined) adjective.Sverdlov (2006). According to this view, all kennings are formally compounds, notwithstanding widespread tmesis.
nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr í móður holdi mellu dolgs of folginn
A literal translation reveals several kennings: " Ullr of the war-leek! We carried the seed of Fyrisvellir on our hawk-mountains during all of Haakon'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."
This could be paraphrased as "O warrior, we carried gold on our arms during all of King Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in the earth." The kennings are:
Ullr ... ímunlauks, , from Ullr, the name of a god, and ímun-laukr, (literally ). By convention, the name of any god can be associated with another word to produce a kenning for a certain type of man; here "Ullr of the sword" means . War-leek is a kenning for that likens the shape of the sword to that of a leek. The warrior referred to may be King Harald.
Hauka fjöllum, , from hauka and fjöll . This is a reference to the sport of falconry, where a bird of prey is perched on the arm of the falconer. By convention, combined with a term for a geographic feature forms a kenning for .
Fýrisvalla fræ, , from Fyrisvellir, the plains of the river Fýri, and fræ, . This is an allusion to a legend retold in Skáldskaparmál and Hrólfs saga kraka in which King Hrolf and his men scattered gold on the plains (vellir) of the river Fýri south of Gamla Uppsala to delay their pursuers.
Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr, , is another kenning for . It alludes to the Grottasöngr legend.
Móður hold mellu dolgs, , . Here the earth is personified as the goddess Jörð, mother of Thor, enemy of the jǫtnar.
Old English kennings are all of the simple type, possessing just two elements. Examples for : seġl-rād (Beowulf 1429 b), swan-rād (Beowulf 200 a), bæð-weġ (Andreas 513 a), hron-rād (Beowulf 10), hwæl-weġ (The Seafarer 63 a). Most Old English examples take the form of compound words in which the first element is uninflected: heofon-candel = (Exodus 115 b). Kennings consisting of a genitive phrase occur too, but rarely: heofones ġim = (The Phoenix 183).
Old English poets often place a series of synonyms in apposition, and these may include kennings (loosely or strictly defined) as well as the literal referent: Hrōðgar maþelode, helm Scyldinga ... (Beowulf 456).
Old Frisian also had kennings, though they were relatively rare. In legal documents regarding the protection of children and pregnant women, the term bēnenaburcht ('fortress of the bones') is used for 'womb'.
Although the word kenning is not often used for non-Germanic languages, a similar form can be found in Biblical poetry in its use of parallelism. Some examples include Genesis 49:11, in which "blood of grapes" is used as a kenning for , and Job 15:14, where "born of woman" is a parallel for .
Kennings remain somewhat common in German language (Drahtesel for bicycle, Feuerstuhl for motorcycle, Stubentiger for cat, and so on).
The poet Seamus Heaney regularly employed kennings in his work; for example, bone-house for .
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Jörmungrund: Lexicon of Kennings – The Domain of Battle
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