Blood-Snakes and Weapon-Assemblies: Objects and Animacy in Skaldic Kennings and Heiðreks gátur
Building on the preceding explorations of objects as participants in distributive networks of agency, I now consider how similar dynamics of materiality, entanglement and animacy manifest in skaldic kennings and
Heiðreks gátur. We have seen how material entanglement underpins myths of cosmogony and aetiology, and how it extends into the very mechanism of the kenning, which transforms one thing (the base-word, e.g. ‘blood’) into another (the referent, e.g. ‘sea’) through linguistic substitution – ‘dreyri vengis’ (‘blood of the land [SEA]’).
1 Óttarr svarti, Hǫfuðlausn 3, SkP I, 745. This alchemical quality aligns with a broader poetic interest in the animacy of nonhuman entities, drawing audiences into an enriched perception of objects, plants and animals. Eddic riddles likewise imagine nonhuman materials as dynamic, vocal and emotive, blurring the boundaries between human and nonhuman.
Both these poetic discourses rely on anthropomorphism (and zoomorphism) in their engagements with objects and material animacy. Anthropomorphism is a double-edged sword for human consideration of the nonhuman: on the one hand, as Jane Bennett suggests, anthropomorphism can work against anthropocentrism (‘a chord is struck between person and thing, and I am no longer above or outside a nonhuman “environment”’).
2 Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC, 2010), p. 120. On the other hand, it can diminish the distinctiveness of the nonhuman by forcing it into human terms; as Abram notes, ‘to make a (nonhuman) thing more like a human (thing) is to make it less like itself’.
3 ‘Kennings and Things’, pp. 178–9. This duality is apparent in skaldic verse, where we find kennings that, while attentive to the ‘lives’ of nonhuman phenomena, interpret nonhuman experiences through the language of human suffering. For instance, fire is ‘angr ýs’ (‘sorrow of the yew’)
4 Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld, Lausavísur 18, SkP I, 829. and wind is ‘almsorg’ (‘grief of the elm’).
5 Einarr Skúlason, Fragments 16, SkP III, 166. The shared empathy between humans and trees evoked by these kennings also resonates with the mythological association of people with trees (wood being the material from which humans were created; Gylf., ch. 9; Vsp. 17). Similarly, in weapon-kennings, the interaction between weapons and armour is anthropomorphised as emotional hurt: ‘bǫðvar byrgis sorg’ (‘sorrow of the fence of battle [SHIELD > SWORD]’)
6 Einarr skálaglamm Helgason, Vellekla 4, SkP I, 287. and ‘Herjans hattar sút’ (‘sorrow of Herjann’s <Óðinn’s> hat [HELMET > WEAPON]’).
7 Anon., Stanzas from Third Grammatical Treatise 12, SkP III, 545. These examples highlight how anthropomorphism enriches the imagery and timbre of skaldic poetry, drawing audiences into an emotive engagement with objects, at the same time as recasting the nonhuman in more human terms.
This anthropomorphised vibrancy of objects extends to depictions of warfare in skaldic verse: battle-kennings like ‘brynþing’ (‘byrnie-assembly’),
8 Sturla Þórðarson, Hrafnsmál 18, SkP II, 743. ‘málmþing’ (‘weapon-assembly’),
9 Bjarni byskup Kolbeinsson, Jómsvíkingadrápa 6, SkP I, 964. ‘mót hjálma’ (‘meeting of helmets’)
10 Anon., Krákumál 7, SkP VIII, 730. and ‘hringmót’ (‘sword-meeting’)
11 Anon., Líknarbraut 26, SkP VII, 256–7. transform the battlefield into a deliberative space where weapons (rather than their wielders) engage in verbal resolution. The base-words
mót and
þing carry legal connotations,
12 ‘mót’, ONP, https://onp.ku.dk/onp/onp.php?o55300, ‘þing’, ONP, https://onp.ku.dk/onp/onp.php?o89472 [accessed 23 February 2022]. imbuing these scenes with a solemn order that contrasts the chaos of battle. Additionally, weapon-kennings often evoke acts of speech, song and debate, further animating the battlefield with a cacophony of auditory exchanges: ‘ríkismál stála’ (‘sovereign speech of swords’),
13 Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson, Hákonardrápa 8, SkP III, 224. ‘sǫngr sverða’ (‘song of swords’)
