KENNING-PARAPHRASE.

The word is derived from the Old Norse phrase kenna eitt vi, "to express a thing in terms of another".

A kenning is a literary device in which a poetic phrase substitutes for a noun. In the best kennings, one element of the phrase will create a striking, unexpected comparison.
The root "ken" is still used in Scandinavian (knna) and in German (kennen) whereas its English use is restricted to Scots and the North of England. 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. In Norse mythology the story of Odin bringing the mead of poetry to Asgard is an indicator of the significance of poetry within the contemporary Nordic cultures. A notable peculiarity of kennings is the possibility to construct 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 development of the kenning has its origins in the ancient cultures of the Norse and the Celts. As part of the popular culture, storytellers and minstrels both would look for creative ways to conjure up images with the subject matter of their art. Essentially, this would involve finding colorful ways to use the most mundane objects. For example, the ocean may be referred to in the fanciful manner as being the land of the whales, while a simple tree limb may be envisioned as being a roadway for the squirrels. DEFINITION 1: A kenning involves 4 objects, symbolically b,C,x,Y. A kenning is based on an analogy between two "possesive" relations: "b of C" and "x of Y". A kenning of object x is an expression of the form "b of Y".

b ............. x ^ | | ^ ^ | | ^

C ............. Y

It works as follows. You *know* that b is of C, e.g. that milk is of cow. Thus when you say "first drops of milk of the night" and not of the cow, you're redefining "milk". And what can it be? ... ok, enough.

EXAMPLE 1: consider "a horse of the prarie" & "a ship of the sea (ocean)". Then a "horse of the ocean" is a (classical) example of a kenning of the ship.

Thus kenning is a more advanced notion than the simile, which involves only two objects (D is like E) - perhaps a simile involves also a property (feature) with respect to which the simile makes sense, e.g. this girl is like (i.e. as beautiful as) a doll. DEFINITION 2: Kenning of object b, "x of C", is dual th the kenning "b of Y" of object x from Definition 1 above.

Let's see how it works. We had a "horse of the ocean". The dual kenning is a "ship of the prarie". The funny thing is that we do not get back our pony but rather a wagon. Again, this is the joy of arts.

In my poem "Relief" I have borrowed Jon Rowe's kenning of clouds: sky's thoughts, and have combined it with a nearly dual kenning. The dual kenning would be the kenning of thoughts : mind's clouds.

Together they would form, what I call, a mirror kenning construction. But exact mirror would be uninteresting to my taste, so I deviated and have written:

The birds of my mind Got lost in the thoughts of the sky

This way you can imagine birds lost in clouds (rather than clouds lost in clouds:-). It is recognized in music that we want predictable patterns, but also surprises. Ancient Greeks would introduce irregularities in their architectural constructions to break the monotony of regular patterns. Regular patterns are beautiful, but too much of it makes us sick or bored or even uneasy, scarred, makes us feel exposed to the cruelty of cosmos, of death. Quite often the possesive relation can be reversed. We can say "Antarctica is my land" or "I am Antarctica's citizen". When the possesive relation is not routinely reversable we again get some poetic potential. E.g. we can say "this is his money" or "he is his money's man" (and a poem follows :-). Just like in mathematics. When something is impossible you do it any way.

By reversing the possesive relation we get the complementary kennings.

DEFINITION 3. The kenning "C of x" of Y is the reversed kenning of the kenning "b of Y" of x.

For instance the classical kenning of the ocean "whale's highway" is the reversed kenning of the kenning of the whale "the 16-wheeler of the ocean" (or "the truck of the ocean") - I just made it up but it works. We see that the old kennings "the horse of the ocean" and "whale's highway" are almost reversed one w.r. to another. We also see that it is not enough to identify a kenning by it's phrase but we need often to be told or somehow, cued by the context perhaps, about the object described by the kenning. Indeed, we hardly have a chance to tell whether "the horse of the ocean" describes a ship or a dolphin. The same goes for "the truck of the ocean". Scandinavian poets would use many kennings which were (to me) in no way natural, but rather cultural conventions between them. They made a semi-scientific game out of poetry, which has appealed to me enormously. I had only a glimpse at their poetry but its beauty has overwhelmed me completely. Their kenning conventions allowed them to achieve a continuity of development characteristic of Mathematics, where mathematicians are building on the top what was done in past for thousands of years. This type of continuity is sadly missing most of the time in poetry and on our rap microcosmos too. When it's present results are joyful, like in the case of haiku (where continuity concerns not just the preservation of the form but also the refinement of the taste). 5. Kennings.

