Page:The Story of Egil Skallagrimsson.djvu/16

to unravel, may also cause additional trouble to the translator, who has to make new alliterations in place of old ones, that were perhaps ready to hand, but have disappeared by the rearranging of the words into something intelligible.

But the most curious characteristic of Icelandic poetry and the most difficult to deal with is the ‘kenning,' as it is called. It means 'a mark of recognition'; kennings are descriptive names or periphrases. Such phraseology we find, to some extent, in all ancient poetry, but it is most artificial in the Northern poets. It seems a principle with them seldom to call a thing or person by its plain name, but to use a periphrasis. These kennings are of very different kinds. Sometimes they are really poetical descriptions, figurative, but easily understood and appreciated, and apposite to the passage in which they occur. For instance, anyone can understand a sword in action being called a 'wound-snake' or 'wound-wolf,' arrows flying from the bow-string 'wound-bees,' a shield a ‘rimmed moon,' a ship 'sea-swan,' sea-horse ‘sea-king's steed.' 'Willow-render' (tree-render) for wind recalls the silvifraga flabra of Lucretius. But some kennings are extraordinary, especially when compound, as they often are. 'Dale-fish,' for example, is a curious roundabout for 'serpent'; then built upon this we find 'dale-fish-mercy,' for the season that cheers or enlivens the serpent, i.e., ‘summer.' We know that 'it is the bright day that brings forth the adder,' but very cumbrous is this kenning used in a verse of the Egla simply to mark the time of an exploit. Numerous are the kennings for 'gold,' 'man,' 'woman,' nor are these (as far as one can see) used with any reference to the fitness of each for the occasion.

Again, some of the kennings seem meant to be rather humorous than what we should call poetical, as when the head is 'hat-knoll,' 'hat-stall'; the eyes 'brow-pits'; the tongue 'song-pounder.' And certainly some were purposely enigmatical, meant to tax the ingenuity of the hearer to solve. Names of persons are hidden. Egil is supposed once to do this with the name of a woman; it is hidden so carefully that his friend Arinbjorn cannot discover it, nor have commentators satisfactorily found it yet. On another occasion Egil describes Arinbjorn by a kind of pun