14 Anon., Liðsmannaflokkr 4, SkP I, 1020. and ‘senna vápna’ (‘quarrel of weapons’).
15 Anon., Lausavísur from Sverris saga 4, SkP II, 845. These kennings can evoke supernatural agency, referencing pre-Christian magic (‘seiðr lǫgðis’ – ‘incantation of the sword’)
16 Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, Glymdrápa 8, SkP I, 88. or incorporating Christian imagery (‘messa odda’ – ‘mass of sword-points’),
17 Anon., Krákumál 11, SkP VIII, 738. lending the battlefield a numinous quality.
18 Such kennings may have informed the depiction of magical swords in saga literature as vocal, such as Hrólfr’s sword Skǫfnungr: ‘nättura Skǫfnungz var su, ad hann kuad vid hätt, þä hann kiendi beinanna’. Hrólf, ch. 33 (ed. Slay, pp. 116–17): ‘that was the nature of Skǫfnungr, that it spoke loudly when it tasted bone’.Among weapons, axes are anthropomorphised to the greatest degree, through kennings like ‘fála fjǫrnis’ (‘troll-woman of the helmet’).
19 SkP I, 995. As Quinn finds, these axe-kennings are clarified by the poetic treatise
Litla Skálda, which explains that ‘a troll of something is that which is able to destroy it, so fire is the troll of wood, sunshine the troll of ice’ and so on.
20 ‘The “Wind of the Giantess”: Snorri Sturluson, Rudolf Meissner, and the Interpretation of Mythological Kennings along Taxonomic Lines’, VMS 8 (2012), 207–59 (pp. 222–3). Poets sometimes extend the metaphorical personification of the axe as a dangerous female force into a more material frame of reference: for instance, Einarr Skúlason’s
tvíkent kenning for an axe-blade plays on the image of the axe as the
actual body of a troll-woman – ‘brá Gríðar fjǫrnis’ (‘eyelash/eyebrow of the Gríðr <giantess> of the helmet [AXE > AXE-BLADE]’).
21 Einarr Skúlason, Øxarflokkr 10, SkP III, 150. As with the ‘weapon-assembly’ battle-kennings, this language elevates the role of weapons: the axe, not its wielder, is the destroyer of armour. This perspective is also evident in weapon-kennings which use an agentive noun as base-word (for example, ‘corslet-stabber’),
22 Anon., Sǫrlastikki 1, SkP VIII, 788: ‘brynstingr’. and in kennings like ‘slayer of Hjálmarr (Tyrfingr)’,
23 Angantýr, Lausavísur 7, SkP VIII, 399: ‘bani Hjálmars’. which describe a named weapon through its victim.
Zoomorphism also serves to animate objects in kennings. Swords and spears become snakes or fish, emphasising their visual and kinetic similarities to these animals.
24 Sturla Þórðarson, Hrafnsmál 18, SkP VIII, 743: ‘hræsíld’ (‘corpse-herring’); and Sturla Þórðarson, Hákonarkviða 18, SkP II, 712–13: ‘blóðormr’ (‘blood-snake’). Other kennings adopt behavioural parallels, likening swords to dogs and wolves through their shared ‘biting’ action.
25 Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá II 35, SkP VIII, 165: ‘gránir garmar slíðra’ (‘grey dogs of the scabbards’). For further examples, see Meissner, Die Kenningar, p. 155. The common quality between the animal base-word and object referent is most often motility/mobility, as seen in ship-kennings, which employ a wide array of animals as base-words. Occasionally, this dynamic is inverted, with animals imagined as objects, as in kennings where snakes become rings,
26 Bjǫrn krepphendi, Magnússdrápa 4, SkP II, 399: ‘vallbaugr’ (‘ring of the field’). fish become arrows
27 Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson, Lausavísur 14, SkP I, 234: ‘mævǫr sævar’ (‘slender arrow of the sea’). and horses become ships.
