2. Stylistic considerations
This is not currently part of the peer-reviewed material of the project. Do not cite as a research publication.
As with the linguistics of skaldic verse, many stylistic features have been insufficiently studied, and once again the difficulty of dating skaldic poetry makes it difficult to determine what stylistic features are characteristic of particular periods. The following jottings give examples of the kind of questions that may be asked, but perhaps cannot be satisfactorily answered in the abstract or in the present state of knowledge. Awareness of them, however, is important, and it is important that alternative possibilities are not lost sight of but are mentioned in notes.
a. Apposition: can there be two parallel subjects to the same verb?
b. Can the same concept be repeated within a single kenning, and if so from what period?
E.g. in Hallfreðar saga v. 15/7-8, the best mss have fúrskerðir ... hjǫrva ‘shearer/notcher of the fire of swords [SWORD]’ as a warrior kenning — but it is perhaps odd to call a weapon the fire of another weapon (as Einar Ól. Sveinsson remarks in ÍF 8, 172n.; the v.l. is frið-).
c. Other kinds of tautology:
E.g. in Arnórr 2, 13, Kock NN § 816, following Wisén, emends to verja, which solves one problem, but produces a phrase verja valkǫstr, which is awkward since both verja and val imply men (fallen men in val). Similarly in Arnórr 3, 11, he reads hrækǫst fira af ulfa barri ‘corpse-heap of men of wolves’ barley’ [CORPSES, CARRION].
d. At what period do half-kennings, i.e. kennings without determinants, come into general use?
e. Can a woman be referred to as ‘tree/forest of the sea’ before C13th?
E.g. in Hallfreðar saga v. 29/6-7, is gjalfrteigs mǫrk ‘forest of the ocean-strip’ possible as a ‘woman’ kenning? Einar Ól. Sveinsson in ÍF 8, 193n. accepts it, though with reservations. Finnur Jónsson and (surprisingly) Kock emend to gjalfrleygs and make a consequential emendation of eigi to þeygi.
f. What kenning-like constructions are possible?
E.g. in Hallfreðar saga v. 20/1-2, Kock adopts the Flateyjarbók reading, taking halr hjalmgrands ‘?man of the helmet-damage(r) [SWORD/AXE]’ together as a non-metaphorical kenning and citing parallels (NN § 2455). Einar Ól. Sveinsson prefers the M reading, adj. hjalmgrandr (ÍF 8, 182). Finnur in Skj B emends to Hǫðr.
g. This shades into the question of the adjectival use of the genitive.
E.g. in Arnórr 6, 11a, the majority reading is hreinskjaldar, which could be taken with gagn, hildr, or mǫnnum, hence ‘victory / battle / men of the bright shield’, all rather unexpected phrases. Should the unproblematic variant hreinskjaldaðr therefore be preferred?
h. Just how convoluted and fragmented can the arrangement of clauses in the helmingr be (cf. the famous disagreements between Finnur Jónsson and Kock on this point)?
j. Apo koinou: Some clause elements, e.g. adverbials, adjectives, apostrophes and nouns in gen. case, can be construed with more than one phrase or clause. For practical purposes, an editorial choice needs to be made as to which construction is dominant, while alternatives can be mentioned in a note (including the possibility that an adverbial qualifies the whole helmingr and not merely one clause within it).