A kenning (Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech, a figuratively phrased compound term that is used in place of a simple single-word noun. For instance, the Old English kenning () means , as does ().
A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant. So in whale's road, road is the base-word, and whale's is the determinant. This is the same structure as in the modern English term skyscraper; the base-word here would be scraper, and the determinant sky. In some languages, kennings can recurse, with one element of the kenning being replaced by another kenning.
Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse–Icelandic and Old English alliterative verse. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including ) for centuries, together with the closely related . Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do the parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side. The lack of grammatical cases in modern English makes this aspect of kennings difficult to translate. Kennings are now rarely used in English, but are still used in the Germanic language family.
Etymology
The word kenning is used in manuscripts of Snorri Sturluson's Edda to refer to this kind of poetic construction, and its use in English in this context is taken directly from Old Norse.
The corresponding modern verb to ken survives in Scots and English dialects and in general English through 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, , and canny, . Modern Scots retains (with slight differences between dialects) , or , Afrikaans and and . Old Norse ( (Modern Icelandic , Swedish (to feel or to know of), Danish (same as Swedish but closer "to know" as føle is the Danish word for "to feel"), Norwegian or (to understand or to know)) is cognate with Old English , Old Frisian , , Old Saxon () , Middle Dutch and Dutch , Old High German (, , ) (Middle High German and German ), Gothic < Proto-Germanic , originally causative of which is the same in modern swedish "att kunna (kan)", whence Modern English can . The word ultimately derives from , the same Proto-Indo-European root that yields Modern English know, Latin-derived terms such as cognition and ignorant, and Greek .
Structure Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive phrase ( = (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 3)) or a compound word ( = (Anon.: Hervararkviða 27)). The simplest kennings consist of a base-word (Icelandic , German ) and a determinant (Icelandic , German ) 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 and , the determinants and . The unstated noun which the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case: .
The base-word of the kenning ( [SWORD], Einarr Skúlason: Øxarflokkr 9) is () and the determinant is (). The referent is .
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, and are distinctively poetic lexemes; the normal word for in Old Norse prose is .
Complex kennings The skalds also employed complex kennings in which the determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself made up of a further kenning: = = (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 6); = = (Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1) (referring to carrion birds scavenging after a battle). Where one kenning is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be .Faulkes (1999), p. 5/12.
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: = = = (Steinunn Refsdóttir: Lausavísa 2).
If the figure comprises more than three elements, it is said to be "extended". Kennings of up to seven elements are recorded in skaldic verse. Snorri himself characterises five-element kennings as an acceptable license but cautions against more extreme constructions: "The ninth [license] is extending a kenning to the fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it."Faulkes 1991, 8:29–31; Faulkes 1987, 172. The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórðr Sjáreksson and reads , which simply means .
Word order and comprehension Word order in Old Norse was generally much freer than in Modern English because Old Norse and Old English are synthetic languages, where added prefixes and suffixes to the root word (the core noun, verb, adjective or adverb) carry grammatical meanings, whereas Middle English and Modern English use word order to carry grammatical information, as analytic languages. This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between a base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word (tmesis). Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is usually less than it would be if an English text were subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate morphology of Old Norse.
Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to the same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an "enemy of gold", "attacker of treasure", "destroyer of arm-rings", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional,Faulkes (1997), pp. 11–17, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake.Faulkes (1997), p. 15.
Semantics Kennings could be developed into extended, and sometimes vivid, metaphors: (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 6); (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 7).Faulkes (1997), p. 24. Snorri calls such examples and exemplifies them in verse 6 of his Háttatal. The effect here seems to depend on an interplay of more or less naturalistic imagery and jarring artifice. But the skalds were not averse either to arbitrary, purely decorative, use of kennings: "That is, a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even when it is in the form of a man's arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the mention of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at all and does not contribute to the picture of the battle being described" (Faulkes (1997), pp. 8–9).
Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms (Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6), and his nephew called the practice (Óláfr hvítaskáld: Third Grammatical Treatise 80).Faulkes (1997), pp. 24–25. In spite of this, it seems that "many poets did not object to and some must have preferred baroque juxtapositions of unlike kennings and neutral or incongruous verbs in their verses" (Foote & Wilson (1970), p. 332). E.g. (Einarr skálaglamm: Vellekla 1).
Sometimes there is a kind of redundancy whereby the referent of the whole kenning, or a kenning for it, is embedded: = = (Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1); = = = (Anon.: Líknarbraut 42).
While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on a knowledge of specific myths or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically (Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3) or described in mythical terms as (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 19), referring to the idea that the sky was made out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according to certain conventions without reference to a specific story: = (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5).
Poets in medieval Iceland even treated Christian themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings complete with allusions to heathen myths and aristocratic epithets for saints: = 'Saint Catherine' (Kálfr Hallsson: Kátrínardrápa 4).
Kennings of the type AB, where B routinely has the characteristic A and thus this AB is tautological, tend to mean "like B in that it has the characteristic A", e.g. , tautological because the god Njörðr by nature has his own shield, means , i.e. . A modern English example is "painted Jezebel" as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics.
Kennings may include proper names. A modern example of this is an ad hoc usage by a helicopter ambulance pilot: "the Heathrow of hang gliders" for the hills behind Hawes in Yorkshire in England, when he found the air over the emergency site crowded with hang-gliders.the Really (TV channel) television program Helicopter Heroes
Sometimes a name given to one well-known member of a species is used to mean any member of that species. For example, Old Norse means , but Old Norse mythology mentions a horse named Valr, and thus in Old Norse poetry is sometimes used to mean .
Ellipsis A term may be omitted from a well-known kenning: (Haraldr Harðráði: Lausavísa 19). The full expression implied here is = = = (characterised according to convention as wearing golden jewellery, the arm-kenning being a reference to falconry). The poet relies on listeners' familiarity with such conventions to carry the meaning.Gordon (1956), p. 250.
Definitions Some scholars take the term kenning broadly to include any noun-substitute consisting of two or more elements, including merely descriptive epithets (such as Old Norse = (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)),Meissner (1921), p. 2. while others would restrict it to metaphorical instances (such as Old Norse = (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)),Heusler (1941), p. 137. specifically those where "[t]he base-word identifies the referent with something which it is not, except in a specially conceived relation which the poet imagines between it and the sense of the limiting element'" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Some even exclude naturalistic metaphors such as Old English = or = : "A metaphor is a kenning only if it contains an incongruity between the referent and the meaning of the base-word; in the kenning the limiting word is essential to the figure because without it the incongruity would make any identification impossible" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Descriptive epithets are a common literary device in many parts of the world, whereas kennings in this restricted sense are a distinctive feature of Old Norse and, to a lesser extent, Old English poetry.Gardner (1969), pp. 109–110.
Snorri's own usage, however, seems to fit the looser sense: "Snorri uses the term 'kenning' to refer to a structural device, whereby a person or object is indicated by a periphrastic description containing two or more terms (which can be a noun with one or more dependent genitives or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures)" (Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv). The term is certainly applied to non-metaphorical phrases in Skáldskaparmál: Faulkes (1998 a), p. 78/17, 22. Likewise in Háttatal: .