Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/52

34 and each of these halves is again divided into two parts, which form a fourth part of the whole strophe, and contain two lines belonging together and united by alliteration. The nature of this alliteration, which also occurs frequently in prose far down in the middle ages, especially when something is to be fixed in the memory, as for instance laws, proverbs and the like, when applied to poetry, is this, that in the two lines belonging together, three words occur (in the oldest poems frequently only two), beginning with the same letters, two of which must be in the first, while the third is usually at the beginning of the second line. The third and last of these letters is called the chief letter (höfuðstafr, head-stave), because it is regarded as ruling over the two others, which depend on it, and have the name sub-letters (studlar, supporters). The lines are metrically divided into accented and unaccented syllables. These simple rules of versification govern the lays of the Edda. The principal metre is the so-called Fornyrðalag, with two feet or accents in each of the eight verses or lines. Still we also find exceptions to this rule in the Edda, some of the poems being written in the so-called Ljóðaháttr, a strophe of six lines, of which the third and sixth are alliterated independently, while the first and second, and the fourth and fifth, belong together.

In the age of the skaids there is a much greater variety