83-460: A kenning ( Icelandic : [cʰɛnːiŋk] ) is a figure of speech , a figuratively -phrased compound term that is used in place of a simple single-word noun . For instance, the Anglo-Saxon kenning "whale's road" ( hron rade ) means "sea", as does swanrād ("swan's road"). A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant. So in "whale's road", "road"
166-512: A reflexive pronoun instead. The case of the pronoun depends on the case that the verb governs. As for further classification of verbs, Icelandic behaves much like other Germanic languages, with a main division between weak verbs and strong, and the strong verbs, of which there are about 150 to 200, are divided into six classes plus reduplicative verbs. The basic word order in Icelandic is subject–verb–object . However, as words are heavily inflected,
249-401: A West Scandinavian language. Icelandic is derived from an earlier language Old Norse , which later became Old Icelandic and currently Modern Icelandic. The division between old and modern Icelandic is said to be before and after 1540. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish Around 900 CE, the language spoken in
332-425: A base-word (Icelandic stofnorð , German Grundwort ) and a determinant (Icelandic kenniorð , German Bestimmung ) which qualifies, or modifies, the meaning of the base-word. The determinant may be a noun used uninflected as the first element in a compound word, with the base-word constituting the second element of the compound word. Alternatively the determinant may be a noun in the genitive case placed before or after
415-432: A base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word ( tmesis ). Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is usually less than it would be if an English text were subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate morphology of Old Norse. Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to
498-465: A genitive phrase occur too, but rarely: heofones ġim "heaven's gem" = "the sun" (The Phoenix 183). Old English poets often place a series of synonyms in apposition, and these may include kennings (loosely or strictly defined) as well as the literal referent: Hrōðgar maþelode, helm Scyldinga ... " Hrothgar , helm (=protector, lord) of the Scyldings , said ..." (Beowulf 456). Although the word "kenning"
581-433: A historical or a formalistic view: -a , -i , and -ur , referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the first person singular present. Almost all Icelandic verbs have the ending -a in the infinitive, some with á , two with u ( munu , skulu ) one with o ( þvo : "wash") and one with e . Many transitive verbs (i.e. they require an object ), can take
664-511: A horse named Valr, and thus in Old Norse poetry valr is sometimes used to mean "horse". A term may be omitted from a well-known kenning: val-teigs Hildr "hawk-ground's valkyrie /goddess" ( Haraldr Harðráði : Lausavísa 19). The full expression implied here is "goddess of gleam/fire/adornment of ground/land/seat/perch of hawk" = "goddess of gleam of arm" = "goddess of gold" = "lady" (characterised according to convention as wearing golden jewellery,
747-427: A knowledge of specific myths or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically él-ker "squall-vat" (Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3) or described in mythical terms as Ymis haus " Ymir 's skull" ( Arnórr jarlaskáld : Magnúsdrápa 19), referring to the idea that the sky was made out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according to certain conventions without reference to
830-423: A lesser extent, Old English poetry. Snorri's own usage, however, seems to fit the looser sense: "Snorri uses the term 'kenning' to refer to a structural device, whereby a person or object is indicated by a periphrastic description containing two or more terms (which can be a noun with one or more dependent genitives or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures)" (Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv). The term
913-722: A monophthong and adding either /i/ or /u/ to it. All the vowels can either be long or short; vowels in open syllables are long, and vowels in closed syllables are short. Icelandic retains many grammatical features of other ancient Germanic languages , and resembles Old Norwegian before much of its fusional inflection was lost. Modern Icelandic is still a heavily inflected language with four cases : nominative , accusative , dative and genitive . Icelandic nouns can have one of three grammatical genders : masculine, feminine or neuter. There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: strong and weak nouns , and these are further divided into subclasses of nouns, based primarily on
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#1733092705264996-403: A protectionist language culture, however, this is deep-rooted ideologically primarily in relation to the forms of the language, while Icelanders in general seem to be more pragmatic as to domains of language use. Since the late 16th century, discussion has been ongoing on the purity of the Icelandic language. The bishop Oddur Einarsson wrote in 1589 that the language has remained unspoiled since
