Litla Skálda: Introduction

by Ann Sheffield for Mimisbrunnr.info, March 2024

 
What is Litla Skálda?

Litla Skálda – the name means something like “a little bit about poetry” – is a medieval Icelandic text that contains a succinct list of kennings and heiti that could be used in composing skaldic poetry. For anyone unfamiliar with Old Norse literature, that description may not be very helpful – what are kennings, heiti, and for that matter “skaldic” poetry? This Introduction begins with a short overview of these concepts before discussing Litla Skálda and related texts. An additional section describes the approach taken here to the translation of Litla Skálda. A final addendum discusses an obscure term for “heart” that appears in the text.

Skaldic Poetry and its Techniques

Skaldic poetry is an Old Norse poetic form with a particularly demanding set of rules governing meter, alliteration, and rhyme. The poets who created this type of poetry were called “skalds,” and many of them specialized in poems that praised the generosity and martial prowess of various rulers. The more skilful, complex, and difficult the poem, the more prestige it created for its subject, and the greater the reward that would be granted to the skald (or so the skalds hoped). 

Understanding skaldic poetry required some of the same skills as composing it. The natural word order of clauses and sentences was generally abandoned, and parts of two clauses were often mixed up with each other and had to be unscrambled by the listener. Some elevated vocabulary was essentially restricted to poetry and is rarely found in prose. Finally, skaldic poetry made liberal use of heiti and kennings, and the audience needed to be familiar with both to understand the poems. 

Heiti – literally “name(s)” – form part of the specialized vocabulary of poetry and include synonyms as well as aliases for named beings. For simple nouns, an analogy for heiti in English would be poetic terms for “horse” such as “steed,” “charger,” “palfrey,” etc.. As for aliases, the god Óðinn has dozens of known heiti ranging from Hár (“High One”) to Yggr (“Terrible One”), and the skalds could choose whatever heiti fit the metrical and other requirements of the verse they were composing.

A kenning is a particular type of metaphor that uses some noun (the “base-word”) modified by a descriptor (“the determinant”) to designate a different noun (the “referent”). An example from Litla Skálda is the kenning “bones of the earth” for “stones,” where “bones” is the base-word, “earth” is the determinant, and “stones” is the referent, i.e., what the kenning means. Kennings can also take the form of compounds. For example, “heather-haddock” is a kenning for “serpent”: as it says in Litla Skálda, “It is correct to call serpents by the names of fishes or whales if they are kenned with some land, with lava-field, grass, or gravel, rocky slope or heath.” Thus, in the kenning “heather-haddock”: “haddock,” a fish, is the base-word; “heather,” a type of landscape, is the determinant; and “serpent” is the referent.

Readers interested in learning more about skaldic poetry are recommended to consult Margaret Clunies Ross’s “General Introduction” to the series Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages” (2012), which is freely available online (see the Works Cited section below for the link).

Litla Skálda and Snorri’s Edda

Litla Skálda is not the only medieval Icelandic work to explain heiti and kennings. Far better known, both to the interested public and to scholars of Old Norse, is Snorri Sturluson’s prose Edda. It consists of four parts:

  1. A Prologue in which Snorri, a Christian living in a Christian society, explains why he will be writing about Heathen gods and exhorts readers not to believe in them.

  2. Gylfaginning (“The Deluding of Gylfi”), a collection of stories about the Heathen gods.

  3. Skáldskaparmál (“The Matter of Poetic Composition”), which includes explanations of heiti and kennings along with examples of poetry by various skalds that illustrate the use of these techniques. This section also includes additional tales of gods and heroes to explain the origins of some of the kennings discussed.

  4. Háttatal (“List of Meters”), a long poem composed by Snorri himself in which he demonstrates the use of multiple subcategories of skaldic meter.

The main manuscript of the prose Edda, generally known as the Codex Regius (formally GKS 2367 4to), has been the focus of most editors, scholars, and translators. The Edda, however, also appears in several other manuscripts, in whole or in part (for a detailed description of the extant Edda manuscripts and their contents, see Guðrún Nordal 2001: 44–72). Two of these manuscripts are also our witnesses for Litla Skálda and will be considered in more detail.

AM 748 I b 4to, known familiarly to scholars as manuscript A, dates to 1300–1325 (Guðrún Nordal 1001: 57); it is the earliest extant manuscript that contains Litla Skálda. AM 757 a 4to, known as B, is somewhat later (c. 1400; Guðrún Nordal 2001: 64). There is considerable overlap in the contents of A and B, and their language is virtually identical in many places (including most of Litla Skálda), so both are thought to stem from the same (lost) original. Both A and B contain:

  • The Third Grammatical Treatise, which was composed c. 1250 by Snorri’s nephew Óláfr Þórðarson and covers Old Norse phonetics, orthography, and rhetoric (Raschellà 1993: 237).

