Old Norse poetry
In Skáldskaparmál, Snorri Sturluson, recounts the myth of how Odin brought the mead of poetry to Asgard.
Old Norse poetry developed from the common Germanic alliterative verse, and as such has many commonalities with Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German poetry, including alliteration, poetic circumlocutions termed kennings, and an expansive vocabulary of poetic synonyms, termed heiti.
Eddaic poetry refers to poems on themes of mythology or ancient heroes, composed in simpler meters (see below) and with anonymous authors.
On the other hand, Skaldic poetry was usually written as praise for living kings and nobles, in more intricate meters and by known authors, known as skalds.
Skaldic and Eddic works have many commonalities besides being written in Old Norse, such as alliteration; however, scholars usually distinguish the two based on certain characteristics.
Scholarly distinction between Eddic and Skaldic works largely derives both from differing manuscript traditions and their typical matter and style.
One major distinction between Skaldic and Eddic poetry derives from the manuscript sources of the surviving known works.
Essentially, in fornyrðislag and many other forms, Norse poets treated each "half-line" of Germanic alliterative verse as a separate line.
The Norse "couplet" is basically a single Germanic line, a pair of half-lines joined by alliteration.
[7] Ljóðaháttr ("chant" or "ballad" metre) is a stanzaic verse form, organized into four-line stanzas.
The Eddic poetry lays are diverse; however, three important common characteristics can be described: mythology, ethics, and heroic lore.
Eddic poetry is to indebted narratives describing heroes, which was part of a long oral tradition, as well as textual.
In Skaldic poetry, the structures used tend to be complex,[10] evolved from the common Germanic poetic tradition.
One of the simpler skaldic meters was kviðuháttr, a variant of fornyrðislag with alternating lines of 3 and 4 syllables, used in genealogical poems such as Þjóðólfr ór Hvíni's Ynglingatal and Eyvindr Skáldaspillir's Háleygjatal.
According to the Fagrskinna collection of sagas, King Harald III of Norway uttered these lines of dróttkvætt at the Battle of Stamford Bridge; the internal assonances and the alliteration are emboldened: The bracketed words in the poem ("so said the goddess of hawk-land, true of words") are syntactically separate but interspersed within the text of the rest of the verse.
The elaborate kennings manifested here are also practically necessary in this complex and demanding form, as much to solve metrical difficulties as for the sake of vivid imagery.
Hrynhenda or hrynjandi háttr ('the flowing verse-form') is a later development of dróttkvætt with eight syllables per line instead of six, with the similar rules of rhyme and alliteration, although each hrynhent-variant shows particular subtleties.
It is first attested around 985 in the so-called Hafgerðingadrápa of which four lines survive (alliterants and rhymes bolded): The author was said to be a Christian from the Hebrides, who composed the poem asking God to keep him safe at sea.
The syllable-count changes to seven (and, whether relevant to us or not, the second-syllable seems to be counted as the extra-metrical): As one can see, there is very often clashing stress in the middle of the line (Vápna hríd velta....//..Vægdarlaus feigum...., etc.