1079-584: A result, the Irish language has had some influence on both Faroese and Icelandic. The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100. Many of the texts are based on poetry and laws traditionally preserved orally. The most famous of the texts, which were written in Iceland from the 12th century onward, are the sagas of Icelanders , which encompass the historical works and the Poetic Edda . The language of
1162-426: A specific story: rimmu Yggr " Odin of battle" = "warrior" (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5). Poets in medieval Iceland even treated Christian themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings complete with allusions to heathen myths and aristocratic epithets for saints: Þrúðr falda "goddess of headdresses" = " Saint Catherine " (Kálfr Hallsson: Kátrínardrápa 4). Kennings of the type AB, where B routinely has
1245-624: A standard established in the 19th century, primarily by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask . It is based strongly on an orthography laid out in the early 12th century by a document referred to as the First Grammatical Treatise by an anonymous author, who has later been referred to as the First Grammarian. The later Rasmus Rask standard was a re-creation of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent Germanic conventions, such as
1328-469: Is cognate with Old English cennan , Old Frisian kenna , kanna , Old Saxon ( ant ) kennian (Middle Dutch and Dutch kennen ), Old High German ( ir- , in- , pi- ) chennan ( Middle High German and German kennen ), Gothic kannjan < Proto-Germanic * kannjanan , originally causative of * kunnanan "to know (how to)", whence Modern English can 'to be able'. The word ultimately derives from *ǵneh₃ ,
1411-454: Is íss ('ice, icicle') and the determinant is rǫnd ('rim, shield-rim, shield'). The referent is "sword". In Old Norse poetry, either component of a kenning (base-word, determinant or both) could consist of an ordinary noun or a heiti "poetic synonym". In the above examples, fákr and marr are distinctively poetic lexemes ; the normal word for "horse" in Old Norse prose is hestr . The skalds also employed complex kennings in which
1494-508: Is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland , where it is the national language. Since it is a West Scandinavian language , it is most closely related to Faroese , western Norwegian dialects , and the extinct language Norn . It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages ( Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish ) and
1577-441: Is a kenning only if it contains an incongruity between the referent and the meaning of the base-word; in the kenning the limiting word is essential to the figure because without it the incongruity would make any identification impossible" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Descriptive epithets are a common literary device in many parts of the world, whereas kennings in this restricted sense are a distinctive feature of Old Norse and, to
1660-547: Is a kind of redundancy whereby the referent of the whole kenning, or a kenning for it, is embedded: barmi dólg-svölu "brother of hostility-swallow" = "brother of raven" = "raven" (Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1); blik-meiðendr bauga láðs "gleam-harmers of the land of rings" = "harmers of gleam of arm" = "harmers of ring" = "leaders, nobles, men of social standing (conceived of as generously destroying gold, i.e. giving it away freely)" (Anon.: Líknarbraut 42). While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on
1743-490: Is a reference to the sport of falconry , where a bird of prey is perched on the arm of the falconer. By convention, "hawk" combined with a term for a geographic feature forms a kenning for "arm." Fýrisvalla fræ , "gold", from " Fýrisvellir ", the plains of the river Fýri, and fræ , "seed." This is an allusion to a legend retold in Skáldskaparmál and Hrólfs saga kraka in which King Hrolf and his men scattered gold on
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#17330927052641826-558: Is an ad hoc usage by a helicopter ambulance pilot: "the Heathrow of hang gliders " for the hills behind Hawes in Yorkshire in England, when he found the air over the emergency site crowded with hang-gliders. Sometimes a name given to one well-known member of a species, is used to mean any member of that species. For example, Old Norse valr means " falcon ", but Old Norse mythology mentions
1909-765: Is certainly applied to non-metaphorical phrases in Skáldskaparmál : En sú kenning er áðr var ritat, at kalla Krist konung manna, þá kenning má eiga hverr konungr. "And that kenning which was written before, calling Christ the king of men, any king can have that kenning. Likewise in Háttatal : Þat er kenning at kalla fleinbrak orrostu [...] "It is a kenning to call battle 'spear-crash' [...]". Snorri's expression kend heiti "qualified terms" appears to be synonymous with kenningar , although Brodeur applies this more specifically to those periphrastic epithets which do not come under his strict definition of kenning. Sverdlov approaches
1992-522: Is distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic vocabulary is also deeply conservative, with the country's language regulator maintaining an active policy of coining terms based on older Icelandic words rather than directly taking in loanwords from other languages. Aside from the 300,000 Icelandic speakers in Iceland, Icelandic is spoken by about 8,000 people in Denmark, 5,000 people in