  • Litla Skálda.

  • A description of the binding of the wolf Fenrir (frá Fenrisúlfi), which is sometimes considered to be part of Litla Skálda and sometimes considered to be a separate section. In both this Introduction and our translation, we have chosen to treat frá Fenrisúlfi as part of Litla Skálda, though we take no position on when or how it was incorporated.

  • Part of Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál (Ch. 45 onwards).

  • Þulur (lists of heiti)

Manuscript A also contains part of the Fifth Grammatical Treatise, some eddic poetry, and Haukr Valdísarson’s skaldic poem Íslendingadrápa, which lauds several heroes from Icelandic history. Manuscript B omits these sections but adds some poetic material from the earlier chapters of Skáldskaparmál and some Christian devotional poetry.

Guðrún Nordal convincingly argues that these two manuscripts are not just a random assemblage of material but instead reflect a complete and coherent introduction to skaldic poetry (2001: 231–32):

It is not possible to interpret Skáldskaparmál in B and A without taking into account the other material in the manuscripts: Skáldskaparmál is not to be interpreted in the context of the other parts of the Snorra Edda, Gylfaginning and Háttatal, but in the context of Litla Skálda and Óláfr Þórðarson’s Third Grammatical Treatise, which concentrate on the interpretation of the kenning. A new skaldic treatise emerges when we follow the writers of these two manuscripts and connect Litla Skálda, the section on the wolf, and Skáldskaparmál.

Mikael Males further observes that the portion of Skáldskaparmál transmitted in A and B omits most of Snorri’s narrative material about Norse mythology; instead, the text which is retained serves as “a collection of poetic examples to follow the descriptive text of Litla Skálda” (2020: 110).

As for where and when the text now known as Litla Skálda – the name was coined by Karl Müllenhoff in the nineteenth century (Guðrun Nordal 2001: 374) – was composed, the handful of scholars who have considered this text have reached differing conclusions. Most of their analyses rely heavily on a close examination of kennings that are unique to Litla Skálda, or that have different meanings in Litla Skálda than they do in Skáldskaparmál, and on a consideration of where these kennings appear in the Old Norse poetic corpus generally. Guðrún Nordal concludes that Litla Skálda was probably created “perhaps a generation later than Snorri” (2001: 288). Inger Helene Solvin disagrees: she argues that Litla Skálda predates Skáldskaparmál and was written perhaps as early as c. 1170 (2015: 112);  Males goes further and suggests that Litla Skálda was one of Snorri’s sources (2020: 102). In a nuanced analysis, Judith Jesch considers Litla Skálda in the context of the medieval literary culture of the Orkney Islands and concludes that “[i]t is not possible to decide” whether the distinctive kennings and vocabulary in Litla Skálda “are typically twelfth-century, typically Orcadian, or perhaps both” (2009: 159).

An extended discussion of one type of kenning will serve to illustrate the kind of approach taken by these scholars and to demonstrate the possible connection with Orkney suggested by Jesch. According to Litla Skálda, one of the kennings for “gold” (an extremely popular referent in skaldic poetry) is “snow or ice of the hand/arm.” Presumably, this kenning was originally suggested by the way that snow and ice glitter. In Skáldskaparmál, however, Snorri gives a different meaning, “silver,” for this kenning (Faulkes (ed.) 1998: 61; trans. Sheffield):

Gull er kallat í kenningum eldr handar […] þvíat þat er rautt, en silfr snær eða svell eða héla þvíat þat er hvítt.

In kennings, gold is called fire of the hand […] because it is red, but silver [is called] snow or ice-lump or hoarfrost because it is white.

Solvin suggests that this distinction between red fire/gold and white ice/silver may have been introduced by the twelfth-century skald Einarr Skúlason, who seems to have been a major source for Snorri’s work (2015: 94).

In support of Solvin’s suggestion, a twelfth-century poem from the Orcadian tradition agrees with Litla Skálda in its use of snow/ice in kennings for gold rather than silver, as Jesch points out (2009: 156); the discussion below builds on Jesch’s observations. The skaldic poem Háttalykill inn forni (“The Old Key to Meters”) was probably composed in the 1140’s or 1150’s by Rögnvaldr Kali Kolsson, jarl of Orkney, and an Icelander in his following named Hallr Þórarinsson breiðmaga (Gade “Introduction” 2017: 1001–2). As edited and translated by Kari Ellen Gade, the first helming (half) of st 8 of the poem reads (Háttalykill 2017: 1016):

Atli tók öðling frœknan
— es svá rétt saga þessi —
— eptir frá alnar driptum —
ekki mjúkr sonum Gjúka*.

