Dróttkvætt

I set myself rules in order to be totally free.

—Georges Perec¹

Dróttkvætt. Old Norse court poetry, the verse of scalp-tingling wordsmiths, of wanderers on the whale's mean streets, of silver-tongued advertisers ("Eiríkr Bloodaxe rules OK"). Its stanza-form, a sculpture carved into time. In dróttkvætt, all things are numbers; the shape of reality is mathematical. Once tuned in to the mystic high frequencies of the universe, skalds (poets) said things that they did not know they were capable of saying.

Dróttkvætt had a long run in Scandinavia, emerging at the onset of the Viking Age and holding on, horn, tooth, and claw, for more than half a millennium. The authors of poetic treatises from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iceland believed that this verse had a future. Perhaps W. H. Auden thought so too when he slipped an English imitation into The Age of Anxiety.² J. R. R. Tolkien also tried his hand at the form:

Winter's winds had huntedwaves as dark as ravens,their [leaden] ship laden,lightless, sea-benighted.Forth now fared they mirthlessfar from mortal [portals]in caves coldly-buildedkindled fires that dwindled.³

The rhyme-scheme, alliteration, and syllable count of dróttkvætt are represented. Missing is its poetry: the hypnotic sound and memory links, the jagged wit and suggestiveness, the sudden glory of rounded perception.

The classical dróttkvætt stanza consists of eight lines; a syntactic break after the fourth line divides the whole into two symmetrical halves of twenty-four syllables each (the number of letters in the older runic alphabet). The basic metrical unit is a three-stress, six-syllable line, with a prescribed trochaic ending in a long stressed syllable followed by a short unstressed one. Lines are linked in pairs by means of alliteration or initial correspondence (all vowels alliterate with each other and with most words beginning with j-). There are two stressed alliterating syllables in the odd and one in the even line (always the first syllable). In each line, the next-to-last syllable chimes with a stem in the same line. In even lines, there is full rhyme; in odd lines, half-rhyme (different vowels followed by the same consonant). Of the forty-eight syllables in a full stanza, normally twenty-four are stressed, twelve bear alliteration, eight form full rhyme, and eight form half-rhyme. There is no choice in the placement of eight rhyming and four alliterating syllables. Like a wire in a tight mesh or screen, each significant word is linked in one or more ways to others in the same or immediately adjoining line. But there is more.

Skalds skewed syntax. There is no certainty in dróttkvætt until the final syllable is in. The pull of an invisible grammar dictates the meaning of a stanza: words are urged into place, drawn together into a logical structure, like iron filings above a hidden magnet. Frequently a thought begun in line one is not completed until line four. Multiple stop-signs—the caesuras or gaps between alliterating and rhyming words—slow or redirect traffic, creating deliberate delays and frustration as well as multidimensional effects.

Example 1: A Skald Laments his Fallen Brother.⁴

Gekk, sá's óðisk ekki,jarlmanns bani, snarla,(þreklundaðr fell) Þundar—Þórólfr—í gný stórum;jörð grœr, en vér verðum,Vínu nær, of mínum,(helnauð es þat) hyljaharm, ágætum barma.

Strode he, who feared nothing,the earl's slayer—quickly—the bold one fell—of Óðinn—Þórólfr—in the great din;earth grows—and I have to—near Vína—over my—deadly agony is it—hide—sorrow—noble brother.

The first half-stanza contains a simple kenning or poetic circumlocution ("the din of Óðinn" = battle). The opening quatrain is structured so that a warrior's striding forth and subsequent fall in battle are heard simultaneously. The dead man's name is detached from its potential appositives (he, the earl's slayer, the bold one...