2075-489: Is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be tvíkent "doubly determined, twice modified". Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that makes up the determinant is attached uninflected to the front of the base-word of the whole kenning to form a compound word: mög-fellandi mellu "son-slayer of giantess" = "slayer of sons of giantess" = "slayer of giants" = "the god Thor " ( Steinunn Refsdóttir : Lausavísa 2). If
2158-404: Is evident in general language discourses, in polls, and in other investigations into Icelandic language attitudes. The general consensus on Icelandic language policy has come to mean that language policy and language ideology discourse are not predominantly state or elite driven; but rather, remain the concern of lay people and the general public. The Icelandic speech community is perceived to have
2241-539: Is extending a kenning to the fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it." The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórðr Sjáreksson and reads nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir "fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed", which simply means "warrior". Word order in Old Norse
2324-511: Is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English and German . The written forms of Icelandic and Faroese are very similar, but their spoken forms are not mutually intelligible . The language is more conservative than most other Germanic languages. While most of them have greatly reduced levels of inflection (particularly noun declension ), Icelandic retains a four- case synthetic grammar (comparable to German , though considerably more conservative and synthetic) and
2407-533: Is not a kenning, as it isn't a circumlocution for a simpler term; it just means "a very tall building". Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English alliterative verse . They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including rímur ) for centuries, together with the closely related heiti . Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do
2490-572: Is not often used for non-Germanic languages, a similar form can be found in Biblical poetry in its use of parallelism . Some examples include Genesis 49:11, in which "blood of grapes" is used as a kenning for "wine", and Job 15:14, where "born of woman" is a parallel for "man". Figures of speech similar to kennings occur in Modern English (both in literature and in regular speech), and are often found in combination with other poetic devices. For example,
2573-647: Is not very well known and because those Icelanders not proficient in the other Scandinavian languages often have a sufficient grasp of English to communicate with institutions in that language (although there is evidence that the general English skills of Icelanders have been somewhat overestimated). The Nordic countries have committed to providing services in various languages to each other's citizens, but this does not amount to any absolute rights being granted, except as regards criminal and court matters. All Icelandic stops are voiceless and are distinguished as such by aspiration . Stops are realised post-aspirated when at
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2656-550: Is still a conscious effort to create new words, especially for science and technology, with many societies publishing dictionaries, some with the help of The Icelandic Language Committee ( Íslensk málnefnd ). The Icelandic alphabet is notable for its retention of three old letters that no longer exist in the English alphabet : Þ, þ ( þorn , modern English "thorn"), Ð, ð ( eð , anglicised as "eth" or "edh") and Æ, æ (æsc, anglicised as "ash" or "asc"), with þ and ð representing
2739-433: Is the base-word, and "whale's" is the determinant. This is the same structure as in the modern English term " skyscraper "; the base-word here would be "scraper", and the determinant "sky". In some languages, kennings can recurse , with one element of the kenning being replaced by another kenning. The meaning of the kenning is known as its referent (in the case of "whale's road", "sea" is the referent). Note that "skyscraper"
2822-833: Is well-intentioned, but it remains idiosyncratic to the point of absurdity. Steinbeck invented compound phrases (similar to the Old English use of kennings), such as 'wife-loss' and 'friend-right' and 'laughter-starving,' that simply seem eccentric." Kennings remain somewhat common in German ( Drahtesel "wire-donkey" for bicycle, Feuerstuhl "fire-chair" for motorcycle, Stubentiger "chamber-tiger" for cat, and so on). The poet Seamus Heaney regularly employed kennings in his work; for example, 'bone-house' for "skeleton". Icelandic language Icelandic ( / aɪ s ˈ l æ n d ɪ k / eyess- LAN -dik ; endonym : íslenska , pronounced [ˈistlɛnska] )
2905-583: The Madness song " The Sun and the Rain " contains the line "standing up in the falling-down", where "the falling-down" refers to rain and is used in juxtaposition to "standing up". Some recent English writers have attempted to use approximations of kennings in their work. John Steinbeck used kenning-like figures of speech in his 1950 novella Burning Bright , which was adapted into a Broadway play that same year. According to Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini , "The experiment