The poets of drttkvdtt employed an intricate system of metaphoric circumlocution, usually referred to by its original name, kenning ("paraphrase"). A simple kenning is defined as a phrase, consisting of a base noun (stofn "stem"), qualified by another noun in the genitive (kennior "qualifier"). The qualifier typically transforms the meaning of the stem:

svanr bls "swan of blood" = raven

Here, the stem svanr "swan" could be replaced by any bird's name, but the qualifier bls "of blood" turns the swan into a raven, the typical carrion-bird (bird of the battle-field) of the kenning-system.

The qualifying noun (bls) was easily replaced by new kennings, thus:

svanr sveita svers "swan of sweat of sword" = raven svanr sveita sra "swan of sweat of wounds" = raven

Here, blood is paraphrased as "sweat of sword", and "sweat of wounds". Both are perfectly permissible: blood may be compared with sweat, either as dripping from a sword, or as dripping from a wound.

In an actual drttkvdtt stanza, we find:

svanr sveita orns sra "swan of sweat of thorn of wounds" = raven

This is equivalent to svanr sveita svers (above). The sword has been replaced by a new kenning orn sra "thorn of wounds".

The above example, svanr sveita orns sra "swan of sweat of thorn of wounds", has been chosen to illustrate the problems of interpreting kennings in drttkvdtt. The four words: svanr, sveita, orns, sra, could occur anywhere within a half-stanza, not obviously related to each other. An attempt to read svanr sveita sra "swan of sweat of wounds" would leave the word orns unaccounted for (and tempt the reader to relate it to another, unrelated part of the half-stanza). The reader might also be tempted to interpret sveiti sra orns in a totally different manner. orn is often used to mean "giant", and is equivalent to urs. In the system of kennings, any giant's name could be replaced with any other giant's name. Thus, sveiti sra orns "sweat of wounds (blood) of the giant" could easily be a kenning for the ocean, which mythologically originated from the blood of Ymir, the primeval giant. Such an

interpretation would leave the word svanr unaccounted for (and tempt the reader to relate it to another, unrelated part of the half-stanza).

The intricacies of the system of kennings cannot possible be dealt with in a short introduction. Let us finish this superficial treatment with an exaggerated (but real) example:

gimslngvir drfu gfrs hlmna blakks nausta = warrior

Old English Kennings

1.A (Minimalist) Definition: Kennings (pl. kennigar) - a multi-noun substitution for a single noun, e.g. "din of spears" for battle. Although found in many poetries, the kennings is best known from Old Germanic verse. Kennings are common in West Germanic poetry, and scholars have recognized a kenning in the expression of "corpse-sea," i.e. "blood," on the Eggjum runic inscription from Western Norway, ca. 700 A.D. ONorse Eddic poetry did make use of kennings, but their greatest importance was in skaldic poetry1. The term kennings is derived from the idiomatic use of kenna vi or til, "to name after"2. A specialized type of kennings is the epithet an adjective indicating some quality or attribute which the speaker or writer regards as characteristic of the person or thing described3. Such, for example, is grima gast (grim ghost/guest) for Grendel the monster in Beowulf. 2.Types of Usages: Poetic kennings are first and foremost a poetic device, employing metaphors as substitutes for nouns of major importance: hence swamroad, whale-road and sea-birds baths all substitutes for sea. Similarly, protector of warriors, ring-giver and dispenser of treasures all substitute for lord or king. Narrative Continuity Ogilvy and Baker (19834) regard kennings not simply as a poetic device, but a literary mechanism of narrative movement: in Beowulf, for example, they seem to create a cumulative effect which adds quality or aspect to character or action: Transmission of Attitudes and Evaluations taking a different approach, Smale5 claims kennings to be far more than mere metaphorical substitution. Instead, she argues, kennings are designed to covey and communicate Device of Oral Literature6 deeply rooted in oral tradition, kennings are one among many literary devices (such as alliteration and meter) characterizing oral poetry and narration. Having no means of recording literary - and other texts (i.e.. writing system), oral cultures rely heavily on fixed formulae, devised in such manner in order to assist the

