my-server
← Wiki

List of kennings

A kenning (Old English , Modern Icelandic ) is a circumlocution, an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech, used instead of an ordinary noun in Old Norse, Old English, and later Icelandic poetry.

This list is not intended to be comprehensive. Kennings for a particular character are listed in that character's article. For example, the Odin article links to a list of names of Odin, which include kennings. A few examples of Odin's kennings are given here. For a scholarly list of kennings see Rudolf Meissner's (1921) below or some editions of Snorri Sturluson's .

Source language abbreviations

List of kennings

Sources on kennings

  • Rankin, James Walter (1909). A study of the kennings in Anglo-Saxon poetry. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 8(3), 357–422.
  • Marold, E. (2012). The aesthetic function of the kenning. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, 1, lxxv-lxxxv.
  • Lindow, J. (1975). Riddles, kennings, and the complexity of skaldic poetry. Scandinavian Studies, 47(3), 311–327.
  • Wills, T. (2021). Kennings and variability: Corpus and structural views. European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 51(1), 11–25.
  • Fulk, R. D. (2021). Kennings in Old English verse and in the poetic edda. European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 51(1), 69–91.
  • Scholtz, M. (1927). The Kenning in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Poetry. NV Dekker & Van de Vegt en JW Van Leeuwen.
  • Mohr, Wolfgang (1933). Kenningstudien. Beiträge zur Stilgeschichte der altgermanischen Dichtung. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.
  • Meissner, Rudolf (1921). Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
  • Bode, W. (1886). Die Kenningar in der angelsächsischen Dichtung. Mit Ausblicken auf andere Litteraturen. Darmstadt and Leipzig: Eduard Zernin.
  • Malone, Kemp (1928) “The Kenning in ‘Beowulf’ 2220.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 318–24.

External sources

  • Meissner, Rudolf (1921). Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. https://rafhladan.is/bitstream/handle/10802/4985/kenningar.pdf

References