Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- Abbreviations
- Chapter One Introduction: The Old Norse Poetic Corpus
- Chapter Two An Indigenous Typology of Old Norse Poetry 1: Technical Terms
- Chapter Three An Indigenous Typology of Old Norse Poetry 2: Genres and Subgenres of Skaldic Verse
- Chapter Four Circumstances of Recording and Transmission: Poetry as Quotation
- Chapter Five Old Norse Poetic Aesthetics
- Chapter Six The Impact of Christianity on Old Norse Poetry
- Chapter Seven Poetics and Grammatica 1: The Twelfth Century
- Chapter Eight Poetics and Grammatica 2: The Edda of Snorri Sturluson
- Chapter Nine Poetics and Grammatica 3: The Third and Fourth Grammatical Treatises
- Chapter Ten The Icelandic Poetic Landscape in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
- Chapter Eleven Conclusion
- Appendix: Snorri Sturluson's View of Figurative Language
- References
- Index
- The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century
Chapter Five - Old Norse Poetic Aesthetics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- Abbreviations
- Chapter One Introduction: The Old Norse Poetic Corpus
- Chapter Two An Indigenous Typology of Old Norse Poetry 1: Technical Terms
- Chapter Three An Indigenous Typology of Old Norse Poetry 2: Genres and Subgenres of Skaldic Verse
- Chapter Four Circumstances of Recording and Transmission: Poetry as Quotation
- Chapter Five Old Norse Poetic Aesthetics
- Chapter Six The Impact of Christianity on Old Norse Poetry
- Chapter Seven Poetics and Grammatica 1: The Twelfth Century
- Chapter Eight Poetics and Grammatica 2: The Edda of Snorri Sturluson
- Chapter Nine Poetics and Grammatica 3: The Third and Fourth Grammatical Treatises
- Chapter Ten The Icelandic Poetic Landscape in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
- Chapter Eleven Conclusion
- Appendix: Snorri Sturluson's View of Figurative Language
- References
- Index
- The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century
Summary
The image of the poet
The definition of a skald conveyed in Bragi Boddason's verse Skáld kalla mik, quoted at the beginning of Chapter 1, indicates that there were two fundamental ways in which medieval Scandinavians conceptualised poetry: on the one hand as a divine gift in the form of an intoxicating drink, and, on the other, as a craft or skill, an íþrótt, that is, an accomplishment of human intelligence. These two ways of understanding the genesis and nature of poetry were unlikely to have been viewed as contrastive or contradictory in their eyes, although they may seem so to us. In fact, a comment that occurs at the end of Snorri Sturluson's account of the myth of the origin of the mead of poetry in Skáldskaparmál (a myth to which I will shortly return), reveals that divine inspiration was considered unlikely to fall to someone who did not already possess the ability to compose poetry:
En Suttunga mjǫõ gaf Óõinn Ásunum ok þeim mõnnum er yrkja kunnu. Pví kõllum v[ér] skáldskapinn feng Óõins ok fund ok drykk hans ok gjǫf hans ok drykk Ásanna. (Faulkes 1998 I: 5)
But Óõinn gave Suttungr's mead to the Æsir and to those people who are skilled at composing poetry. Thus we call poetry Óõinn's booty and find, and his drink and his gift and the Æsir's drink. (Faulkes 1987: 64)
The first sentence of this quotation clearly indicates that Óõinn, divine possessor of the source of poetic inspiration, the poetic mead, did not give this intoxicating substance to everyone indiscriminately; rather, he gave it only to those people who already possessed the skill which enabled them to compose poetry. This formulation implies that, for human poets, the skill was primary and needed to be in place before the divine gift was conferred, the reverse of the modern Western concept of inspiration, which almost certainly owes its genesis to Christian and classical rather than Germanic models.
The poet as craftsman
I shall first consider how medieval Scandinavians conceptualised the skills involved in composing poetry.
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- A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics , pp. 83 - 113Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005