Prace komisji nauk.pdf - Instytut Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytetu ...

which, as culturally bound linguistic entities, have mirrored to a certain degree
the society in question as well as its relationships with the extralinguistic (and
also linguistic) reality (for a comprehensive study regarding the linguistic view
of the world see, e.g. Bartmiński 2006). This means that Vikings, the Nordic
conquerors, incessant voyagers, or whatever name we would wish to tag them
with, had simply different clusters of metaphors from ours “to live by”.
In this place let me briefly refer to just one such strikingly Old
Germanic/Old Nordic figure of speech which is called a “kenning”, and is “a
kind of condensed metaphorical expression” (Hollander 1962: XXI). Hollander
characterizes “kennings” in the following way:
It most often contains a real, or implied, comparison, or else defines a
concept with reference to something else. Thus a ship (which may be
thought of as galloping over the waves) is called a “sailsteed”; a tree,
braving the “shower-of-arrows” (…). Or instead of naming an object or
person directly, there is a reference to somebody, or something else. Thór,
for example, is called, simply, “Sif’s husband”, or ‘Hrungnir’s bane”, or
in allusion to his typical activity, “Breaker-of-thurs-heads”. Similarly,
blood is termed “dew-of-wounds” or “dew-of-sorrow”; 15 gold, “the
burthen-of-Grani” (Sigurt’s steed which bears away the Niflung hoard); a
prince, most often “breaker-of-rings”, “reddener-of-swords”, or similar
names, referring to the two qualities most highly admired in rulers –
generosity and bravery. (Hollander 1962: XXI)
The above described proclivity for the use of “kennings” is well seen not
only in ON literature, which was written down in a later period, but also in the
runic inscriptions of the Viking Age. It is to be observed quite clearly in the
form of fixed expressions, like for instance “a very noble dreng”, or ritualistic
formulas (sometimes personalized due to the particular occasion), where the
commemorated protagonist is referred to with respect to something else, as in
the Mejlby Stone (see the description below): “Åne raised this stone in memory
of Eskil, his son, who met his death with Thore (or: Thore’s raid) in Øresund”,
or “Thorgot (a man) [or] Thorgund (a woman) raised this stone in memory of
15 Compare Tennyson’s “drops of onset” (from “The Passing of Arthur”, 1 383).
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