Jessica Smith

GER 448 Vikings and Sagas

Prof. Robert Hoeing

17 December 1999

Eddic Poetics and Complexity in Postmodern Scandinavian Poetry

Complexity is buzzword that scholars normally apply only to twentieth century society. The non-random patterns made by fractals, the New Complexity movement out of merely atonal music, and the linguistic manipulation mastered by the Language poets are just a few examples of the production of our postmodern world. Though we look at our present life in contrast with pastoral pictures of history, complexity is as old and integrated an aspect of our Lebensform as language itself.

Viking society is one illustration of a history we have simplified with exaggerations and stereotypes. As is the case in almost every so-called primitive society, however, the Scandinavian people had an advanced culture long before Western Europeans began to conquer "dark" and mysterious lands with the "light" of Christianity. During the Dark and Middle Ages, Vikings developed metalworking techniques that allowed them to mold intertwining monsters (the "gripping beast motif"). Their mythology described the world as resting in an organic, gnarly tree, and their highest god, Odin, was manic-depressive and changed shapes. Their legal system and social mores were highly codified, albeit with many loopholes.

The arts of oral composition and metalworking seem to have evolved into a brilliant grasp on the complexities of postmodern poetry. This area, the "made" literature described long ago by Snorri Sturluson in his Edda, survives not only as an indication of the Vikings’ "complicated form of life," but also as an aesthetic ideal, much like the relation of Western poetry to Aristotle’s Poetics.

Sturluson’s Edda set out to describe and preserve pre-Christian Scandinavian oral tradition, which changed as Christianity pervaded the culture. Sturluson outlines the commonly used poetic devices and tells the stories that explain the riddle-like "kennings." The following chart illustrates the poetic devices that Sturluson gives, in his described hierarchy:

The Edda begins with a story about how poetry was first "made" (interestingly, even without the influence of the Greek tradition, the Vikings saw poetry as a created thing): a man made of peace-pact spittle is killed by two dwarves, who mix his blood with honey to make mead. Later the dwarves get into trouble with a giant and offer him the mead as atonement. The giant hides the mead in a cave, but one of his servants eventually cons him out of the treasure. The servant (actually Odin disguised as a human) turns into an eagle and flies away with the mead in his belly. He spits it out in flight and it lands in containers. He also "sent some of the mead out backwards… and it is what we call the rhymester’s share." The relatively unadulterated mead was carefully distributed to people who were "skilled at composing poetry."ⁱ

After telling the story of poetry’s creation, Sturluson explains the craft. As in Viking shipbuilding and metalwork, the art of poetry has very specific rules and devices; the task is not to make an "original" poem, but to make the most creative use of existent materials. The materials are form and language. As in the British poetic tradition with which we, as Americans, are familiar, "form" is an umbrella term under which meter, sound, lines, syllables, and other structural elements lie. "Language" contains all figurative language, the relationship between words (plot, subject and predicate), and the most interesting poetic device in Scandinavian literature, the kenning.

The kenning deserves a bit of a solo passage, as its place in the symphony of Norse poetry is key. Kennings are somewhat akin to metaphors, but metaphors also exist in Norse poetry (though they are much rarer than kennings). Kennings are riddles usually based on myths—one must know Viking mythology to understand them, so most of the Edda is taken up with small anecdotes and lists of kennings one can use to describe or point to certain ideas. Some examples follow:

Kennings are usually hyphenated groups of words that completely replace the word usually paired with an image. They are not comparative, as metaphors are, but actually substitutive. Instead of saying "Juliet is the sun," for example, a kenning would say "The sun" and leave the subject for the audience to locate. The Norse reader or listener would pride himself on being able to decode kennings, as breaking the code requires wide knowledge of pagan mythology.

Typical Viking poetry was usually six to eight lines long with six syllables per line. The end rhyme scheme was ABAB; better-crafted poems also contained internal rhyme. The first letter of the last word of one line sets the alliterative scheme for the first two words of the next line. An eight-line poem typically had twelve alliterative sounds thus arranged. Refrains between stanzas and the excitement of extemporaneous composition augmented these basic rules.

The early Norse poem was a well-crafted piece of art-- the more complex, the better. A talented poet like Egil in Egil’s Saga could employ end-rhyme, kennings, alliteration, varied forms for choruses between stanzas, and six to eight line stanzas with perfect traditional meter. Impromptu poems made for entertainment at parties, words of wisdom, or commemoration were usually not as ornate as Egil’s poem composed for the king as a plea for his [Egil’s] life.