2988-582: The Parliament in 2011, Icelandic is "the national language of the Icelandic people and the official language in Iceland"; moreover, "[p]ublic authorities shall ensure that its use is possible in all areas of Icelandic society". Iceland is a member of the Nordic Council , a forum for co-operation between the Nordic countries, but the council uses only Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as its working languages (although
3071-501: The bishop and members of parliament . Early Icelandic vocabulary was largely Old Norse with a few words being Celtic from when Celts first settled in Iceland. The introduction of Christianity to Iceland in the 11th century brought with it a need to describe new religious concepts . The majority of new words were taken from other Scandinavian languages ; kirkja ("church"), for example. Numerous other languages have influenced Icelandic: French brought many words related to
3154-444: The genitive singular and nominative plural endings of a particular noun. For example, within the strong masculine nouns, there is a subclass (class 1) that declines with -s ( hests ) in the genitive singular and -ar ( hestar ) in the nominative plural. However, there is another subclass (class 3) of strong masculine nouns that always declines with -ar ( hlutar ) in the genitive singular and -ir ( hlutir ) in
3237-541: The jǫtnar . The practice of forming kennings has traditionally been seen as a common Germanic inheritance, but this has been disputed since, among the early Germanic languages, their use is largely restricted to Old Norse and Old English poetry. A possible early kenning for "gold" ( walha-kurna "Roman/Gallic grain") is attested in the Proto-Norse runic inscription on the Tjurkö (I)-C bracteate . Kennings are virtually absent from
3320-470: The voiceless and voiced "th" sounds (as in English thin and this ), respectively, and æ representing the diphthong /ai/ which does not exist in English. The complete Icelandic alphabet is: The letters with diacritics , such as á and ö , are for the most part treated as separate letters and not variants of their derivative vowels. The letter é officially replaced je in 1929, although it had been used in early manuscripts (until
3403-445: The 11th century, when the first texts were written on vellum . Modern speakers can understand the original sagas and Eddas which were written about eight hundred years ago. The sagas are usually read with updated modern spelling and footnotes, but otherwise are intact (as with recent English editions of Shakespeare's works). With some effort, many Icelanders can also understand the original manuscripts. According to an act passed by
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3486-480: The 14th century) and again periodically from the 18th century. The letter z was formerly in the Icelandic alphabet, but it was officially removed in 1974, except in people's names. Ragnarsson, Baldur (1992). Mál og málsaga [ Language and language history ] (in Icelandic). Mál og Menning. ISBN 978-9979-3-0417-3 . Einarr Sk%C3%BAlason Einarr Skúlason (c. 1100 – after 1159)
3569-462: The 16th century, especially in vowels (in particular, á , æ , au , and y / ý ). The letters -ý & -y lost their original meaning and merged with -í & -i in the period 1400 - 1600. Around the same time or a little earlier the letter -æ originally signifying a simple vowel, a type of open -e, formed into the double vowel -ai, a double vowel absent in the original Icelandic. The modern Icelandic alphabet has developed from
3652-550: The Church of Christ in Nidaros in the presence of the three Norwegian kings of the time, Eysteinn , Sigurd and Inge , along with Jon Birgersson, Archbishop of Nidaros . The poem is composed in the dróttkvætt metre and it is the earliest completely preserved drápa with Christian content. [REDACTED] This article contains content from the Owl Edition of Nordisk familjebok ,
3735-586: The Faroes was Old Norse , which Norse settlers had brought with them during the time of the settlement of Faroe Islands ( landnám ) that began in 825. However, many of the settlers were not from Scandinavia , but descendants of Norse settlers in the Irish Sea region. In addition, women from Norse Ireland, Orkney , or Shetland often married native Scandinavian men before settling in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. As
3818-587: The United States, and more than 1,400 people in Canada, notably in the region known as New Iceland in Manitoba which was settled by Icelanders beginning in the 1880s. The state-funded Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies serves as a centre for preserving the medieval Icelandic manuscripts and studying the language and its literature. The Icelandic Language Council, comprising representatives of universities,
3901-432: The above examples, the conjugated verbs veit and fór are always the second element in their respective clauses. A distinction between formal and informal address ( T–V distinction ) had existed in Icelandic from the 17th century, but use of the formal variant weakened in the 1950s and rapidly disappeared. It no longer exists in regular speech, but may occasionally be found in pre-written speeches addressed to
