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Primary meaning Kenning translated Original kenning Explanation Source language Example axe blood-ember Blóðeisu: N: Einarr Skúlason, Øxarflokkr 7 battle spear-din N: Snorri Sturluson, Skaldskaparmal: blood dead-slave N: blood battle-sweat One reference for this kenning comes from the epic poem, Beowulf.
Detail of the Old English manuscript of the poem Beowulf, showing the words "ofer hron rade" ("over the whale's road"), meaning "over the sea". 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.
The compact half-line phrases are often made indirect with kennings like banhus, "bone-house", meaning "body", but also implying the brief span of life while the soul is housed in the body. [12] These can be mapped on to modern kennings, preserving the Beowulf poet's indirectness, or translated to unpack the kenning and render the meaning more ...
Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] [2 ... or "bee-hunter" and that it is a kenning for ... Anglo-Saxon propose that Beowulf is a variant of beado-wulf meaning ...
Kennings are a key feature of Old English poetry. A kenning is an often formulaic metaphorical phrase that describes one thing in terms of another: for instance, in Beowulf, the sea is called the whale road. Another example of a kenning in The Wanderer is a reference to battle as a "storm of spears". [22]
Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature.
Slade in a footnote states that "the kenning (if it is one) is obscure". From the context it is clear that "being in ealuscerwen" is an unpleasant state. The first part of the compound is clearly ealu "ale". The second part, scerwen is less clear. A simplex *scerwen is unknown. There is a compound verb be-scerwen, meaning "to deprive".
Two main characters in Beowulf stand as peace-weavers. Wealhþeow is a fairly able peace-weaver inasmuch as a peace-weaver can be effective. [5] She attended to the successes of her husband and sons while providing her daughter as another peace-weaver to a different enemy tribe.