Kenning

A kenning (Old Norse pronunciation: *, Modern Icelandic pronunciation: ) is a type of circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Old English poetry. A kenning (Old Norse pronunciation: *, Modern Icelandic pronunciation: ) is a type of circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Old English poetry. They usually consist of two words, and are often hyphenated. For example, Old Norse poets might replace sverð 'sword' with an abstract compound such as 'wound-hoe' (Egill Skallagrímsson: Höfuðlausn 8) or a genitive phrase such as randa íss 'ice of shields' (Einarr Skúlason: Øxarflokkr 9). Modern scholars have also applied the term kenning to similar figures of speech in other languages, especially Old English. The word was adopted into English in the nineteenth century from medieval Icelandic treatises on poetics, in particular the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, and derives ultimately from the Old Norse verb kenna 'know, recognise; perceive, feel; show; teach', etc., as used in the expression kenna við 'to name after; to express in terms of ', 'name after; refer to in terms of', and kenna til 'qualify by, make into a kenning by adding'. The corresponding modern verb to ken survives only in Scots and highly remote English dialects, other than the derivative existing in the standard language in the set expression beyond one's ken, 'beyond the scope of one's knowledge' and in the phonologically altered forms uncanny, 'surreal' or 'supernatural', and canny, 'shrewd', 'prudent'. Modern Scots retains (with slight differences between dialects) tae ken 'to know', kent 'knew' or 'known', Afrikaans ken 'be acquainted with' and ' to know' and kennis 'knowledge'. Old Norse kenna (Modern Icelandic kenna, Swedish känna, Danish kende, Norwegian kjenne or kjenna) is cognate with Old English cennan, Old Frisian kenna, kanna, Old Saxon (ant)kennian (Middle Dutch and Dutch kennen), Old High German (ir-, in-, pi-) chennan (Middle High German and German kennen), Gothic kannjan < Proto-Germanic *kannjanan, originally causative of *kunnanan 'to know (how to)', whence Modern English can 'to be able' (from the same Proto-Indo-European root as Modern English know and Latin-derived cognition). Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive phrase (báru fákr 'wave's horse' = 'ship' (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 3)) or a compound word (gjálfr-marr 'sea-steed' = 'ship' (Anon.: Hervararkviða 27)). The simplest kennings consist of a base-word (Icelandic stofnorð, German Grundwort) and a determinant (Icelandic kenniorð, German Bestimmung) which qualifies, or modifies, the meaning of the base-word. The determinant may be a noun used uninflected as the first element in a compound word, with the base-word constituting the second element of the compound word. Alternatively the determinant may be a noun in the genitive case placed before or after the base-word, either directly or separated from the base-word by intervening words. Thus the base-words in these examples are fákr 'horse' and marr 'steed', the determinants báru 'waves' and gjálfr 'sea'. The unstated noun which the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case: skip 'ship'. In Old Norse poetry, either component of a kenning (base-word, determinant or both) could consist of an ordinary noun or a heiti 'poetic synonym'. In the above examples, fákr and marr are distinctively poetic lexemes; the normal word for 'horse' in Old Norse prose is hestr. The skalds also employed complex kennings in which the determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself made up of a further kenning: grennir gunn-más 'feeder of war-gull' = 'feeder of raven' = 'warrior' (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 6); eyðendr arnar hungrs 'destroyers of eagle's hunger' = 'feeders of eagle' = 'warrior' (Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1) (referring to carnivorous birds scavenging after a battle). Where one kenning is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be tvíkent 'doubly determined, twice modified'. Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that makes up the determinant is attached uninflected to the front of the base-word of the whole kenning to form a compound word: mög-fellandi mellu 'son-slayer of giantess' = 'slayer of sons of giantess' = 'slayer of giants' = 'the god Thor' (Steinunn Refsdóttir: Lausavísa 2).