3984-485: The arm-kenning being a reference to falconry ). The poet relies on listeners' familiarity with such conventions to carry the meaning. Some scholars take the term kenning broadly to include any noun-substitute consisting of two or more elements, including merely descriptive epithets (such as Old Norse grand viðar "bane of wood" = "fire" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), while others would restrict it to metaphorical instances (such as Old Norse sól húsanna "sun of
4067-574: The arts, journalists, teachers, and the Ministry of Culture, Science and Education , advises the authorities on language policy . Since 1995, on 16 November each year, the birthday of 19th-century poet Jónas Hallgrímsson is celebrated as Icelandic Language Day . Icelandic is an Indo-European language and belongs to the North Germanic group of the Germanic languages . Icelandic is further classified as
4150-433: The base-word, either directly or separated from the base-word by intervening words. Thus the base-words in these examples are fákr "horse" and marr "steed", the determinants báru "waves" and gjálfr "sea". The unstated noun which the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case: skip "ship". The base-word of the kenning "íss rauðra randa" ('icicle of red shields' [SWORD], Einarr Skúlason : Øxarflokkr 9)
4233-408: The beginning of the word, but pre-aspirated when occurring within a word. Scholten (2000 , p. 22) includes three extra phones: [ʔ l̥ˠ lˠ] . Word-final voiced consonants are devoiced pre-pausally, so that dag ('day (acc.)') is pronounced as [ˈtaːx] and dagur ('day (nom.)') is pronounced [ˈtaːɣʏr̥] . Icelandic has 8 monophthongs and 5 diphthongs. The diphthongs are created by taking
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#17330927052644316-444: The characteristic A and thus this AB is tautological, tend to mean "like B in that it has the characteristic A", e.g. "shield- Njörðr ", tautological because the god Njörðr by nature has his own shield, means "like Njörðr in that he has a shield", i.e. "warrior". A modern English example is " painted Jezebel " as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics. Kennings may include proper names. A modern example of this
4399-494: The council does publish material in Icelandic). Under the Nordic Language Convention , since 1987 Icelandic citizens have had the right to use Icelandic when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries, without becoming liable for any interpretation or translation costs. The convention covers visits to hospitals, job centres, the police, and social security offices. It does not have much effect since it
4482-502: The court and knightship; words in the semantic field of trade and commerce have been borrowed from Low German because of trade connections. In the late 18th century, linguistic purism began to gain noticeable ground in Iceland and since the early 19th century it has been the linguistic policy of the country. Nowadays, it is common practice to coin new compound words from Icelandic derivatives. Icelandic personal names are patronymic (and sometimes matronymic ) in that they reflect
4565-402: The determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself made up of a further kenning: grennir gunn-más "feeder of war-gull" = "feeder of raven " = "warrior" ( Þorbjörn Hornklofi : Glymdrápa 6); eyðendr arnar hungrs "destroyers of eagle's hunger" = "feeders of eagle" = "warrior" (Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1) (referring to carrion birds scavenging after a battle). Where one kenning
4648-519: The earth." The kennings are: Ullr ... ímunlauks , "warrior", from Ullr , the name of a god, and ímun-laukr , "sword" (literally "war-leek"). By convention, the name of any god can be associated with another word to produce a kenning for a certain type of man; here "Ullr of the sword" means "warrior." "War-leek" is a kenning for "sword" that likens the shape of the sword to that of a leek. The warrior referred to may be King Harald. Hauka fjöllum , "arms", from hauka "hawk" and fjöll mountain. This
4731-439: The exclusive use of k rather than c . Various archaic features, such as the letter ð , had not been used much in later centuries. Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th-century changes include the use of é instead of je and the replacement of z with s in 1974. Apart from the addition of new vocabulary, written Icelandic has not changed substantially since
4814-447: The figure comprises more than three elements, it is said to be rekit "extended". Kennings of up to seven elements are recorded in skaldic verse. Snorri himself characterises five-element kennings as an acceptable license but cautions against more extreme constructions: Níunda er þat at reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar, er ór ættum er ef lengra er rekit; en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. "The ninth [license]
4897-622: The following dróttkvætt stanza, the Norwegian skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir (d. ca 990) compares the greed of King Harald Greycloak (Old Norse: Haraldr ) to the generosity of his predecessor, Haakon the Good ( Hákon ): Bárum, Ullr, of alla, ímunlauks, á hauka fjöllum Fýrisvalla fræ Hákonar ævi; nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr í móður holdi mellu dolgs of folginn —Eyvindr skáldaspillir, Lausavísa A literal translation reveals several kennings: " Ullr of
