A kenning (

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

Modern Icelandic Icelandic (; is, íslenska, link=no ) is a North Germanic language spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Due to being a West Scandinavian language, it is most closely re ...

) is a

circumlocution Circumlocution (also called circumduction, circumvolution, periphrasis, kenning, or ambage) is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea. It is sometimes necessary in communication (for example, to work around lexical gap ...

, an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech, used instead of an ordinary

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

in Old Norse,

, and later Icelandic poetry. This list is not intended to be comprehensive.

Kenning A kenning ( Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English po ...

s for a particular character are listed in that character's article. For example, the

Odin Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered Æsir, god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, v ...

article links to a

list of names of Odin Odin (Old Norse Óðinn) is a widely attested god in Germanic mythology. The god is referred to by numerous names and kenningar, particularly in the Old Norse record. List In Old English, Odin was known as ; in Old Saxon, as ; and in Old High ...

, which include kennings. A few examples of Odin's kennings are given here. For a scholarly list of kennings see Meissner's (1921) or some editions of

Snorri Sturluson Snorri Sturluson ( ; ; 1179 – 22 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of the ...

's .

Source language abbreviations

*''OE'' – Old English *''D'' –

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

*''G'' – Germanic *''Ic'' – Old Icelandic *''N'' – Norse *''ON'' –

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

*''S'' – Swedish

List of Kennings

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennings, List of Icelandic literature Old English poetry Old Norse poetry Poetic devices