28 Bragi Boddason, Fragments 4, SkP III, 59: ‘lung váfaðar Gungnis’ (‘the longship of the swinger of Gungnir [ÓÐINN > HORSE]’).Skaldic verse offers us a vision of the world in which nonhuman materials are actants in their own right – a vision shared by the eddic riddle collection
Heiðreks gátur. Here, objects go (‘gengr’),
29 Riddle 4 (SkP VIII, 413). govern (‘ræðr’),
30 Riddle 6 (ibid., 415). flog (‘hýddi’),
31 Riddle 31 (ibid., 445). fight and defend (‘vega’, ‘hlífa’).
32 Riddle 19 (ibid., 430). Nonhuman things and phenomena have voices (Riddle 4’s hammer is described as ‘the shrill one’),
33 Riddle 4 (ibid., 413): ‘inn hvelli’. and emotions (Riddle 5’s fog fears the wind).
34 Riddle 5 (ibid., 414): ‘glygg […] óaz’. They are anthropomorphised (Riddle 18’s self-propagating angelica plants are women without husbands)
35 Riddle 18 (ibid., 429): ‘varðir’ and ‘vera’. and zoomorphised: in Riddle 27, a shield is described as a ‘creature’,
36 Riddle 27 (ibid., 440): ‘dýr’. while in Riddle 31, the operation of the weaver’s linen cloth, rod and web is imagined as sexual intercourse between two horses:
hest sá ek standa;
hýddi meri,
dúði dyndil,
drap
hlaun und kvið.
37 Riddle 31 (ibid., 445).[I saw a horse standing, it flogged a mare, it shook the penis, buttock struck under belly.]
While it is more common for an object to appear as an animal, animals may also be transformed into objects: Riddle 33’s sow with suckling pigs, for example, becomes a shrieking ale-cask.
38 Riddle 33 (ibid., 447): ‘þegjandi […] ölker’. Some riddles also directly engage with the ambiguous vitality of objects, as exemplified in Riddle 9 (smith’s bellows):
ókyrrir tveir
andalausir
sára lauk suðu.
39 Riddle 9 (SkP VIII, 419).[two animate things, without breath, cooked a wound-leek [SWORD].]
This riddle hinges on the paradox of the bellows: they appear animate yet lack breath of their own. By focusing on their activity, the riddle probes how an object might transition from the category of the kyrr (quiet/lifeless) to that of the ókyrr (unquiet/living). The exploration of this vitality is deepened through wordplay, with the kenning ‘wound-leek’ inviting a dual reading: both its base-word (‘leek’) and referent (‘sword’) resonate with the polysemy of the verb sjóða (to cook, to fuse). This semantic layering conjures two simultaneous, yet distinct, images of human action: cooking a leek and forging a sword, only one of which ‘truly’ describes the function of the bellows.
Old Norse poetics attend to the complex relationships between language, perception and materiality. While kennings emphasise material correspondences, the riddles thrive on material deceptions, offering us descriptions of seemingly impossible objects (‘horni harðara,/ hrafni svartarta,/ skjalli hvítara,/ skapti réttara’ – ‘harder than a horn, blacker than a raven, whiter than the membrane of an egg, straighter than a shaft’)
40 Riddle 16 (SkP VIII, 426). The solution is ‘obsidian with a sunbeam’. at the same time as drawing our focus to the enigmatic materiality of the nonhuman world, where we find wonders ‘vara þat höndum horfit/ né hamri klappat’ (‘not turned by hand nor struck by hammer’).
41 Riddle 17 (SkP VIII, 28). The poet refers here to an eider-duck’s egg.