Skalds against ‘the System’.The Kennings of Þjóðolfr Arnórsson’s Harvest Metaphor

Abstract

The four helmingar recently edited as stanzas 27–29 of Sexstefja (‘Six-Refrained [Drápa]’) share similarities in imagery and structure. In the past, various scholars had therefore construed them as one thematic sequence containing a running metaphor on different moments of the agricultural cycle. The present article supports this idea by addressing a number of textual difficulties which have contributed to obscuring the metaphor’s unity. By discussing the problematic readings and by addressing some well-established biases of modern kenning scholarship – such as a dogmatic avoidance of overdetermined kennings – the present article aims at improving our understanding of the text while, at the same time, re-evaluating some methodological premises to the interpretation of skaldic verse. When editorial guidelines become too strict, inferences predicated on the alleged regularities of the so-called ‘kenning system’ may, in fact, compromise the poem’s internal logic. Rather, an investigation of the text’s possible poetic precedents may prove helpful, shedding light on the trade-off between the skald’s innovativeness and his indebtedness to tradition.