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109-474: Skáldskaparmál ( Old Norse : 'Poetic Diction' or 'The Language of Poetry'; Old Norse pronunciation: [ˈskaldskaparˌmɒːl] ; Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈskaultˌskaːparˌmauːl̥] ) is the second part of the Prose Edda , compiled by Snorri Sturluson . It consists of a dialogue between Ægir , the divine personification of the sea, and Bragi , the god of poetry, in which both stories of

218-727: A change known as Holtzmann's law . An epenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Old Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic. An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three: /u/ was used in West Norwegian south of Bergen , as in aftur , aftor (older aptr ); North of Bergen, /i/ appeared in aftir , after ; and East Norwegian used /a/ , after , aftær . Old Norse

327-403: A crew; eight men make a panel; nine are 'good fellows;' ten are a gang; eleven form an embassy; it is a dozen if twelve go together; thirteen are a crowd; fourteen are an expedition; it is a gathering, when fifteen meet; sixteen make a garrison; seventeen are a congregation; to him who meets eighteen, they seem enemies enough. He who has nineteen men has a company; twenty men are a posse; thirty are

436-500: A duel along the border of Asgard and Jötunheim; Thor was eager to accept given that none had offered him single-combat before. The other giants, wary of losing their strongest fighter in Hrungnir, build a massive clay construct called Mökkurkálfi to aid Hrungnir as a second. The only heart they can find large enough to power the construct is a mare's heart, though, which falters in courage upon having to face Thor. Hrungnir himself has

545-485: A falcon, but is captured. After being kept in a chest for three months, Loki eventually agrees to Geirrödr's demands: he will free Loki if he lures Thor to his abode, but without his hammer Mjölnir , his belt of strength ( Megingjörð ), or his iron gloves ( Járngreipr ). An unarmed Thor and Loki travel to Geirrödr's abode, but stop by the home of the giantess Grídr , who warns Thor of the danger. Grídr loans Thor her own belt, gauntlets, and staff (Grídarvöl). The two ford

654-417: A female raven or a male crow. All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms, and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals. The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as lim and mund . Some words, such as hungr , have multiple genders, evidenced by their determiners being declined in different genders within

763-412: A front vowel to be split into a semivowel-vowel sequence before a back vowel in the following syllable. While West Norse only broke /e/ , East Norse also broke /i/ . The change was blocked by a /w/ , /l/ , or /ʀ/ preceding the potentially-broken vowel. Some /ja/ or /jɔ/ and /jaː/ or /jɔː/ result from breaking of /e/ and /eː/ respectively. When a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb has

872-400: A giant as well, who is married to the goddess Rán . There, he is seated next to Bragi at a banquet. Bragi is the god of poetry, but there is also a Bragi the skald mentioned later; it is unclear if the skald was named for the god, or if the human skald had been elevated to the rank of god later. The framing story does not last; it seems to stop around chapter 17 (out of 75 chapters), and

981-409: A given sentence. Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns were declined in four grammatical cases – nominative , accusative , genitive , and dative  – in singular and plural numbers. Adjectives and pronouns were additionally declined in three grammatical genders. Some pronouns (first and second person) could have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The genitive

1090-464: A great part of the poem, the events after and before the interpolated recollection are of greater interest than the memory. A film that plays with frame narrative is the 1994 Forrest Gump . Most of it is narrated by Forrest to various companions on the bus-stop bench. However, in the last fifth or so of the film, Forrest gets up and leaves the bench, and we follow him as he meets with Jenny and her son. This final segment suddenly has no narrator unlike

1199-482: A journey. A giant eagle offers help in cooking an ox in exchange for a share of the meal; the three agree, but Loki quickly attacks in anger after seeing the eagle take a plum share. The eagle flys off with Loki, and only agrees to let Loki go after extracting a promise for Loki to help lure Idunn away from Asgard. In truth, the eagle was a transformed version of the giant Thjazi . Loki honors his promise and lures Idunn away so she can be kidnapped by Thjazi. As Idunn

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1308-584: A long vowel or diphthong in the accented syllable and its stem ends in a single l , n , or s , the r (or the elder r - or z -variant ʀ ) in an ending is assimilated. When the accented vowel is short, the ending is dropped. The nominative of the strong masculine declension and some i-stem feminine nouns uses one such -r (ʀ). Óðin-r ( Óðin-ʀ ) becomes Óðinn instead of * Óðinr ( * Óðinʀ ). The verb blása ('to blow'), has third person present tense blæss ('[he] blows') rather than * blæsr ( * blæsʀ ). Similarly,

1417-676: A massive whetstone , at the incoming hammer. The weapons collide in the middle, breaking the whetstone into pieces and sending flint shards all across Midgard (an explanation of them being a rock that can start fires). Mjöllnir continues on its path and smashes Hrungnir's skull, killing him; a shard of the whetstone also continues toward Thor, embedding itself in Thor's skull. The two fall forward into each other, with Hrungnir's foot covering Thor's neck. Meanwhile, Thjálfi defeats Mökkurkálfi. The audience of Æsir can find none strong enough to heft Hrungnir's corpse off Thor, though. Magni, son of Thor and