After the Edda recorded and, in so doing, standardized Norse poetry, the aesthetic ideal remained steadfast. Early forms from the British Isles such as sonnets and ballads were scorned or edited, as they were "too loosely constructed for Icelandic taste." Scandinavians altered the ballad form and made the rìmur form, which keeps the four-line ABAB ballad concept but adds the Eddic alliterative system. Long rìmur cycles have shifting metrical patterns on the macro-level but retain the perfect micro-level stanza. The rìmur form is still popular today—over two thousand different variations on the simple four-stanza line exist. One of the more interesting is the sléttubönd (palindrome) form, which "can be read backwards as well as forwards, and occasionally upwards and downwards and diagonally as well, all the time making perfect sense and observing all the very strict rules of alliteration and rhyme."^iv An example of the rìmur form reveals the complexity of alliteration (emphasized), end and internal rhyme, and meaning:

In the palindrome, the meaning reverses but the rhyme and alliteration schemes remain:

This poem characterizes a person who (depending on how you physically read the poem) either respects justice and judges carefully, or judges foolishly in contempt of justice. The two faces of the poem reflect the same imagination with which the Vikings created Odin, their shape-changing high god, and built double-bowed ships. Instead of composing linear, simplistic poems like British ballads, the Norse created knotted masterpieces of multi-directional subject, interior rhyme, and inter-linear alliteration.

The Edda marked the political end of the Viking era and the beginnings of a peaceful Christian society, but poems such as the sléttubönd above reveal a deep-seated sense of ordered chaos. As the centuries rolled past, the many faces of poetry and the poetic subject became clear. The Scandinavian countries lauded poets, whose job it was to master their art while decorating it with as many possible variants and devices as possible. Christian and pagan gods and the natural beauty of Scandinavia were typical subjects, and although no form could be labeled typical, "the technical part of poetry had, by the year 1750, been very generally mastered." Gosse continues:

The Scandinavian poets had burned themselves out, not only as individual artists but also as a culture of literary heroes. It became uninteresting to create long, praise-filled poems with complex but predictable twists and turns. The next step needed to venture outside of the traditional field of poetry while retaining the complexity that had remained an ideal feature of Scandinavian art for centuries.

Pre-modernist innovations appear in Scandinavian poetry at about the same time as the Romantic poets emerge in Britain and Europe. Although a marriage between Scandinavian and continental poetry reportedly does not occur until after WWII, Scandinavia’s first scared dive into the cold-water outside world, similarities between Romantic poets exist. The most striking similarities are in the slow but unapologetic retreat from traditional form.

Movements towards creative integrity above traditional poetic ideals originated, for the Northern countries, in the continentally-bound country of Denmark.^v Two important Danish poets were Henrik Steffens (b. 1773) and Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger (1779-1850); Steffens was Oehlenschläger’s teacher. Steffens presented lectures in Denmark near the turn of the nineteenth century. "His formula was that nature is soul made visible, and soul invisible nature" (12). This Romantic vision sounds remarkably similar to such British poems as "Ode to the West Wind," the Lucy poems of Wordsworth, and "The World is Too Much With Us." Industrial change pervading the continent and the British Isles seems to have created a social ripple effect, so that pastoral subjects for poetry were fluid and natural. Oehlenschläger’s work also parallels some British Romantic interests. His magnum opus, Aladdin, is a play written in verse form. It takes as its subject the Arabian Thousand and One Nights cycle and espouses Oriental aesthetics. Coleridge’s "Kubla Khan" and Shelley’s "Ozymandias" similarly reveal knowledge and an appreciation of Middle Eastern culture. The change from writing about nature-as-nature and ethnocentric affairs was critical; until the late eighteenth century, Scandinavian poetry focussed exclusively on the beautiful countryside, the old pagan gods, and the proud fatherland. In these subjects, Scandinavian poetry closely resembled German poetry. Perhaps the development of Denmark from a fishing and farming country into an industrial nation prompted the personification of Nature and a departure from stringent patriotic work. Poets may lose have lost their sense of patriotism due to an increasing interdependency of industrialized nations. Such major cultural developments probably influenced artists to look beyond traditional boundaries for inspiration.

