Egil's Saga
Introduction
Of the verse in this Saga, and of the principles followed in translating it, something must be said; for peculiar difficulties beset the translator of Icelandic verses. Icelandic poetry differs entirely from Icelandic prose. Whereas the prose is simple, the poetry is highly artificial. Especially so are the detached staves or stanzas sprinkled throughout the Sagas. Of such the Egla has a great number, mostly Egil's own verses; and, as he is accounted one of the best of Iceland's ancient skalds, they are an interesting part of the Saga and could not be omitted. But in rendering them into English one meets with perplexing difficulties.
These staves consist nearly always of eight lines each, made up of two sets of four lines, the sense being usually complete in each quatrain. As regards metre, the lines are short, about of a length, not exactly so in syllables, but alike in rhythm and number of accented syllables. No doubt more exact rules about their metre are discoverable and known to Icelanders, but for the English reader the above description will suffice. The lines to not rhyme, or very seldom do so, and (I believe) rhyme in these detached stanzas is looked on as a mark of a later date than the tenth century. The place of rhyme is taken by alliteration of initials. That is to say, in the second line must be repeated the same initial consonant that has been used twice (or at least once) in the first line, or else a vowel must be so repeated. Anyone familiar with old English or Saxon verses (such as occur in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, e.g., the battle of Brunanburh) will understand the kind of alliteration meant.
Now, a translator has to choose between keeping this [x] form as far as he may, or changing it into rhyme with strict syllabic metre. As the former method of alliteration with some license as to length of line by unaccented syllables allows of a closer rendering of the original, it has been preferred.
But there are several puzzles to solve in icelandic verse. There is often a curiously complex order of words, an order that sometimes renders a sentence unconstruable at first sight even to one accustomed to the involutions of Latin and German. Were it not for the consentient authority of Scandinavian interpreters, I could never have imagined words to be meant so out of the order in which they are written. To keep their rules of alliterative sound, the skalds broke those of grammatical sense. The subjoined examples (by no means extreme ones—will give an idea of the Icelandic practice in this kind.
(1) 'Now hath the lord of earth slain falls the land under the descendent of Ella forward in fight of rule head-stem three princes.'
Which being interpreted is: 'Now hath the lord of earth, forward in fight, head-stem, slain three princes: the land falls under the rule of the descendant of Ella.'
(2) 'Let listen pleased to the stream of long-haired friend of altars take heed thane of silence thy people the king's of mine.'
Interpreted: 'Let the king's thane listen pleased to the stream of my long-haired altar-friend (= to the stream of song from Odin); let the people take heed of silence.'
The consenting voice of three gives (with hardly a variation in detail) these explanations. Now, these examples in their original order sound much as if Scott had written in the opening of the 'Lady of the Lake':
'At eve had drunk where danced his fill
The stag the moon on Monan's rill.'
This feature of Icelandic verse plainly cannot be kept, nor is it worth keeping. We must presume that somehow the hearers (or most of them) did understand what was sung, but no English hearer or reader could understand his own language so treated. A translator must give up this artificial order. But this peculiarity, besides making the sense hard [xi] to unravel, may also cause additional trouble to the translator, who has to make new alliterations in place of old ones, that were perhaps ready to hand, but have disappeared by the rearranging of the words into something intelligible.
But the most curious characteristic of Icelandic poetry and the most difficult to deal with is the 'kenning,' as it is called. It means 'a mark of recognition'; kennings are descriptive names or periphrases. Such phraseology we find, to some extent, in all ancient poetry, but it is most artificial in the Northern poets. It seems a principle with them seldom to call a thing or person by its plain name, but to use a periphrasis. These kennings are of very different kinds. Sometimes they are really poetical descriptions, figurative, but easily understood and appreciated, and apposite to the passage in which they occur. For instance, anyone can understand a sword in action being called a 'wound-snake' or 'wound-wolf,' arrows flying from the bowstring 'wound-bees,' a shield a 'rimmed moon,' a ship 'sea-swan,' sea-horse 'sea-king's steed.' 'Willow-render' (tree-render) for wind recalls the silvifraga flabra of Lucretius. But some kennings are extraordinary, especially when compound, as they often are. 'Dale-fish,' for example, is a curious roundabout for 'serpent'; then built upon this we find 'dale-fish mercy,' for the season that cheers or enlivens the serpent, i.e., 'summer.' We know that 'it is the bright day that brings forth the adder,' but very cumbrous is this kenning used in a verse of the Egla simply to mark the time of an exploit. Numerous are the kennings for 'gold,' 'man,' 'woman,' nor are these (as far as one can see) used with any reference to the fitness of each for the occasion.
Again, some of the kennings seem meant to be rather humorous than what we should call poetical, as when the head is 'hat-knoll,' 'hat-stall'; the eyes 'brow-pits'; the tongue 'song-pounder.' And certainly some were purposely enigmatical, meant to tax the ingenuity of the hearer to solve. Names of persons are hidden. Egil is supposed once to do this with the name of a woman; it is hidden so carefully that his friend Arinbjorn cannot discover it, nor have commentators satisfactorily found it yet. On another occasion Egil describes Arinbjorn by a kind of pun [xii] as 'the bear' (bjorn) of the birchwood's terror (of arin, 'the hearth,' on which birchwood is burnt).
This fondness for wrapping up wisdom in riddles we see in Eastern nations. Solomon (Prov. i.6) puts it as a desirable learning 'to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their dark sayings' (marg. 'riddles'); the LXX. has parabol»n ca…scoteiuÒu lÒgou r»seij tj sofèn ca… a…u…gata. There are phrases like Icelandic kennings in Solomon; e.g., in Eccles. Ix. 3, 4, 'the keepers of the house, the strong men, the grinders, those that look out of the window,' are of this kind, as also perhaps some of those expressions that follow. And riddles of the older type are so. Take, for example, Samson's riddle, 'Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' What is this but describing what had happened with the kennings, 'eater' and 'strong' for lion, 'meat' and 'sweetness' for honey?
In some respects the use of certain epithets in ancient Greek poetry is like the use of kennings. We find in Homer stock epithets, names, titles, repeatedly occurring where they do not specially fit the passage. Men are 'articulating, enterprising' (mšropej, £lfhstai); the earth is 'black, all-feeding, rye-giving' (mšlainam poulubÒteiram, xeidwroj); the sea is 'divine, fishful' (dia, …cquÒessa); kings and chiefs 'Jove's nurslings, blameless' (diotrefš ej, £mÚmonej), etc., without regard to the special circumstances. But in Greek with the epithet the noun is mostly expressed; whereas in Icelandic it has to be guessed.
Very many kennings are based on mythology. This is not only true of the names of the gods, but also of other persons and things; they are frequently described by periphrases which can only be explained from the Edda, and are therefore meaningless to those who are not well versed in the details of that same.
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