SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

The Languages of Alvissmdl
poet, a man for whom the discovery of old and rare words
and the creation of new ones were a source of pleasure and
satisfaction. One does not have the impression that he
had any particularly serious intention in composing his
verses. Despite the poem's similarity to fiulur, he
scarcely intended to create a handbook for skalds. It
seems even less likely that the poet wished to help his
fellow men in communicating with the gods and with
dangerous powers by teaching them words used by these
supernatural beings. (One notes with a certain amount
of surprise that Thor himself uses the words of men in his
questions. Whether this is due to an oversight on the
part of the poet or whether he found this arrangement a
practical necessity is difficult to say. In any case it
helps to strengthen the impression that the poet did not
himself take the fiction of the languages of different worlds
all that seriously.)
Alvissmdl is first and foremost a virtuoso performance.
The poet shows off his rich vocabulary and his powers of
expression. And the fictitious connection with other
worlds is secondary. Like the poem's narrative frame, the
heim-fiction is a stylistic trick - and not an unsuccessful
one. As I have pointed out several times, the poet knew
and perhaps himself shared the old popular belief that
gods and supernatural powers spoke a special language.
But the differentiation of this non-human speech into
languages of gods, giants, dwarves, the inhabitants of Hel
and the others is certainly to a large extent the poet's
own invention.