Many Danish and Scandinavian poets found the Romantic innovations absurd and apoetic. Though Oehlenschläger claimed the Edda, the Sagas, and German lyric poetry as his inspiration, a younger poet, Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872) expressed contempt for poetry "for poetry’s sake," a phrase he used to describe Oehlenschläger’s verse dramas. Despite such disapproval from conservative quarters, Oehlenschläger continued to thrive as a creator and even wrote a few non-rhyming poems, which were at the time a complete anomaly. The first stanza of his "CorsÝ er" reads:

Oehlenschläger’s poetry fed largely upon Shakespearean form, but neither iambic pentameter nor rhyme are present in an analysis of "CorsÝ er." His departure from traditional Eddic style, with short lines, internal rhyme, end rhyme, and six to eight line stanzas, is obvious. "CorsÝ er" exemplifies Oehlenschläger’s desire to write the perfectly wrought poem, regardless of the popularity of traditional Eddic form and new Shakespearean influence.

The life of the Romantic Era in Danish poetry marks not only the link from Scandinavian identity to Britain and Europe (Germany), but the willingness of Scandinavian poets to depart from Eddic form for the sake of artistically solid poetry. While Oehlenschläger created innovative poetry, however, the Eddic tradition persisted in his own work and in the work of his contemporaries. In his "Guldhornene," for example, Oehlenschläger retains the traditional eight-line stanza and end rhyme.

The regularity of the lines is complete: the syllable count reads 7-5-5-7-5-5-3-5, which is a variation on the drÙ ttkvætt form explained in the Hattatal chapter of the Edda. Most of Oehlenschläger’s contemporaries imagined poetry as a game of variations played on a well-established board. The second stanza of Grundtvig’s "Niels Ebbesen" shows his preferred form, a conservative creation of seven line stanzas, simplistic end rhyme, patriotic subject, and Eddic alliterative patterns (emphasized):

The syllable count here is 10-5-10-4-11-11-8. The longer lines are less typical of Eddic verse forms, but the syllabic variation is conventional. The varied conventional poem of Grundtvig is an example of the aesthetic ideal from the Edda onward, and despite the existence of innovators such as Oehlenschläger, these traditional forms retained popularity and validity.

The complexity of the Eddic ideal spoke to the paradox-filled lives of the Vikings, and as Scandinavia continued to face challenges—war, disease, new religions and arts, new economic resources and trade routes—the empathetic complexity found in poetry could not lose its appeal. The complexity of life could be expressed, however, in ways other than tightly wrought, highly ornamented poetic structures. Twentieth century Danish writers found inspiration in the organic "compost-heap" of Walt Whitman’s poetry and the inward-spiraling agony in the works of Charles Baudelaire.

The early poetry of twentieth century Denmark was more similar to Yeats' poetry than to that of Paris' modernist circle. Sophus Claussen (1865-1931) adopted long-lined couplet and triplet (ABB) poems which, while very different from the terse poems of the Edda, were conventional in Pope’s England and Dante’s Italy. Claussen clung to the Edda in his loyalty to patriotic subject matter. Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950) was more explorative, breaking the previously sacred doctrines of meter, rhyme, and alliteration with free verse. Jensen’s "The red tree" exhibits stanzas that are not of uniform composition, that do not rhyme, and that speak metaphorically of Nature not as a merely Scandinavian phenomenon, but as a general beauty. Action takes place in Singapore and Europe, not only in the Northern circle. Dashes vary the previously exclusive use of commas and periods as pause markers. Jensen’s poem is truly innovative:

This passage reveals the lack of micro-level rhyme, meter, and Scandinavian subject. However, a few devices remain from Eddic idealism. The rain’s haphazard, drum-like beat is called a "drunken deluge-throb," an adjectival kenning from the Skaldsskaparmal description. The stanza is short, though the lines are not of typical Eddic length. Jensen’s "The red tree" simultaneously preserved Eddic tradition and broke its stranglehold on Scandinavian poetry.

A slightly younger Danish poet, Sigfred Pedersen (1903-1967), smashed the Eddic mold into so many pieces that it is a difficult, if not insulting, task to trace the roots of a poem like "Anthem to an inn" to Sturluson’s influence. The stanzas, though short and repetitive, contain only light and haphazard rhyme and sound-based rather than rule-based meter (that is, Pedersen seems to be giving more thought to how the poem sounds than to how to follow rules). The subject matter is completely nonsensical, mentioning nothing of God, gods, nature, or country:

"Anthem to an inn" contains the foreign ideas of aspirin and improvisational music, playful Gertrude Stein-like repetition of nonsense phrases, the atypical Danish name "Lou," and references to crêpes. These imports were rare in Danish poetry, and they have remained luxury poetic items in Scandinavian poetry throughout the twentieth century. Though one can trace its poetic ancestry, Pedersen’s "Anthem" took a step outside the richly decorated but dilapidated Eddic box.

