78
is helped by the spelling
Eigils which achieves
the required full match between <
eig>s of
Eigils and
deiga, yet this requirement is only
met visually. This line thus runs contrary to the
rules of classical
dróttkvætt: skaldic poetry
functioned as
oral poetry and thus by definition
excluded such devices as eye-rhymes.
17
It is important to point out, too, that a few
of the full stem-rhymes (
aðalhendingar)
employed by our poet clearly mark his text as
late. The following lines illustrate this: in 7.6,
where the late, and etymologically wrong,
form
trǫll (ON has
troll) is in
aðalhending with
Hǫllu, a correct ON form; in 6.2, where the late
form
bustum (ON has
burstum) is in
aðalhending with
musteris, a correct ON form
that never had an -
r- before -
st; in 4.8, where
geyfu is in
aðalhending with
dreifir only
thanks to 18
th
-century and MI pronounciation
of dipthongs
ey and
ei as identical, which was
not the case in ON.
Noun Phrase Word Order
Several stanzas of the poem exhibit a peculiar
treatment of prepositional phrases with
compounds: normal expressions like
í Svínadal
are metrically packaged as
dal í Svína, as in
line 3.7. This is a curious case.
The first impression is that this specific
arrangement is ‘naturally’ forced by rules of
classical
dróttkvætt: as this noun phrase is
about to be put at the end of the line, it must
match the requirement for filling of the close,
and so end in a long disyllable. This can only
be achieved by splitting the
Svínadal
compound in two and putting the monosyllable
dal somewhere else, so that the line ends with
the long disyllable of
Svína. Splittings and
word order inversions that resemble this
do
happen in classical
dróttkvætt syntax (splits are
also discussed in “Features Retained from
Classical
dróttkvætt” below).
The most famous case of such a split +
inversion is probably by Egill Skallagrímsson,
in a stanza from
Egils saga 47 (also
Skj B-1
43–6.4):
í dal-miskunn fiska. What Egill does
is, first, coin a three-stem nonce kenning for
SUMMER
,
dal-fiska miskunn (
dal- [bare stem of
n.masc.
dalr ‘valley, dale’],
fiska [n.masc.gen.pl.
of
fiskr ‘fish’],
miskunn [n.fem.nom/dat/acc.sg
‘mercy’, lit. ‘mis-knowledge’]). Literally it
reads ‘the mercy of fishes of the valley’: fish
of the valley >
SNAKE
, mercy of
SNAKE
>
SUMMER
;
18
notice that Egill’s coinage is a
three-stem compound,
not a two-stem one like
Svínadal. Yet Egill cannot use this ‘correct’
word order if the kenning is to be put at the end
of the line (as it is), because the compound
mis-
kunn does not meet the requirements of the
close (see above): the first syllable of this word
is short while the second is long, ruling out a
position in the close. Nor can Egill put
dal-
fiska in the close –
dal- alliterates with words
dáð and
drýgja of the previous line, and, being
a single-syllable word, thus cannot occupy the
position in front of the close because of the rule
we discussed in the previous section. So, the
second thing Egill has to do is to
split the three
stems of the kenning (the nature of kenning as
a compound noun specifically allows for this)
and re-arrange them in a different order, so that
fiska, being a long disyllable and perfectly
matching
the requirements of the close, comes
last, while
dal- comes first. The resulting
sequence
í dalmiskunn fiska [‘in the mercy of
the valley of fishes’] makes no sense at all
unless one reverse-engineers the metrical
packaging process and re-assembles the
elements in correct order; such reverse-
engineering is a typical syntactic process
involved in the parsing of classical
dróttkvætt
(e.g. Sverdlov 2009). We have to resort to
similar reverse-engineering in the case of our
poet’s
dal í Svína for it to make sense. The
similarity between classical
dróttkvætt and the
metre of
our poet ends, however, right here.
Classical
dróttkvætt allows such split-and-
rearrange operations to be carried out for its
kenning-compounds, not for regular compounds
it employs; this is because such reverse-
engineering is only possible thanks to the
existence and use of kenning-models as
recognition patterns, and thanks to the
existence of kenning metrical packaging rules
that are specific to them. Splitting a phrase
around a preposition is not common in
classical
dróttkvætt, although it is sometimes
found in the same final four positions of a
line.
19
Our poet does this repeatedly in the final
four positions of a line: 2.2
geðs í bygðum; 3.8
knjám í Bolla; 5.3
dóms í drauma; and 7.7.
dal
í Skorra. Such splits are typical for certain
rímur (e.g.
Sǫrla rímur), which seems the more
likely source of influence here.