Icelandic sagas are a unique layer of world literature. They do not have many of the moments to which the modern readership is accustomed - plots built on a love or detective intrigue, descriptions of the nature and feelings of the heroes. An unprepared reader may find it particularly difficult to use unusual verses that are often found in sagas.
During the Viking Age in northern Europe, a very peculiar poetry arose, which was called "skaldskap", and the poets who composed such poems - skalds. In European history, this is the first case after antiquity when poetry was not folklore, but author's, conscious.
The main means of expression for the skalds was not rhyme, but a special technique not found in any other poetic tradition - Kenning. This is a combination of two nouns. The first word is an allegorical name for the object that Kenning denotes, and the second, taken in the genitive case, is something with which this object is associated. If we are talking about a person, then the name of any god or goddess is often used as the main word. A man or a warrior is called "Njord of battle", "Baldrom of the shield", "Tyur of the helmet", a woman - "Nanny of flax", "Freya of the leek", "Nal monista". Mythological names are optional, the man may be called the "Maple of the Boat" and the woman the "Grove of Necklaces".
Many kennings are built solely on associations: death is called "the wither of the veins", the sword is the "serpent of the helom", blood is the "river of wounds", the crows are the "goslings of the Valkyries", but there are also those whose understanding requires knowledge of mythological subjects - in the era Vikings they were known to all listeners of skaldic poetry. For example, the Normans believed that the palaces of the sea giant Aegir were illuminated by the glitter of gold, so one of the kennings of gold is "the flame of the tide."
The organizing principle in the poetry of skalds was the poetic rhythm, as well as alliteration - the repetition of syllables with the same or similar consonants (this feature is most often lost in translation). With the help of these means, the kennings were lined up in a stanza - visu. It was in the form of the Wis-Normans that they improvised poetry in different situations. But sometimes the visas were combined into a cycle, turning into a rather large work - such are, for example, the Visas of Joy, written by King Harald the Severe on the occasion of his marriage to Elizabeth, the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise.
Another common skaldic genre was drape, a song of praise in three parts. In the first part, the skald attracts the attention of the audience, in the second it describes the deeds of the one whom it praises, in the third it asks for a reward. Often there was a chorus in the drape, which - by analogy with the part of the ship - was called the "stem". Skald, who dedicated the king to a "drape without a stem", could be reproached with disrespect for the ruler.
Another genre - nid - was the opposite of drape. This is a blasphemous poem, which was not written with the aim of "pouring out emotions": it was believed that Nid could have very serious consequences for the one against whom he was directed. For this reason, few samples of nida survived - such dangerous poems were afraid to both repeat and write down.
There were also skaldic love poems - manseng, but not every skald risked creating in this genre. This was regarded as a love spell, society was not welcomed and could even lead to blood feud.
Skald poetry shared the fate of the heritage of the Viking Age as a whole: just as the voyage of Leiva Eiriksson did not become America's discovery for Europe, so the findings of the skalds turned out to be unclaimed in the subsequent development of European poetry. But even today this poetry amazes the imagination.