Meanwhile the traditional forms, especially the rìmur (above), remained wildly popular in Iceland. Poetry was, and is, such a mainstay of cultural fare in Iceland that making poems is a "national sport," with radio and newspaper contests frequently offered to the public. Iceland’s physical separation from Europe and Britain explain her slowness to industrialize (Iceland is still a sleepy country), so although the Scandinavian Romantics were somewhat influential there, real change came only after Iceland’s shocking entry into the world during World War II.

Johannes ur Kötlum’s "Prayer" illustrates the impact of WWII involvement on Icelandic poetry. Though his stylistic choices are Eddic, Kötlum’s subject matter contains violence that the Scandinavian people did not express between the Viking and the Postmodern eras. The stanzas are straightforward ABAB quatrains, and there are references to lyres and metaphorical trolls of an older society. These features provide stark contrast to the falling bombs mentioned in the first stanza. The final two stanzas despairingly plead with a Romantic view of Nature:

Here is an evolved Scandinavian poem; it contains elements of the Edda’s ideal structure and the Romantic view of Nature (Shelley’s "Destroyer and Preserver"), but adds contemporary flair (flare): the lonely call for faith in humanity after extreme violence and destruction.

Kristinn Reyr (b. 1914) also wrote poems about World War II, a major cultural event for a quiet people, but his poems also exhibit loyalty to Icelandic history. Although his poem "Do you fall elevator?" takes as its audience a modern invention designed to save time, Reyr "saves time" in his own way by referencing pagan mythology:

In a metaphorical sense, Reyr means that humanity is corrupt, filling the world with evil and imperfection. However, the straight reference is to the World-Tree, which in Viking mythology cradled the world. Reyr also includes a reference to Christianity:

Doubting Thomas is a well-known Bible character, and Iceland had officially been Christian for almost a millennium by the time Reyr produced "Elevator,". Reyr uses all the influences on his cultural moment in his poem: pagan mythology, Christianity, and inhumanity are given equal consideration. "Elevator" does not rhyme, but its stanzas are concise and the meter is relatively even.

Of all the Scandinavian poets, the so-called "Atom Poets" are the most infamous and the most innovative. In an effort to rebel from all that was previously considered poetry, these men did not form a movement or even associate with one another. They started writing soon after WWII and into the 1950s, feeling influences from Europe and America, especially France. The poetry of the Atom Poets closely resembles other post-war poetry and contains the usual "postmodern complexity" found worldwide.

Einar Bragi’s (b.1921) poetry takes traditional form and straightens it, simplifies it, much like Robert Creeley’s variation on traditional English-American meter. Bragi’s relocation of facts and people following WWII’s destruction also resembles Creeley’s sensitive search for humanity and understanding. "In April"’s terse free verse form strays from alliteration, rhyme, punctuation, capitalization, and stanza division.

Bragi’s wrap-around poem returns to the portrait of beautiful, caring innocence. The sleek, simple form reflects the "tender," "frail," "mild," "silk-soft" image. Unlike Creeley’s poetry, which often involves anger and regret, the image in "In April" is deep rather than emotionally complex. Every adjective works towards a more intense softness and sympathy. A tighter form would not have allowed Bragi to express the delicacy of the picture.

Bragi also wrote some of the first Icelandic prose poems, which are light-years away from Eddic form. Prose poetry is an aptly named form that disregards meter, syllable count, rhyme, and almost every other poetic device, including the basic structural fingerprint of poetry, the line-break. Bragi’s poem "Daybreak" speaks of the beauty and harshness of the Icelandic landscape—a typical subject in atypical format:

"Daybreak" does not depart from the ideas of Icelandic scenery and pagan history, but the feeling of the poem is downcast and searching rather than celebratory or proud. The tone is existential rather than patriotic, and the audience reads a need for security and calmness. These despondent terms do not refer to the ecstatic Eddic love of land and culture, but instead speak of a worldwide postwar melancholy.

Over a thousand years passed in Scandinavian culture from the beginning of Eddic poetry (the Edda itself was only a record of previously established styles) to the postmodern phenomena of complex, deep emotional imagery paired with sparse, even "uncaring" poetic form. I have traced such features as patriotism, love of the land, line length, rhyme, and alliteration, and shown these to be sparser in modern, and even sparser in postmodern, poetry. Yet, the term "complexity" applies not merely to highly ornamented, carefully crafted poetry, but also to complexity of ideas and emotions. Scandinavian poetry in the post-war period strays from traditional Eddic idea of poetry as an interwoven image, with words as knotted things. As the same time, the post-war poetry expands the idea of "complexity" to include deepness of emotion, and the sparseness of decorative devices only augments the new messages of existential loss, inhumanity, and despair.