4980-419: The hard feet of the hilt (sword blades)" ( Eyvindr Skáldaspillir : Hákonarmál 6); svarraði sárgymir á sverða nesi "wound-sea (=blood) sprayed on headland of swords (=shield)" (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 7). Snorri calls such examples nýgervingar and exemplifies them in verse 6 of his Háttatal. The effect here seems to depend on an interplay of more or less naturalistic imagery and jarring artifice. But
5063-467: The houses" = "fire" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), specifically those where "[t]he base-word identifies the referent with something which it is not, except in a specially conceived relation which the poet imagines between it and the sense of the limiting element'" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Some even exclude naturalistic metaphors such as Old English forstes bend "bond of frost" = "ice" or winter-ġewǣde "winter-raiment" = "snow": "A metaphor
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#17330927052645146-422: The immediate father or mother of the child and not the historic family lineage. This system, which was formerly used throughout the Nordic area and beyond, differs from most Western systems of family name . In most Icelandic families, the ancient tradition of patronymics is still in use; i.e. a person uses their father's name (usually) or mother's name (increasingly in recent years) in the genitive form followed by
5229-639: The middle voice is a voice or simply an independent class of verbs of its own, as every middle-voice verb has an active-voice ancestor, but sometimes with drastically different meaning, and the middle-voice verbs form a conjugation group of their own. Examples are koma ("come") vs. komast ("get there"), drepa ("kill") vs. drepast ("perish ignominiously") and taka ("take") vs. takast ("manage to"). Verbs have up to ten tenses, but Icelandic, like English, forms most of them with auxiliary verbs . There are three or four main groups of weak verbs in Icelandic, depending on whether one takes
5312-418: The morpheme -son ("son") or -dóttir ("daughter") in lieu of family names. In 2019, changes were announced to the laws governing names. Icelanders who are officially registered with non-binary gender will be permitted to use the suffix -bur ("child of") instead of -son or -dóttir . A core theme of Icelandic language ideologies is grammatical, orthographic and lexical purism for Icelandic. This
5395-445: The nominative plural. Additionally, Icelandic permits a quirky subject , that is, certain verbs have subjects in an oblique case (i.e. other than the nominative). Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in the four cases and for number in the singular and plural. Verbs are conjugated for tense , mood , person , number and voice . There are three voices: active, passive and middle (or medial), but it may be debated whether
5478-459: The parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side. The lack of grammatical cases in modern English makes this aspect of kennings difficult to translate. Kennings are now rarely used in English, but are still used in the Germanic language family . The corresponding modern verb to ken survives in Scots and English dialects and in general English through the derivative existing in the standard language in
5561-651: The picture of the battle being described" (Faulkes (1997), pp. 8–9). Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms nykrat "made monstrous" (Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6), and his nephew called the practice löstr "a fault" ( Óláfr hvítaskáld : Third Grammatical Treatise 80). In spite of this, it seems that "many poets did not object to and some must have preferred baroque juxtapositions of unlike kennings and neutral or incongruous verbs in their verses" (Foote & Wilson (1970), p. 332). E.g. heyr jarl Kvasis dreyra "listen, earl, to Kvasir 's blood (=poetry)" ( Einarr skálaglamm : Vellekla 1). Sometimes there
5644-455: The plains ( vellir ) of the river Fýri south of Gamla Uppsala to delay their pursuers. Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr , "flour of Fróði's hapless slaves", is another kenning for "gold." It alludes to the Grottasöngr legend. Móður hold mellu dolgs , "flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess." "earth." Here the earth is personified as the goddess Jörð , mother of Thor , enemy of
5727-526: The question from a morphological standpoint. Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing (declined) adjective. According to this view, all kennings are formally compounds, notwithstanding widespread tmesis. In
5810-407: The sagas is Old Icelandic , a western dialect of Old Norse . The Dano-Norwegian , then later Danish rule of Iceland from 1536 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic (in contrast to the Norwegian language), which remained in daily use among the general population. Though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages, Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to
5893-407: The same Proto-Indo-European root that yields Modern English know , Latin -derived terms such as cognition and ignorant , and Greek gnosis . Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive phrase ( báru fákr "wave's horse" = "ship" ( Þorbjörn Hornklofi : Glymdrápa 3)) or a compound word ( gjálfr-marr "sea-steed" = "ship" (Anon.: Hervararkviða 27)). The simplest kennings consist of