Atli, not gentle to the sons of Gjúki <legendary king> [= Gunnar and Högni], seized the brave prince; he asked about the snow-drifts of the arm [SILVER]; thus this tale is right.

The relevant kenning is indicated in bold text above, where Gade interprets “snow-drifts of the arm” to mean “silver,” but the context of both this stanza and the one that precedes it make clear that the poem is referring to the cursed treasure of the Rhine, which is usually described as consisting of  gold. In fact, st 7, to which st 8 is a direct response, refers to this same treasure using multiple kennings that are universally accepted to mean “gold” (Gade (ed. and trans.) Háttalykill 2017: 1015):

Gunnarr réð grundu linna;
gætti vel digra mæta;
Faðmis láð fengu þjóðir
færi heldr, an skapligt væri.
Lestir réð loks at kasta
— lofðungs brögð ýtar sögðu —
urðar lax œskijörðu
út á Rín Fenris sútar.

Gunnarr governed the ground of snakes [GOLD]; he guarded the large treasures well; rather fewer people received Faðmir’s <serpent’s> land [GOLD] than was fitting. The destroyer of the sorrow [GLADDENER] of Fenrir <wolf> [WARRIOR] finally decided to throw the desired earth of the salmon of the rocky slope [SERPENT > GOLD] out into the Rhine; men recounted the ruses of the ruler.

Thus, consistent with Litla Skálda, “snow-drifts of the arm” almost certainly means “gold,” not “silver,” in Háttalykill 8. Moreover, in stanza 56, the same poem uses multiple kennings of the “enemy/distributor of gold” type to praise the generosity of a ruler (Gade (ed. and trans.) Háttalykill 2017: 1065):

Morð óx (mildingr sparði)
mjök (lítt diguljökla);
lét ósa röf ræsir
rétt bjúg á her fljúga.
Fira sættir rak flótta
fúss trauðr vita lauðar;
þollr vas geirs, en gulli,
góðr, illr, kyni þjóðar.

The battle intensified much; little did the generous one spare crucible-glaciers [SILVER]; the ruler made bent amber of estuaries [GOLD] fly straight at the army. The reconciler of people [JUST RULER], reluctant to flee, eager, pursued the beacon of the furnace [GOLD]; the tree of the spear [WARRIOR] was good to the kin of men, but bad to gold.

Given that, not only do two other kennings in the same stanza refer to gold, but also that “gold” (gull) is mentioned explicitly, it is very probable that diguljökla (a compound of digull, which can mean either “crucible” or “congealed drop,” and the genitive plural form of jökull “glacier”),  refers to gold as well, Gade’s interpretation as “silver” notwithstanding. This stanza provides additional confirmation that the distinction between white/ice/silver and red/fire/gold described by Snorri did not apply in all contexts, especially early and/or Orcadian ones.

Similar arguments can be made about other distinctive features of Litla Skálda, as the works previously cited demonstrate in detail. For the present purpose, the important conclusion is that Litla Skálda is not a derivative or inferior version of Skáldskaparmál; rather, it has independent value as a source of information about Old Norse poetics.

This importance of Litla Skálda to the study of Old Norse poetry is one reason we believe that it is worth translating into English. Another is that its relatively simple, direct treatment of kennings and heiti makes it more accessible than Skáldskaparmál, which intersperses direct explanations with illustrative examples of skaldic poetry, some of it fiendishly difficult. A reader who peruses Litla Skálda can acquire a good sense of how kennings work relatively quickly and easily, and we therefore feel that it offers an excellent introduction to this aspect of Old Norse poetry. In addition, the mythological materials in Litla Skálda, such as the description of King Fróði’s mill and the tale of the binding of Fenrir, complement the versions found in other sources.

Finally, we think it worth noting a distinctive aspect of Litla Skálda that, as far as we know, has not been remarked in previous work: many of the kennings it describes are decidedly less courtly and elevated than in those in Skáldskaparmál. Some relate to the world of nature – winter is “the sleep of bears,” night is “the grief of birds” – or to everyday life –  a dog is a “troll of bones,” the nose is the “house of snot.” Litla Skálda also includes kennings designed to be insulting: “feeder of swine” for a man, or “goddess of the piss-trough” for a woman, for example. In Skáldskaparmál, on the other hand, as Kevin Wanner notes (2008: 128):

It is generally agreed that the referents to which Snorri gives most attention were those most crucial for composing skaldic encomia: these include terms for kings and rulers, warriors and things of war, the sea and ships, and gold.

