Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/54

36 utmost minuteness. To the rules of metre, alliteration and rhyme, was added the elaborate apparatus of figurative paraphrases. The Edda-songs are as a rule noble and simple in style, but even here, especially in the youngest of them, those artificial tendencies begin to show themselves, which are so conspicuous and common in the compositions of the skalds, that they, considered as a whole, constitute one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of literature. The fundamental principle of this abnormity is found in all poetry. The poets of all lands and ages have striven to ornament and elevate their style by the use of figurative expressions; but the old Norse skalds carried the use of figures of speech to the extreme. Nothing is called by its right name, and the result is an obscurity and a distortion of language which, as a rule, make the skaldic verses unintelligible, except to those who possess the key to the metaphors. Indeed, the best Old Norse scholars would be unable to interpret many of the passages in the skaldic lays, if we did not fortunately have the Skáldskaparmál of the Younger Edda which gives us the key to many of these enigmas. The simplest metaphors used are those which, without being genuine paraphrases, express the thought in words that do not occur in common prose, or at least not in the sense in which they are used in poetry. Thus we find in the skaldic lays on the one hand a number of obsolete words, and, on the other, words used in their original sense, just as is the practice of poets in our time. Frequently a quality or effect is substituted for the name of an object, as when splendor is used instead of gold, etc. In this early skaldic poetry we find many ideas and phrases taken from the realm of mythology and legends of heroes, as when a spear is called Gungner after Odin's spear, or a horse Grane after the horse of Sigurd, the slayer of Fafner. But these figures of speech, and, of course, also, such as are borrowed from battle and war with which this whole poetry is so extensively interwoven, occur especially among the so-called Kenningar