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Skaldic Poetry and Modern Painting 135
a structure at the same time as unified and as variable and
as concerned with its structural laws as the skaldic
helming or half-stanza and later on the skaldified rimur
quatrain in Icelandic. The sound pillars of this four
verseline composition are marked by alliteration, assonance,
internal or end-rime. The alliteration connects two
stressed syllables in the odd lines with the first stressed
syllables of the even line, combining the two to make an
alliterative couplet. For the purpose any consonant
could alliterate with itself, as well as the special
combinations sp, st, sk. But any vowel could alliterate,
and preferably did, with some other vowel, making the
task of the alliterator considerably easier than that of the
rhymester. The first line of each couplet should have
a consonantic assonance, like bend: band, the second a full
rime, like round : sound. Usually the skaldic metre,
counting six syllables to a line to make up a helming of
the magically potent twenty-four syllables, would have
a disyllabic ending to each line, usually not riming,
although a row-rime might occur, but never alternate
rimes. The rimur quatrains would have either alternate
end-rimes or row-rimes: aa bb or aaaa. This is, of course,
purely a composition of sound effects: one could imagine
the alliteration words coloured green, the assonance blue,
and the full rime yellow. In the quatrain of the rimur
poetry the assonances and internal rimes are worked to an
ever greater artistic degree in hundreds of variations until
one can, in the so-called slettubond, end up with every word
in the second half of the stanza riming with every word
in the first, and one can read the stanza in a great many
ways, sometimes backward and forward with or without
change of meaning. 9 This may remind one of paintings
that can be hung many ways on the wall.
o The following example of Slettubiind, by Hallgrimur Petursson, is changeable
in 96 ways, see Helgi Sigurosson, Safn til bragfrCEoi islenzkra rimna
(r89r), II4-128; he prints 48 of the variants.
Mattur rettur snjalla snill
snara farra kynni
hattur Iettur valla vill
vara tzera minni.