human memory in its obligatory (and tiresome) task of recalling data. Kennings well represent orality's inclination towards the "redundant" or "copious"7 in its recited narration (appearing relatively frequent in repetitive phrases). Lastly as most oral devices they consist of fixed sets and ranges of formulatic variations, differing not so much by semantic value but rather by metrical competence. At the heart of skaldic poetry we find the kenning. Scholarly views on the kenning not only determine its poetic value within skaldic verse, but are also crucial in establishing the cognitive, aesthetic and even the historical significance of the skaldic genre. Generally speaking, scholars dealing with kennings on a theoretical level can be divided into two schools. I have been inclined to speak about these separate tendencies as the Formulaic school and the Functionalistic school. From the perspective of the Formulaic school one tends to treat the kenning as a coincidental decoration as a formula. The emphasis is on the strict metre (verstvang) when attempting to explain both the strangeness and the poetical function of the kenning. Here the kennings are invariably associated with dead metaphors and are thus hardly capable of illuminating skaldic thoughts and feelings. The functionalistic view, on the other hand, maintains that the kenning served multiple roles in its poetic context. The emphasis here is on the highly allusive nature of kennings which cannot be separated from the meaning of the skaldic stanza. Secondly the kenning is seen as being able to both glorify and humiliate its subject; these abilities are connected with Wolfgang Mohrs term der treffende Kenning (1933). A central question to both schools of kenning theory is the relation between kennings and metaphor. This matter is of high relevance at present, not the least because of the insights from cognitive linguistics on metaphor over the last three decades. The key question in this context would be whether the kenning could be likened to the so-called novel metaphor in cognitive metaphor theory. A novel metaphor is of the same kind Aristotle referred to as a one that cannot be acquired from someone else, and is an indication of genius (Janko 1987: 32). Such metaphors have been of great topicality in the poetics of different periods the French Gaston Bachelard is apparently aiming at the same figure with his term le image nouvelle, i.e. a poetical image that stems from the depths of the poets soul. Furthermore, it is widely accepted in cognitive metaphor theory that the novel metaphor is capable of reflecting not only the life-history of the metaphor-maker, but also the culture in which he lived and the values that surrounded him. In other words, there is a strong relationship between metaphor and culture (Kvecses 2005). If these factors, in addition to traditional dating of skaldic poetry, are taken as a given, the novel metaphors of the oldest skalds not only appear as glimpses of life histories, but also as the only textual primary sources on culture and values of the pre-Christian Viking Age. The skaldic rtt and the contest of verse-making Skaldic poetry was a highly conventional mode of oral performance, but one in which special value was attached to the artistry and technical virtuosity of the individual poet. Skalds evidently expected their work to be perpetuated in a more or less stable form, and the finished poem was conceived as a unique artefact that proclaimed the virtuosity of its maker. The skaldic conceptualisation of creativity as craftsmanship is encapsulated in what Gert Kreutzer identified as the handwerklich orienterte Dichtunsterminologie of the poets, which likened verse composition to the making of durable objects in metal, stone or wood. In modern scholarship

especially since Hallvard Lies influential discussions in the 1950s this conceptualisation of skaldic verse-making is often connected with the identification of poetic skill in various poetic, poetological and prose narrative sources as an rtt, usually interpreted in these contexts in the sense of craft or skill. Here I will argue that the status of skaldic poetry as an rtt does not principally reflect its association with craftsmanship, but instead encapsulates the agonistic aspects of skaldic versemaking, and its recognition as a status-enhancing skill in contrasting performance environments. Although the term rtt was used from as early as the tenth century to refer to prodigious feats and capacities valued in elite contexts, and it was co-opted to refer to the courtly artes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it did not belong exclusively to the aristocratic sphere. The performance of rttir of various kinds was fundamentally a matter of competitive display. It involved the demonstration of a surpassing level of prowess in a variety of possible domains, and it served to set the individual practitioner apart, not only in the wider community, but also within the narrower peer-group of fellow performers and rivals. The claim that accomplished verse-making was an rtt, a feat of extraordinary prowess or mastery, depended partly upon the technical challenge of composition within the traditional constraints of the form and successful manipulation of the riddling poetic language of kennings and heiti. But it was also based on the continued prestige of skaldic performance, and the conceit of the court poets according to which their own conspicuous mastery in the feat of verse-making was a counterpart to the glorious deeds of those whom they praised. Just like the myth of the Odinic mead, which was only made available to poets of sufficient measure, the notion of the skaldic rtt served the complicity and self-interest of poets working in a highly conventional form, who vied against their fellows to demonstrate their primacy as conduits of the tradition which they all sought to perpetuate.
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 genitives or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures). This is clearest in his definition of the term in Httatal in the commentary to verse 2, where he unequivocally describes the kenning as containing a base-word and one or more determinants (though he does not have separate terms for these latter concepts; cf. kenna vi, kenna til in Glossary). His terminology in describing extended kennings ( rekit) also makes this clear: At reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar (Httatal 8/29) means to extend a kenning to the fifth determinant (in this phrase kenning seems to mean the determinant itself). The verb kenna means to use a kenning (Httatal 1/53), to use a determinant (at kenna rtt, 6/9), or to denote or express by means of a kenning (kenna [manns] nafn, 8/389; see kenna, kenning in Glossaries to Httatal and

Skldskaparml). In Httatal, however, sannkenna and sannkenning refer not to the use of base-words and determinants, but to the use of attributives and adverbials with nouns, adjectives and verbs.