5976-691: The same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an "enemy of gold", "attacker of treasure", "destroyer of arm-rings ", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake. Kennings could be developed into extended, and sometimes vivid, metaphors: tröddusk törgur fyr [...] hjalta harðfótum "shields were trodden under
6059-528: The set expression beyond one's ken , "beyond the scope of one's knowledge" and in the phonologically altered forms uncanny , "surreal" or "supernatural", and canny , "shrewd", "prudent". Modern Scots retains (with slight differences between dialects) tae ken "to know", kent "knew" or "known", Afrikaans ken "be acquainted with" and "to know" and kennis "knowledge". Old Norse kenna ( Modern Icelandic kenna , Swedish känna , Danish kende , Norwegian kjenne or kjenna )
6142-452: The simple type, possessing just two elements. Examples for "sea": seġl-rād "sail-road" ( Beowulf 1429 b), swan-rād "swan-road" (Beowulf 200 a), bæð-weġ "bath-way" (Andreas 513 a), hron-rād "whale-road" (Beowulf 10), hwæl-weġ "whale-way" ( The Seafarer 63 a). Most Old English examples take the form of compound words in which the first element is uninflected: "heofon-candel" "sky-candle" = "the sun" (Exodus 115 b). Kennings consisting of
6225-428: The skalds were not averse either to arbitrary, purely decorative, use of kennings: "That is, a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even when it is in the form of a man's arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the mention of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at all and does not contribute to
6308-459: The sons of the latter, especially Eysteinn Haraldsson , whose marshall he became. After Eysteinn's death in 1157, he composed the poem Elfarvísur for the nobleman Gregorius Dagsson (died 1161), referring to his victory over King Hákon Herdebrei at Göta älv in Götaland . The best known of Einarr's drápur is Geisli ("Ray of Light"), about St. Olaf Haraldsson . This drápa was recited in
6391-640: The surviving corpus of continental West Germanic verse; the Old Saxon Heliand contains only one example: lîk-hamo "body-raiment" = "body" (Heliand 3453 b), a compound which, in any case, is normal in West Germanic and North Germanic prose ( Old English līchama , Old High German lîchamo , lîchinamo , Dutch lichaam , Old Icelandic líkamr , líkami , Old Swedish līkhamber , Swedish lekamen , Danish and Norwegian Bokmål legeme , Norwegian Nynorsk lekam ). Old English kennings are all of
6474-446: The time the ancient literature of Iceland was written. Later in the 18th century the purism movement grew and more works were translated into Icelandic, especially in areas that Icelandic had hardly ever been used in. Many neologisms were introduced, with many of them being loan-translations. In the early 19th century, due to the influence of romanticism , importance was put on the purity of spoken language as well. The written language
6557-399: The war- leek ! We carried the seed of Fýrisvellir on our hawk-mountains during all of Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden the flour of Fróði 's hapless slaves in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess. " This could be paraphrased as "O warrior, we carried gold on our arms during all of King Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in
6640-455: The word order is fairly flexible, and every combination may occur in poetry; SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV and OVS are all allowed for metrical purposes. However, as with most Germanic languages, Icelandic usually complies with the V2 word order restriction, so the conjugated verb in Icelandic usually appears as the second element in the clause, preceded by the word or phrase being emphasised. For example: In
6723-479: Was also brought closer to the spoken language, as the sentence structure of literature had previously been influenced by Danish and German . The changes brought by the purism movement have had the most influence on the written language, as many speakers use foreign words freely in speech but try to avoid them in writing. The success of the many neologisms created from the movement has also been variable as some loanwords have not been replaced with native ones. There
6806-532: Was an Icelandic priest and skald . He was the most prominent Norse poet of the 12th century. Einarr's poetry is primarily preserved in Heimskringla , Flateyjarbók , Morkinskinna , Fagrskinna and Skáldskaparmál . He was descended from the family of Egill Skallagrímsson , the so-called Mýramenn . For most of his life he lived in Norway, during the reign of kings Sigurd Magnusson , Harald Gille and
6889-502: Was generally much freer than in Modern English because Old Norse and Old English are synthetic languages , where added prefixes and suffixes to the root word (the core noun, verb, adjective or adverb) carry grammatical meanings, whereas Middle English and Modern English use word order to carry grammatical information, as analytic languages . This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between
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