lines and half-rhyme in the odd-numbered). It makes use of poetic tropes such as ‘the
wolf’s mouthful’, and descriptive adjectives (‘bright’, ‘slender’). But it also demonstrates
a concern for naming significant places, and has a precise concern with chronology,
specifying the day of the week on which the battle took place. In this way it is both
poetry and chronicle, both entertainment and praise. The combination of significant
historical details, interesting literary embellishment and strict metre all helped to
ensure the survival of this stanza, like many others in dróttkvætt, for an unknown length
of time in the oral tradition, and for subsequent recording in Icelandic historical texts.
Like the runic memorials, these poems are verse in action, used for a variety of social
purposes. The art of the Viking Age, including its poetry, is rarely just decorative
(though it is highly decorative), but usually also functional. The surviving Eddic poems,
however, hint at an alternative, less functional, aesthetic, which might also be located in
the Viking Age.
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–– chapter 22: Poetry in the Viking Age––