Wanner further contends that Snorri’s work was intended in large part for King Hákon Hákonarson of Norway and his court (2008: 121), an audience for whom some of the more down-to-earth kennings in Litla Skálda would have been disastrously inappropriate. It is not necessary to accept this aspect of Wanner’s argument, however, to appreciate the general difference in tone between Litla Skálda and Skáldskaparmál. For us, the more human touch perceptible in Litla Skálda is one of its most appealing features.

About This Translation

Various scholars have previously translated specific kennings in Litla Skálda to support their arguments, and Guðrún Nordal offers a complete translation of frá Fenrisúlfi in her book Tools of Literacy (2001: 228). To the best of our knowledge, however, the present work represents the first published translation of the whole of Litla Skálda (including frá Fenrisúlfi) into English.

We have relied primarily on the text edited by Finnur Jónsson as “Den lille Skálda” in his edition of Snorri’s prose Edda (1931: 255–59). However, Finnur omits both the verses that Litla Skálda quotes from Grímnismál (which differ slightly from the versions in the Codex Regius text of the poetic Edda) and frá Fenrisúlfi. For the former, we based our translation on the text published by Heimir Pálsson, which he normalizes to modern Icelandic (2015: 11). For the latter, we used the text of frá Fenrisúlfi published by Guðrún Nordal (2001: 228). In cases of difficult or puzzling readings, we have also consulted the digitized images of manuscripts A and B at the handrit.is website.

In general, we have attempted to translate the text as directly and literally as possible. Though we have occasionally changed the word-order and punctuation to accord with standard English usage, we have otherwise resisted the urge to make the translation more “readable” and have preferred instead to attempt to give something of the flavor of the Old Norse original. To that end, we have sometimes left terms with no satisfactory English equivalent untranslated; these are explained in the endnotes, which also comment on some of the mythological references in Litla Skálda and on significant differences from other versions of the same stories. In both the translation and this Introduction, we have changed the Old Norse vowel represented by a hooked “o” to “ö” for compatibility with a wider range of fonts and software. The Norse characters Þ/þ (unvoiced “th”) and Ð/ð (voiced “th”), however, have been retained in proper names, which are given in the nominative case throughout.

Addendum: A Note on eisköld

In a list of kennings for “heart,” Litla Skálda includes the unusual term eisköld. The etymology of this word is, as Jan de Vries notes, obscure, and he summarizes various suggestions that have been offered to explain the meaning “heart” (1977: 98). The most straightforward reading of eisköld would seem to be as a compound of elements related to ON eisa, “glowing embers,” and kaldr, “cold.”

Compounding the difficulty in interpreting eisköld is its rarity: apart from its appearance in Litla Skálda (in the A manuscript only), it appears only in some lists of heiti, in the eddic poem Fáfnismál, and in a skaldic poem by Illugi Bryndœlaskáld (Males 2020: 139). Both Litla Skálda and the lists of heiti presumably include it based on its occurrence in poetry. Fáfnismál and Illugi’s verse are the only extant poems that use the word, so they are our only clues to its meaning. In Fáfnismál 27, Reginn has set the hero Sigurðr to roasting the heart of the dragon Fáfnir (Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (eds.) 2014b: 308; trans. Sheffield):

Reginn kvað:

“Sitti nú, Sigurðr,
en ek mun sofa ganga,
ok halt Fáfnis hjarta við funa;
eiskǫld

ek vil etin láta
eptir þenna dreyra drykk.”

Reginn said:

“Sit now, Sigurðr
(but I will go to sleep),
and guard Fáfnir’s heart against flame;
eiskǫld

I want to have eaten
after the drink of blood.”

Eisköld is generally assumed to be a synonym for hjarta, the usual word for “heart” that occurs in the preceding line. Since Reginn is planning to eat the heart, however, a literal meaning of “cold ember” is also possible: he may be stating his intention to eat the roasted heart once it has cooled.

Illugi’s stanza is part of a praise-poem composed for Haraldr harðráði that dates to the eleventh century. The second stanza reads (Gade (ed. and trans.) 2009: 283–84):

Enn helt ulfa brynnir
— eiskaldi gramr beisku
mildr réð orms of eldi —
austrför þaðan görva.