1526-427: A new light. A framing device might simply be a defining image of the narrative or art that is used at the beginning and end of the work, as in the film Chariots of Fire which begins and ends with the characters running along a beach, accompanied at both times by the movie's famous theme music. This scene, although chronologically in the middle of the film and unimportant to the straightforward plot, serves to convey

1635-474: A noun must mirror the gender of that noun , so that one says, " heill maðr! " but, " heilt barn! ". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeed karl , "man" is masculine, kona , "woman", is feminine, and hús , "house", is neuter, so also are hrafn and kráka , for "raven" and "crow", masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to

1744-418: A nut, and flies off in the form of a falcon using the cloak, clutching Idunn in his talons. Thjazi pursues while in the form of an eagle after discovering Idunn missing. After a high-speed chase between falcon-Loki pursued by eagle-Thjazi, Thjazi crashes and is then killed by the awaiting Æsir near the gate to Asgard. His daughter Skadi swears vengeance for her father, but the Æsir make a deal with her. She

1853-447: A powerful mead that turns one into a skald or a scholar if drunk . The two continue their killing spree by inviting the giant Gillingr to go fishing, then drowning him by overturning his boat; they then murder Gillingr's widow, too. It falls to Gillingr's son (or nephew in some manuscripts), Suttungr , to avenge him. Suttungr strands the two dwarves on a reef and threatens them with drowning; they buy their freedom by offering Suttungr

1962-476: A similar development influenced by Middle Low German . Various languages unrelated to Old Norse and others not closely related have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman language ; to a lesser extent, Finnish and Estonian . Russian, Ukrainian , Belarusian , Lithuanian and Latvian also have a few Norse loanwords. The words Rus and Russia , according to one theory, may be named after

2071-618: A squadron; forty, a community; fifty are a shire; sixty are an assembly; seventy are a line; eighty are a people; one hundred is a host. The last part of Skáldskaparmál , which is not in all manuscripts of the Edda , is Nafnaþulur , a list of names of beings and items in Norse mythology. Old Norse Old Norse , also referred to as Old Nordic , or Old Scandinavian , was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse

2180-424: A stone heart capable of facing against Thor as well as a stone shield that could perhaps absorb Thor's thunder. Thor is accompanied by Thjálfi , who tells Hrungnir that Thor is planning on attacking from underground. Hrungnir unwisely heeds Thjálfi's warning and stands on his stone shield to protect himself, but Thor instead attacks from afar, throwing his hammer Mjöllnir at Hrungnir. Hrungnir throws his own weapon,

2289-472: A story arc called Worlds End which consisted of frame stories, and sometimes even featured stories within stories within stories. Sometimes, as in Washington Irving 's Sketch Book , which contains " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " and " Rip Van Winkle " among others, the conceit is that the author of the book is not the real author but a fictional character, in this case a man named Crayon. Here

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2398-522: A story within the main narrative encapsulates some aspect of the framing story, in which case it is called a mise en abyme . A typical frame story is One Thousand and One Nights , in which the character Scheherazade narrates a set of fairy tales to the Sultan Shahriyar over many nights. Many of Shahrazad's tales are also frame stories, such as Tale of Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad

2507-608: A voiced velar fricative [ɣ] in all cases, and others have that realisation only in the middle of words and between vowels (with it otherwise being realised [ɡ] ). The Old East Norse /ʀ/ was an apical consonant , with its precise position unknown; it is reconstructed as a palatal sibilant . It descended from Proto-Germanic /z/ and eventually developed into /r/ , as had already occurred in Old West Norse. The consonant digraphs ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ occurred word-initially. It

2616-467: A vowel or semivowel of a different vowel backness . In the case of i-umlaut and ʀ-umlaut , this entails a fronting of back vowels, with retention of lip rounding. In the case of u-umlaut , this entails labialization of unrounded vowels. Umlaut is phonemic and in many situations grammatically significant as a side effect of losing the Proto-Germanic morphological suffixes whose vowels created

2725-448: A word. Strong verbs ablaut the lemma 's nucleus to derive the past forms of the verb. This parallels English conjugation, where, e.g., the nucleus of sing becomes sang in the past tense and sung in the past participle. Some verbs are derived by ablaut, as the present-in-past verbs do by consequence of being derived from the past tense forms of strong verbs. Umlaut or mutation is an assimilatory process acting on vowels preceding

2834-404: A young priest, because the movie is based more on stories Salieri told about Mozart than on historical fact. Another use is a form of procatalepsis , where the writer puts the readers' possible reactions to the story in the characters listening to it. In The Princess Bride the frame of a grandfather reading the story to his reluctant grandson puts the cynical reaction a viewer might have to

2943-627: Is a layered example, as Thor is referred to by the kenning "giant's enemy" (or "slayer of giants" elsewhere), and once that substitution is made, "Thor's mother" becomes a reference to the earth where the gold was hidden. The chapter goes on to cite excerpts from Hallfredr the Troublesome Skald and Thjódólf of Hvinir as well. In other sections, the Skáldskaparmál writes more directly of poetic synonyms for words, or heiti . These can read somewhat strangely in translation, as

3052-544: Is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden . In what is present-day Denmark and Sweden, most speakers spoke Old East Norse. Though Old Gutnish is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations, it developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th-century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes , Norwegians , Icelanders , and Danes spoke

3161-465: Is expected to exist, such as in the male names Ragnarr , Steinarr (supposedly * Ragnarʀ , * Steinarʀ ), the result is apparently always /rː/ rather than */rʀ/ or */ʀː/ . This is observable in the Runic corpus. In Old Norse, i/j adjacent to i , e , their u-umlauts, and æ was not possible, nor u/v adjacent to u , o , their i-umlauts, and ǫ . At

3270-413: Is framed by the narrator's story and letters. Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein has multiple framed narratives. In the book, Robert Walton writes letters to his sister, describing the story told to him by the scientist Victor Frankenstein . Midway through Frankenstein's story, he is met by the monster , who tells him his own story after he was created, and this third narrative even briefly contains

3379-410: Is given; Bragi delivers a systematic list of kennings for various Æsir, people, places, and things. He then goes on to discuss poetic language in some detail, in particular heiti , essentially poetic synonyms or alternate words. For example, the simple hestr , "horse", might be replaced by jór , "steed". In general, the parts of the work that attract the most interest from modern audiences are

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3488-584: Is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse. This is still a major difference between Swedish and Faroese and Icelandic today. Plurals of neuters do not have u-umlaut at all in Swedish, but in Faroese and Icelandic they do, for example the Faroese and Icelandic plurals of the word land , lond and lönd respectively, in contrast to

3597-425: Is offered compensation in a marriage of a man of her choice, but she can only see the feet of those offered: the result is she is married to Njord , a god of the sea presumably with very clean feet. She also demands that the Æsir make her laugh again after her loss, and Loki does a prank involving tying a cord between his genitals and a goat. Finally, Thjazi's eyes are cast into the heavens to make two new stars. At

3706-459: Is that the nonphonemic difference between the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative is marked. The oldest texts and runic inscriptions use þ exclusively. Long vowels are denoted with acutes . Most other letters are written with the same glyph as the IPA phoneme, except as shown in the table below. Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels which are swapped, or ablauted, in the nucleus of

3815-433: Is the most complete account of the tale, but kennings from other sources validate it by calling poetry the "drink of dwarves", "sea of Óðrerir " (one of the three vats), or "booty of Odin". While Odin is a trickster in the story who deceives Gunnlöd and causes the deaths of innocents in his plan, it does not appear he was particularly judged harshly for his actions; there is a sentiment that cultural treasures should go to

3924-557: Is unclear whether they were sequences of two consonants (with the first element realised as /h/ or perhaps /x/ ) or as single voiceless sonorants /l̥/ , /r̥/ and /n̥/ respectively. In Old Norwegian, Old Danish and later Old Swedish, the groups ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ were reduced to plain ⟨l⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , which suggests that they had most likely already been pronounced as voiceless sonorants by Old Norse times. The pronunciation of ⟨hv⟩

4033-620: Is unclear, but it may have been /xʷ/ (the Proto-Germanic pronunciation), /hʷ/ or the similar phoneme /ʍ/ . Unlike the three other digraphs, it was retained much longer in all dialects. Without ever developing into a voiceless sonorant in Icelandic, it instead underwent fortition to a plosive /kv/ , which suggests that instead of being a voiceless sonorant, it retained a stronger frication. Primary stress in Old Norse falls on

4142-525: The One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabian Nights ), The Decameron , and the Canterbury Tales , in which each pilgrim tells his own kind of tale, and whose frame story "was once the most admired part of Chaucer's work". The use of a frame story in which a single narrative is set in the context of the telling of a story is also a technique with a long history, dating back at least to

4251-597: The Thorsdrápa , Ragnarsdrápa , Húsdrápa , Bjarkamál , and others. Other lost sources believed to be consulted by Sturluson include the Skjöldunga saga , possibly an early version of the Völsunga saga , and even more hypothetically a lost work referred to as *Hladajarla saga . One work that does not appear to be consulted much, conversely, is Saxo Grammaticus 's Gesta Danorum , which seems to have been

4360-488: The Gylfaginning very dialogue-heavy, while the Skáldskaparmál tends toward third-person storytelling, and occasional didactic sections in its latter parts. Regardless, the two fit together snugly, containing almost no repetition of stories. The chapter markings used in most editions are not original to the work, but rather applied in later printings for the ease of discussion. The Æsir then went to their feast, and

4469-535: The Latin alphabet , there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letter wynn called vend was used briefly for the sounds /u/ , /v/ , and /w/ . Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. The standardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century and is, for the most part, phonemic. The most notable deviation

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4578-661: The Poetic Edda , has Loki seemingly accuse Sif of having an affair with him, perhaps explaining how Loki was able to cut the hair in the first place, although it is unclear if Snorri was referencing this.) Thor, Sif's husband, is enraged by the prank, and demands Loki make it right—or else he'll break every bone in Loki's body. Loki travels to the dwarves , and the sons of Ivaldi agree to create replacement hair made from gold, except it would magically attach to Sif's flesh and grow like normal hair. The sons of Ivaldi also create

4687-667: The Rus' people , a Norse tribe, probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi , respectively. A number of loanwords have been introduced into Irish , many associated with fishing and sailing. A similar influence is found in Scottish Gaelic , with over one hundred loanwords estimated to be in the language, many of which are related to fishing and sailing. Old Norse vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. The standardized orthography marks

4796-624: The Vimur River , but the water rises as they get to the midpoint; they brace themselves with the borrowed belt of strength and rod to avoid being washed away. Thor spies Gjálp, one of Geirrödr's daughters, at the source causing the torrent (possibly from urinating?), and throws a stone at her. Arriving at Geirrödr's home, Thor sits down in a chair, but the chair suddenly rises toward the ceiling, threatening to crush him—Geirrödr's two daughters Gjálp and Greip were hiding under it and pushing it up. Thor uses Grídr's staff to brace himself against

4905-473: The Völsunga saga . The cursed Rhinegold triggers a train of tragedy across generations. Various other presumed mythological references exist but only as mentions. For example, in discussing stories of Heimdall, the author mentions that Heimdall fought Loki over the necklace Brísinga-men while in the form of seals, citing Úlfr Uggason , but this reference if it ever existed has since been lost. Much of

5014-668: The word stem , so that hyrjar would be pronounced /ˈhyr.jar/ . In compound words, secondary stress falls on the second stem (e.g. lærisveinn , /ˈlɛːɾ.iˌswɛinː/ ). Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark , runic Old Norse was originally written with the Younger Futhark , which had only 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and long and short vowels were not distinguished in writing. Medieval runes came into use some time later. As for

5123-439: The Æsir and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined. The work additionally includes tales of human heroes and kings. The overarching mythological setup gradually fades and the work becomes more of an early form of a poetic thesaurus of Old Norse , presumably intended for usage by skalds (Norse poets and bards of the era). Much of the work is focused on poetic phrases and descriptors. The origin of these kennings

5232-557: The 11th century in most of Old East Norse. However, the distinction still holds in Dalecarlian dialects . The dots in the following vowel table separate the oral from nasal phonemes. Note: The open or open-mid vowels may be transcribed differently: Sometime around the 13th century, /ɔ/ (spelled ⟨ǫ⟩ ) merged with /ø/ or /o/ in most dialects except Old Danish , and Icelandic where /ɔ/ ( ǫ ) merged with /ø/ . This can be determined by their distinction within

5341-979: The 12th-century First Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-century Prose Edda . The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained in Elfdalian and other dialects of Ovansiljan ). See Old Icelandic for the mergers of /øː/ (spelled ⟨œ⟩ ) with /ɛː/ (spelled ⟨æ⟩ ) and /ɛ/ (spelled ⟨ę⟩ ) with /e/ (spelled ⟨e⟩ ). Old Norse had three diphthong phonemes: /ɛi/ , /ɔu/ , /øy ~ ɛy/ (spelled ⟨ei⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨ey⟩ respectively). In East Norse these would monophthongize and merge with /eː/ and /øː/ , whereas in West Norse and its descendants

5450-668: The 13th century there. The age of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland is strongly contested, but Swedish settlement had spread the language into the region by the time of the Second Swedish Crusade in the 13th century at the latest. The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland , although Norwegian

5559-462: The Christian allegory Pilgrim's Progress and its sequel, explaining that they were dreams he had while he was in prison and felt God wanted him to write down. This worked because it made what might have been seen as a fantasy more like a divine revelation to others who believed as he did. In modern usage, it is sometimes used in works of fantasy as a means toward suspension of disbelief about

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5668-572: The Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish. Both Middle English (especially northern English dialects within the area of the Danelaw ) and Early Scots (including Lowland Scots ) were strongly influenced by Norse and contained many Old Norse loanwords . Consequently, Modern English (including Scottish English ), inherited a significant proportion of its vocabulary directly from Norse. The development of Norman French

5777-571: The Landsman , a collection of adventures related by Sindbad the Seaman to Sindbad the Landsman. Ovid 's Metamorphoses makes extensive use of framing, with the stories nested several deep, allowing the inclusion of many different tales in one work. Emily Brontë 's Wuthering Heights uses this literary device to tell the story of Heathcliff and Catherine, along with the subplots. Her sister Anne uses this device in her epistolary novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall . The main heroine's diary

5886-409: The Old Norse terms do not always have perfect parallels of English words (or other languages' words), although the general idea of using "fancier" terminology still comes across. For example, synonyms for numbers of people are offered here: Each one singly is called man; it is twain if they are two; three are a thorp; four are a group; a band is five men; if there are six, it is a squad; seven complete

5995-558: The Shipwrecked Sailor , and The Eloquent Peasant . Other early examples are from Indian literature , including the Sanskrit epics Mahabharata , Ramayana , Panchatantra , Syntipas 's The Seven Wise Masters , and the fable collections Hitopadesha and Vikram and The Vampire . This form gradually spread west through the centuries and became popular, giving rise to such classic frame tale collections as

6104-473: The Swedish plural land and numerous other examples. That also applies to almost all feminine nouns, for example the largest feminine noun group, the o-stem nouns (except the Swedish noun jord mentioned above), and even i-stem nouns and root nouns , such as Old West Norse mǫrk ( mörk in Icelandic) in comparison with Modern and Old Swedish mark . Vowel breaking, or fracture, caused

6213-462: The Valiant, will come home after being missing. He tells a story that he met Aurvandill in icy wastes, carried him on his back across the river Elivagar, and threw a frozen toe of his into the sky where it now serves as a star. Gróa is so happy to hear the news she forgets what she is doing, and thus the whetstone shard remained stuck in Thor's head. Loki spies on the giant Geirrödr in the form of

6322-408: The beginning and end of the work, or returns periodically. A framing device may take the form of a recurrent element at the beginning and end of the narrative. For example, a story may begin with a character visiting a park under one set of circumstances, then returning at the end to the same park under a different set of circumstances, having undergone a change that allows him or her to see the park in

6431-541: The beginning of words, this manifested as a dropping of the initial /j/ (which was general, independent of the following vowel) or /v/ . Compare ON orð , úlfr , ár with English word, wolf, year . In inflections, this manifested as the dropping of the inflectional vowels. Thus, klæði + dat -i remains klæði , and sjáum in Icelandic progressed to sjǫ́um > sjǫ́m > sjám . The * jj and * ww of Proto-Germanic became ggj and ggv respectively in Old Norse,

6540-414: The beginning section of Homer 's Odyssey , in which the narrator Odysseus tells of his wandering in the court of King Alcinous . A frame story is a literary device that acts as a convenient conceit to organize a set of smaller narratives, either devised by the author or taken from a previous stock of popular tales, slightly altered by the author for the purpose of the longer narrative. Sometimes

6649-414: The close of the Æsir–Vanir War , both sides spit into a cauldron to seal the treaty between the Æsir and Vanir . Surprisingly, a new entity arises from the saliva in the cauldron: Kvasir , who travels the land teaching men, and acquires a reputation as the wisest one of all. Fjalar and Galar , two evil dwarves, murder Kvasir after inviting him into their home. They ferment his blood with honey to create

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6758-411: The cluster */Crʀ/ cannot be realized as /Crː/ , nor as */Crʀ/ , nor as */Cʀː/ . The same shortening as in vetr also occurs in lax = laks ('salmon') (as opposed to * lakss , * laksʀ ), botn ('bottom') (as opposed to * botnn , * botnʀ ), and jarl (as opposed to * jarll , * jarlʀ ). Furthermore, wherever the cluster */rʀ/

6867-432: The descriptions of Norse mythology , even if given in passing to illustrate a poetic phrase. Some of the stories in the Skáldskaparmál include: The Skáldskaparmál is both a retelling of Norse legend as well as a treatise on poetry. It is unusual among surviving medieval European works as a poetic treatise written both in and about the poetry of a local vernacular language , Old Norse ; other Western European works of

6976-449: The diphthongs remained. Old Norse has six plosive phonemes, /p/ being rare word-initially and /d/ and /b/ pronounced as voiced fricative allophones between vowels except in compound words (e.g. veðrabati ), already in the Proto-Germanic language (e.g. * b *[β] > [v] between vowels). The /ɡ/ phoneme was pronounced as [ɡ] after an /n/ or another /ɡ/ and as [k] before /s/ and /t/ . Some accounts have it

7085-492: The entire vats in his "sips" of the mead, taking everything. He then transforms into an eagle to fly back to Asgard; Suttungr also transforms into eagle form and pursues. While Odin vomits most of the mead back into vats prepared for him in Asgard, in his flight, he distracted Suttungr by excreting some of the mead backward. This excreted mead of poetry is accessible to all, but is the source of bad poets and poetry. This version

7194-405: The era were on Latin language poetry, as Latin was the language of scholars and learning. The work seems to have been used to aid in the composition of rímur (Icelandic ballads ) in the centuries after its composition. The Skáldskaparmál quotes poems as examples of usage; many of these poems are only known from the excerpts and mentions here, as they are lost works . Poems quoted include

7303-486: The flaw of the haft of the hammer being a tad short due to Loki's interference. This means Loki has lost the bet, and therefore presumably his life. Loki flees using shoes that can walk on water and fly, but Thor catches him and brings him back. Loki raises a quibble : he had offered his head, but not his neck. The dwarves settle for using an awl to sew Loki's mouth shut, clearly a part of his face, rather than beheading him. The Skáldskaparmál includes its own version of

7412-424: The fly is presumably a transformed Loki trying to ensure he wins his bet. The six gifts are brought back to Asgard to be judged by Odin, Thor, and Freyr . The golden wig is given to Sif, Skídbladnir is given to Freyr, and Gungnir is given to Odin. Brokkr and Eitri give Gullinbursti to Freyr, Draupnir to Odin, and Mjölnir to Thor. The judges confer, and decide that Mjölnir is the best gift of them all, even despite

7521-436: The frame includes the world of the imagined Crayon, his stories, and the reader who is assumed to play along and "know" who Crayon is. When there is a single story, the frame story is used for other purposes – chiefly to position the reader's attitude toward the tale. This can be done in a variety of ways. A common reason to frame a single story is to draw attention to the narrator's unreliability . By explicitly making

7630-455: The giantess Járnsaxa comes forward, and hefts Hrungnir away; for this he is rewarded with Thor giving him Hrungnir's horse Gullfaxi, despite Odin's disapproval at a half-giant receiving the fine horse. Thor then visits a wise woman Gróa , seeking to have the whetstone shard removed from his head. She begins chanting spells to pull it out (perhaps using seidhr ?), but Thor attempts to reward her by saying that he thinks her husband, Aurvandill

7739-399: The long vowels with an acute accent. In medieval manuscripts, it is often unmarked but sometimes marked with an accent or through gemination . Old Norse had nasalized versions of all ten vowel places. These occurred as allophones of the vowels before nasal consonants and in places where a nasal had followed it in an older form of the word, before it was absorbed into a neighboring sound. If

7848-521: The main history textbook used by scholars of the period; whether its history was not of interest to Sturluson, he did not have access to it, or he had access to it but couldn't read Latin is not known. It is not known whether the Skáldskaparmál and the Gylfaginning were written by the same author, or even if the first third of the Skáldskaparmál has the same author as the latter two thirds. They are certainly written in two different styles, with

7957-568: The marvels depicted in the story. J.R.R. Tolkien , in his essay " On Fairy-Stories " complained of such devices as unwillingness to treat the genre seriously; he used frame stories of different kinds in his Middle-earth writings. Lewis Carroll 's Alice stories ( Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass ) includes such a frame, the stories themselves using dream-like logic and sequences. Still, even as

8066-452: The mead they made from Kvasir's blood. Suttungr accepts and moves the mead to his home Hnitbjörg ("Clashing Rocks"), stores it in three vats, and places his daughter Gunnlöd to guard it. Odin, desirous of the power of the mead, hatches an elaborate scheme to steal it. He goes to the home of Baugi , one of Suttungr's brothers. He uses a magic whetstone to magically sharpen the scythes of Baugi's thralls (slaves), and theatrically tosses

8175-424: The mead. Bölverkr works for a season, but Suttungr is unwilling to accept his brother's request. Baugi reluctantly helps Odin by drilling a hole in the side of Hnitbjörg with an auger; Odin transforms into a snake and wiggles through. Once inside, Odin seduces Gunnlöd and lays with her for three nights; she permits him three sips of mead in exchange, one from each vat. Odin, however, twists the agreement, and drains

8284-544: The mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects : Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as Old Norse ), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish . Old West Norse and Old East Norse formed a dialect continuum , with no clear geographical boundary between them. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway , although Old Norwegian

8393-730: The most conservative language, such that in present-day Iceland, schoolchildren are able to read the 12th-century Icelandic sagas in the original language (in editions with normalised spelling). Old Icelandic was very close to Old Norwegian , and together they formed Old West Norse , which was also spoken in Norse settlements in Greenland , the Faroes , Ireland , Scotland , the Isle of Man , northwest England, and in Normandy . Old East Norse

8502-434: The narrator a character within the frame story, the writer distances him or herself from the narrator. The writer may characterize the narrator to cast doubt on the narrator's truthfulness, as when in P. G. Wodehouse 's stories of Mr. Mulliner , Mulliner is made a fly fisherman , a person who is expected to tell tales of unbelievably large fish. The movie Amadeus is framed as a story that an old Antonio Salieri tells to

8611-514: The nasal was absorbed by a stressed vowel, it would also lengthen the vowel. This nasalization also occurred in the other Germanic languages, but were not retained long. They were noted in the First Grammatical Treatise , and otherwise might have remained unknown. The First Grammarian marked these with a dot above the letter. This notation did not catch on, and would soon be obsolete. Nasal and oral vowels probably merged around

8720-641: The other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic ( Scottish and/or Irish ). Although Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have diverged the most, they still retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having

8829-430: The portable ship Skídbladnir and the spear Gungnir . Loki raises the stakes by approaching the dwarf Brokkr and his brother Eitri (Sindri) and wagering his head that they cannot create three artifacts that exceed the first three. The three create the shining golden boar Gullinbursti , the replicating ring Draupnir , and the war hammer Mjölnir . As the two dwarves work, a fly stings them and mildly distracts them;

8938-407: The reader's wondering whether the story is worth reading to the listeners'. Such an approach was used, too, by Edith Wharton in her novella Ethan Frome , in which a nameless narrator hears from many characters in the town of Starkfield about the main character Ethan's story. A specialized form of the frame is a dream vision , where the narrator claims to have gone to sleep, dreamed the events of

9047-476: The rest of the film that came before it, but is instead told through Forrest and Jenny's dialogues. This approach is also demonstrated in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire (adapted from the 2005 novel Q & A ), about a poor street kid named Jamal who comes close to winning Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian equivalent of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ) but finds himself accused of cheating. Most of

9156-433: The romantic fairytale into the story in the grandson's persona, and helps defuse it. This is the use when the frame tells a story that lacks a strong narrative hook in its opening; the narrator can engage the reader's interest by telling the story to answer the curiosity of his listeners, or by warning them that the story began in an ordinary seeming way, but they must follow it to understand later actions, thereby identifying

9265-463: The roof and to push back down, breaking their backs. Thor is invited for games in Geirrödr's hall, and Geirrödr throws a bar of iron heated so much as to be glowing at Thor. With his borrowed iron gloves, Thor snatches the missile out of the air, and throws it back with such force it goes straight through the pillar that Geirrödr had ducked behind, Geirrödr himself, and the wall, not stopping until it

9374-536: The root vowel, ǫ , is short. The clusters */Clʀ, Csʀ, Cnʀ, Crʀ/ cannot yield */Clː, Csː, Cnː, Crː/ respectively, instead /Cl, Cs, Cn, Cr/ . The effect of this shortening can result in the lack of distinction between some forms of the noun. In the case of vetr ('winter'), the nominative and accusative singular and plural forms are identical. The nominative singular and nominative and accusative plural would otherwise have been OWN * vetrr , OEN * wintrʀ . These forms are impossible because

9483-441: The same language, dǫnsk tunga ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said dansk tunga ). Another term was norrœnt mál ("northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , Danish , Swedish , and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Icelandic remains

9592-406: The story is narrated at a police station by Jamal, who explains how he knew the answers to each of the questions as the show is played back on video. The show itself then serves as another framing device , as Jamal sees flashbacks of his past as each question is asked. The last portion of the film then unfolds without any narrator. In musical sonata form or rondo , a reprised theme occurs at

9701-562: The story proceeds realistically, the dream frame casts doubt on the events. In the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , the events really occur; the dream frame added for the movie detracts from the validity of the fantasy. To be a frame narrative, the story must act primarily as an occasion for the telling of other stories. For example, Odysseus narrates much of the Odyssey to the Phaeacians , but, even though this recollection forms

9810-513: The story, and then awoken to tell the tale. In medieval Europe, this was a common device, used to indicate that the events included are fictional; Geoffrey Chaucer used it in The Book of the Duchess , The House of Fame , Parlement of Foules , and The Legend of Good Women (the last also containing a multi-story frame story within the dream). Later, John Bunyan used a dream device in

9919-575: The tale of a family whom he had been observing. This set of frame narratives that fit together is sometimes called a Chinese box narrative; other instances of this style of narrative can be found in Plato 's Symposion , Jostein Gaarder 's The Solitaire Mystery , Emily Brontë 's Wuthering Heights , and Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness . Frame stories have appeared in comic books . Neil Gaiman 's comic book series The Sandman featured

10028-403: The twelve Æsir who were to be judges sat in their high seats. They were named Thor, Njördr, Frey, Týr, Heimdall, Bragi, Vídar, Váli, Ull, Hoenir, Forseti, and Loki. The goddesses ( Ásynjur ), who did likewise, were Frigg, Freyja, Gefjun, Idunn, Gerd, Sigyn, Fulla, and Nanna. To Ægir it seemed that everything he saw around him was noble. Magnificent shields hung on all the wallboards. Strong mead

10137-497: The umlaut allophones . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , /ɛ/ , /ɛː/ , /øy/ , and all /ɛi/ were obtained by i-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /o/ , /oː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , /au/ , and /ai/ respectively. Others were formed via ʀ-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , and /au/ . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , and all /ɔ/ , /ɔː/ were obtained by u-umlaut from /i/ , /iː/ , /e/ , /eː/ , and /a/ , /aː/ respectively. See Old Icelandic for information on /ɔː/ . /œ/

10246-482: The verb skína ('to shine') had present tense third person skínn (rather than * skínr , * skínʀ ); while kala ('to cool down') had present tense third person kell (rather than * kelr , * kelʀ ). The rule is not absolute, with certain counter-examples such as vinr ('friend'), which has the synonym vin , yet retains the unabsorbed version, and jǫtunn (' giant '), where assimilation takes place even though

10355-407: The whetstone into the sky; somehow, in the struggle to be the one to catch it, the newly sharpened scythes held by the thralls chop off each other's necks. Odin, now calling himself "Bölverkr" (literally "worker of misfortune"), introduces himself to Baugi and convinces him the thralls had killed themselves unprovoked. Knowing Baugi suddenly needs new laborers, he offers to trade his work for a sip of

10464-626: The work consists of offering elaborate, poetic titles, often followed by excerpts of poetry that discuss the same concept. These kennings often obliquely refer to a related deed, family, or god. For an example, the work offers the following ways to refer to the earth, most notably " Ymir 's flesh": How shall earth be referred to? By calling it Ymir 's Flesh and mother of Thor, daughter of Ónar , Bride of Odin, rival of Frigg and Rind and Gunnlod , mother-in-law of Sif , floor and base of winds' hall, sea of animals, daughter of Night , sister of Aud and Day . As Eyvind Skaldaspillir said: This

10573-418: The work's educational role as a textbook comes to the fore in later sections. A story on a synonym for gold, the fire of Ægir, does mention that after visiting Asgard, Ægir invited the Æsir to visit him in three months, and he used a hoard of shining gold to light the hall. Less happily, Loki quarreled with the other gods during the event, and killed a slave of Ægir named Fimafeng. Odin, Loki, and Hoenir go on

10682-465: The worthy and strong, not hidden away in a secluded stronghold, and thus approved of Odin's actions. Odin visits the giant Hrungnir in Jötunheim, and the two have a horse race on their steeds Sleipnir and Gullfaxi (Gold-Mane). Odin wins; Hrungnir follows him back to the gates of Asgard, and he is unwisely invited inside. He is a terrible guest and gets extremely drunk, and boasts he should kill all

10791-429: The Æsir except the beautiful Freya and Sif, whom he says he would be willing to take back to Jötunheim with him. Thor returns to Asgard from an expedition hunting trolls, is informed of Hrungnir's insolence, and challenges him. Hrungnir points out he is here under invitation from Odin himself, that he is further weaponless at the moment, and Thor would gain scant renown for killing him while unarmed. He offers to fight

10900-404: Was a moderately inflected language with high levels of nominal and verbal inflection. Most of the fused morphemes are retained in modern Icelandic, especially in regard to noun case declensions, whereas modern Norwegian in comparison has moved towards more analytical word structures. Old Norse had three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to

11009-400: Was also influenced by Norse. Through Norman, to a smaller extent, so was modern French. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in

11118-478: Was deep within the earth. Thor has triumphed again. The Prose Edda then quotes the Thorsdrápa version of the same tale, which is largely similar but indicates Thjálfi also accompanied Thor on this adventure. This story is introduced as an explanation for why "Sif's hair" is a kenning for " gold ". Loki cuts off Sif 's prized blonde hair "for mischief's sake". (The Lokasenna ("Loki's quarrel"), of

11227-583: Was heavily influenced by the East dialect, and is today more similar to East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) than to Icelandic and Faroese. The descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish . Among these, the grammar of Icelandic and Faroese have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, though their pronunciations both have changed considerably from Old Norse. With Danish rule of

11336-535: Was obtained through a simultaneous u- and i-umlaut of /a/ . It appears in words like gøra ( gjǫra , geyra ), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną , and commonly in verbs with a velar consonant before the suffix like søkkva < *sankwijaną . OEN often preserves the original value of the vowel directly preceding runic ʀ while OWN receives ʀ-umlaut. Compare runic OEN glaʀ, haʀi, hrauʀ with OWN gler, heri (later héri ), hrøyrr/hreyrr ("glass", "hare", "pile of rocks"). U-umlaut

11445-497: Was served and the drinking was heavy. Next to Ægir sat Bragi. They drank together and exchanged stories. Bragi told Ægir about the many things that had happened to the Æsir. The Skáldskaparmál is around 50,000 words. It opens with a framing story , the Bragarædur or Bragi's Discourses. A person named Ægir travels to Asgard . This is Ægir , a personification of the sea (what his name literally translates as) and possibly

11554-532: Was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age , the Christianization of Scandinavia , and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in

11663-766: Was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, Kievan Rus' , eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language , ranging from Vinland in the West to the Volga River in the East. In Kievan Rus' , it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod , probably lasting into

11772-400: Was the source of the apples that keep the Æsir from aging, this was a major threat to the well-being of Asgard. Loki is threatened with death and torture unless he fixes the problem, and leaves to go recover Idunn, albeit first asking for Freyja 's falcon cloak ( valshamr ) to aid his mission. He travels to Jötunheim and steals into Thjazi's dwelling while he is away, transforms Idunn into

11881-519: Was used partitively and in compounds and kennings (e.g., Urðarbrunnr , the well of Urðr; Lokasenna , the gibing of Loki). There were several classes of nouns within each gender. The following is an example of the "strong" inflectional paradigms : Framing story Some of the earliest frame stories are from ancient Egypt, including one in the Papyrus Westcar , the Tale of

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