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Welcome poets, today I thought we should learn about kennings again. This is a prompt we did back in 2014, and I think it is worth repeating. A kenning is a very brief metaphoric phrase or compound word and it means “to know” (derived from Icelandic, but exist in many other languages like Swedish and German). It was used extensively in Old Norse (later Icelandic) and Anglo Saxon poetry as a means of adding both colour, and better metre to the skaldic songs. For instance “whale-road” was used as a kenning for the sea in Beowulf, and “wave-stead” replaced ship in Glymdrápa.

The written Norse texts were written down much later, unfortunately the runestones which would be contemporary are much more mundane than the text of the sagas.

Runestones can be found everywhere around Stockholm, this one can be found in the Old City in Stockholm Av Albertyanks – Albert Jankowski – Eget arbete, Public Domain,

It could be formed around a genitive or directly as a compound word and in English we may use a hyphen. It is normally done by combination of nouns but there is no such rule. In Nordic languages compound words are freely formed by writing them together and if you are daring you may skip the hyphen. It’s actually still used in many languages to form new words. Consider for instance “fernseher” for television in German (meaning view from afar), or “couchpotato” for a lazy person watching too much TV. A language that evolves, constantly needs new words and one way to do it as kennings.

Today I want you, dear poets, to create new kennings and use it in your poetry. The process is simple, just consider something you want a new word for and create one or several kennings for this. It can then form an ode, a riddle poem or any type of other poetry. There are examples to find at several places on the internet. But before doing that, I can give you an example I wrote some years  ago, where I at least partially used the process of kennings to write a poem celebrating International women’s day (March 8).

Sweet moon-dancer
and the meal-creator
Our garden’s friend,
and diamond-bearer,
lullaby-singer
honey-whisperer
Our decision-maker
and unpaid labourer.
The butterfly-charmer
and home’s defender.
Today is women’s day,
like every day should be

Usually you start with a base word that has some relation to what your meaning is and then you add a descriptive word. Let yourself associate freely and include all your fantasy in the creation and don’t hesitate to mix senses ( for instance with Synesthesia). Also the use of Mythology could be a good way to create association (Thor-hammering would for instance be thunder). The combination of two words becomes a kenning. For instance “butterfly-charmer” for women. 

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