Old Norse Poetic Forms
The inherited form of alliterative verse was modified somewhat in Old Norse poetry. In Old Norse, as a result of phonetic changes from the original common Germanic language, many unstressed syllables were lost. This lent Old Norse verse a characteristic terseness; the lifts tended to be crowded together at the expense of the weak syllables. In some lines, the weak syllables have been entirely suppressed. From the Hávamál:
- Deyr fé || deyja frændr
- ("Cattle die; kinsmen die. . .")
The various names of the Old Norse verse forms are given in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson. The Háttatal, or "list of verse forms", contains the names and characteristics of each of the fixed forms of Norse poetry.
Read more about this topic: Alliterative Verse
Famous quotes containing the words poetic forms, norse, poetic and/or forms:
“The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Carlyle has not the simple Homeric health of Wordsworth, nor the deliberate philosophic turn of Coleridge, nor the scholastic taste of Landor, but, though sick and under restraint, the constitutional vigor of one of his old Norse heroes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Of the three forms of pride, that is to say pride proper, vanity, and conceit, vanity is by far the most harmless, and conceit by far the most dangerous. The meaning of vanity is to think too much of our bodily advantages, whether real or unreal, over others; while the meaning of conceit is to believe we are cleverer, wiser, grander, and more important than we really are.”
—John Cowper Powys (1872–1963)