Again the thirst-quencher of wolves [WARRIOR] embarked on a well-prepared expedition eastward; the generous ruler moved the bitter heart of the snake across the fire.

Gade interprets the final clause of her translation as a direct allusion to the myth related in Fáfnismál (Gade (ed. and trans.) 2009: 283–84), an interpretation supported by a reference to dragon-slaying in the preceding stanza (Gade (ed. and trans.) 2009: 282–83). Dating eddic poems such as Fáfnismál cannot be definitive because oral versions of the poems may have been in circulation long before the surviving texts were written down. Thus, it is conceivable that Illugi knew a version of Fáfnismál similar to the extant text, interpreted eisköld as a synonym for heart, and used it as such in his poem; this interpretation would then have been propagated in lists of heiti based on his poem or on a similar interpretation of Fáfnismál.

In other words, eisköld might originally not have meant “heart” at all but could have acquired this meaning based on a particular reading of Fáfnismál. We have chosen to translate it as “cold ember” in Litla Skálda because this is our best guess at its literal meaning, but regardless of its history, by the time Litla Skálda was composed, it was evidently understood to be a heiti for “heart.”

 

Works Cited

Manuscripts

Primary Sources (listed by editor)

  • Clunies Ross, Margaret (ed. and trans.). 2017. “Ragnarsdrápa.” By Bragi inn gamli Boddason. In Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold, 27–46. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols.

  • Faulkes, Anthony (ed.). 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. 1. Introduction, Text and Notes. By Snorri Sturluson. London: Viking Society for Northern Research.

  • ———. 2005. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. By Snorri Sturluson. 2nd ed. London: Viking Society for Northern Research.

  • Finnur Jónsson (ed). 1931. ‘Den lille Skálda’ (AM 748. 757).” 1931. In Edda Snorra Sturlusonar udgivet efter håndskrifterne. Ed. Finnur Jónsson, 255–259. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel – Nordisk Forlag. https://archive.org/details/edda-snorra-sturlusonar/page/255/mode/2up. Last accessed 29 February 2024.

  • Gade, Kari Ellen (ed. and trans.). 2017. “Háttalykill”. By Rögnvaldr jarl Kali Kolsson and Hallr Þórarinson breiðmaga. In Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold, 1009–93. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols.

  • ———. 2009. “Poem about Haraldr harðráði.” By Illugi Bryndœlaskáld. In Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Ed. Kari Ellen Gade, 282–285. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols. 

  • Heimir Pálsson (ed.). 2015. “Texti Litlu Skáldu.” In “Hugsað um Litlu Skáldu: Kennslubæker og kennsla á miðöldum” By Heimir Pálsson, 8–12. Netla – Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands. https://netla.hi.is/greinar/2015/alm/004.pdf. Last accessed 29 February 2024.

  • Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (eds.). 2014a. Eddukvæði I: Goðakvæði. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka fornritafélag. 

  • ———. 2014b. Eddukvæði II: Hetjukvæði, . Ed. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka fornritafélag. 

  • Snorri Sturluson: see Faulkes (ed.).

    Secondary sources

  • Clunies Ross, Margaret (ed.). 2012. “General Introduction.” In Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Ed. by Diana Whaley. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols. https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=doc&i=674. Last accessed 29 February 2024.

  • de Vries, Jan. 1977. Altnordischses etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill. https://archive.org/details/nordischesetymologischesworterbuch/page/n149/mode/2up. Last accessed 29 February 2024.

  • Gade, Kari Ellen. 2017. “Háttalykill: Introduction”. In Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold, 1001–1009. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols.

  • Guðrún Nordal. 2001. Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto.

  • Jesch, Judith. 2009. “The Orcadian Links of Snorra Edda.” In Snorres Edda i europeisk og islandsk kultur. Ed. Jon Gunnar Jørgensen, 145–172. Reykholt: Snorrastofna.

  • Males, Mikael. 2020. The Poetic Genesis of Old Icelandic Literature. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

  • Raschellà, Fabrizio D.. 1993. “Grammatical Treatises.” In Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf, 235–237. New York: Garland.

  • Solvin, Inger Helene. 2015. Litla Skálda – Islands første poetiske avhandlung? Et forsøk på å etablere en relativ kronologi mellom Skáldskaparmál og Litla Skálda. MA dissertation, Oslo University. ttps://docplayer.me/docview/50/26556911/#file=/storage/50/26556911/26556911.pdf. Last  accessed 29 February 2024.

  • Wanner, Kevin J.. 2008. Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medieval Scandinavia. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto.