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Halldórr ókristni
Halldórr ókristni (''The Unchristian'') was a Norse skald, active around the year 1000. The only thing known about him is that he was one of the court poets of Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson. Eight ''dróttkvætt'' verses by him are extant, preserved in the kings' sagas. They contain a lively description of the battle of Svolder. ''Heimskringla ''Heimskringla'' () is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorre Sturlason (1178/79–1241) 1230. The name ''Heimskringla'' was first used in the 17th century, derive ...'' attributes at least some of those stanzas to a '' flokkr'' on Earl Eiríkr and scholars sometimes refer to them as ''Eiríksflokkr''. The following is one of the eight verses. The extant sources do not explain the epithet "ókristni" (''unchristian'') but it is known that although Earl Eiríkr adopted Christianity, at least nominally, he was tolerant of paganism and his court poets praised him i ...
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Norsemen
The Norsemen (or Norse people) were a North Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the predecessor of the modern Germanic languages of Scandinavia. During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in all directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers and warriors have commonly been referred to as Vikings. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England distinguish between Norse Vikings (Norsemen) from Norway who mainly invaded and occupied the islands north and north-west of Britain, Ireland and western Britain, and Danish Vikings, who principally invaded and occupied eastern Britain. Modern descendants of Norsemen are the Danes, Icelanders, Faroe Islanders, Norwegians, and Swedes, who are now generally referred to ...
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Skald
A skald, or skáld (Old Norse: , later ; , meaning "poet"), is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry, the other being Eddic poetry, which is anonymous. Skaldic poems were traditionally composed on one occasion, sometimes extempore, and include both extended works and single verses ('' lausavísur''). They are characteristically more ornate in form and diction than eddic poems, employing many kennings and heiti, more interlacing of sentence elements, and the complex '' dróttkvætt'' metre. More than 5,500 skaldic verses have survived, preserved in more than 700 manuscripts, including in several sagas and in Snorri Sturluson's '' Prose Edda'', a handbook of skaldic composition that led to a revival of the art. Many of these verses are fragments of originally longer works, and the authorship of many is unknown. The earliest known skald from whom verses survive is Bragi Boddason, known as Bragi the Old, a Norwegian skal ...
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Eiríkr Hákonarson
Erik Hakonsson, also known as Eric of Hlathir or Eric of Norway, (, 960s – 1020s) was Earl of Lade, Governor of Norway and Earl of Northumbria. He was the son of Earl Hákon Sigurðarson and brother of the legendary Aud Haakonsdottir of Lade. He participated in the Battle of Hjörungavágr, the Battle of Svolder and the conquest of England by King Canute the Great. Name Eric is referred to in various ways in the medieval sources and by modern scholars. He most commonly witnessed charters as ''Yric dux'' ("Duke Eric") but his name is also spelled ''Yric'', ''Yrric'', ''Iric'', ''Eiric'' or ''Eric'' in 11th-century Latin and Old English sources. In Old Norse sources, using normalized orthography, he is most commonly ''Eiríkr jarl'' ("Earl Eric") or ''Eiríkr jarl Hákonarson'', but sometimes as ''Eirekr''. Modern historians usually use a variant of Eiríkr/Eirik/Eric and his patronym, Hákonarson/Hakonarson/Hakonson, meaning "son of Haakon". In modern Norwegian, it would ...
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Dróttkvætt
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the Germanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The Old English epic ''Beowulf'', as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German ''Muspilli'', the Old Saxon ''Heliand'', the Old Norse ''Poetic Edda'', and many Middle English poems such as ''Piers Plowman'', ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'', and the '' Alliterative Morte Arthur'' all use alliterative verse. While alliteration can be found in many poetic traditions, it is 'relatively infrequent' as a structured characteristic of poetic form.Frog, ...
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Kings' Sagas
Kings' sagas ( is, konungasögur, nn, kongesoger, -sogor, nb, kongesagaer) are Old Norse sagas which principally tell of the lives of semi-legendary and legendary (mythological, fictional) Nordic kings, also known as saga kings. They were composed during the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, primarily in Iceland, but with some written in Norway. Kings' sagas frequently contain episodic stories known in scholarship as '' þættir'', such as the '' Íslendingaþættir'' (about Icelanders), '' Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa'', '' Hróa þáttr heimska'', and ''Eymundar þáttr hrings'' (about people from elsewhere). List of Kings' sagas Including works in Latin, and in approximate order of composition (though many dates could be off by decades) *A Latin work by Sæmundr fróði, c. 1120, lost. *The older version of '' Íslendingabók'' by Ari fróði, c. 1125, lost. *'' Hryggjarstykki'' by Eiríkr Oddsson, c. 1150, lost. *'' Historia Norvegiæ'', c. 1170. *''Historia d ...
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Battle Of Svolder
The Battle of Svolder (''Svold'' or ''Swold'') was a large naval battle during the Viking age, fought in September 999 or 1000 in the western Baltic Sea between King Olaf of Norway and an alliance of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden and Olaf's enemies in Norway. The backdrop of the battle was the unification of Norway into a single independent state after longstanding Danish efforts to control the country, combined with the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia. King Olaf Tryggvason was sailing to, or home from, an expedition in Wendland (Pomerania), when he was ambushed by an alliance of Svein Forkbeard, King of Denmark, Olof Skötkonung (also known as Olaf Eiríksson or Olaf the Swede), King of Sweden, and Eirik Hákonarson, Jarl of Lade. According to the Saga of King Olaf I Tryggvason, he had 60 warships plus the contribution of 11 warships from the Jomvikingsbr> His ships were captured one by one, last of all the '' Ormen Lange (longship), Ormen Lange'', which Jarl Eirik ...
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Heimskringla
''Heimskringla'' () is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorre Sturlason (1178/79–1241) 1230. The name ''Heimskringla'' was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts (''kringla heimsins'', "the circle of the world"). ''Heimskringla'' is a collection of sagas about Swedish and Norwegian kings, beginning with the saga of the legendary Swedish dynasty of the Ynglings, followed by accounts of historical Norwegian rulers from Harald Fairhair of the 9th century up to the death of the pretender Eystein Meyla in 1177. The exact sources of the Snorri's work are disputed, but they include earlier kings' sagas, such as Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna and the 12th-century Norwegian synoptic histories and oral traditions, notably many skaldic poems. He explicitly names the now lost work '' Hryggjarstykki'' as his source for the events of the mid-12th century. Alth ...
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Finnur Jónsson
Finnur Jónsson (May 29, 1858 – March 30, 1934) was an Icelandic-Danish philologist and Professor of Nordic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. He made extensive contributions to the study of Old Norse literature. Finnur Jónsson was born at Akureyri in northern Iceland. He graduated from Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in 1878 and went to Denmark for further studies at the University of Copenhagen. He received a doctorate in philology in 1884 with a dissertation on skaldic poetry. He became a docent at the university in 1887 and a professor in 1898, serving until 1928. After retiring he continued work on his subject with new publications until the year he died. He was elected member of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg in 1905 and corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in 1908. Finnur's principal area of study was Old Norse poetry. His three most important works are ''Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning' ...
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Long Serpent
Ormrinn Langi in Old Norse (''The Long Serpent'') ''Ormen Lange'' in Norwegian, ''Ormurin Langi'' in Faroese was one of the most famous of the Viking longships. It was built for the Norwegian King Olav Tryggvason, and was the largest and most powerful longship of its day. In the late 990s King Olav was on a "Crusade" around the country to bring Christianity to Norway. When he was traveling north to Hålogaland he came to a petty kingdom in today's Skjerstad, where the king named Raud the Strong refused to convert to Christianity. A battle ensued, during which Saltstraum, a maelstrom that prevented reinforcements to the king's men, forced King Olav to flee. He continued up north but returned some weeks later when the maelstrom had subsided. Olav won the battle, captured Raud, and gave him two choices: die or convert. The Sagas say that Olav tried to convert him but Raud cursed the name of Jesus, and the King became so enraged that he stuck a ''kvanstilk'' (a stalk of '' Angelica ...
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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 poetry. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including '' rímur'') for centuries, together with the closely related heiti. A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant. For example, the base-word of the kenning "íss rauðra randa" ('icicle of red shields' WORD Einarr Skúlason: ''Øxarflokkr'' 9) is ''íss'' ('ice, icicle') and the determinant is ''rǫnd'' ('rim, shield-rim, shield'). The thing, person, place or being to which the kenning refers is known as its referent (in this case a sword). Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do the parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side ...
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Fáfnir
In Nordic and wider Germanic mythology, Fáfnir (Old Norse pronunciation: �fɑːvnər is a mighty dwarf who is the son of Hreidmar, and brother of Regin and Ótr. Once cursed by Andvari's ring and gold, Fafnir slays his father out of greed and becomes a dragon. Fafnir's brother Regin assisted Sigurd in obtaining Gram, the sword he used to kill Fáfnir. Narrative There have been many renditions of Fáfnir's tale throughout history, but they all follow a standard structure. Loki kills the brother of Regin and Fáfnir, Ótr, while he is in the shape of an otter. As payment, Loki, Odin, and Hœnir had to fill the otter's skin with gold. Loki collects the gold from the pike Andvari and returns the ransom to Hreidmar, Otr's father. When Hreidmar refuses to share the gold, Fáfnir murders him out of greed. Fáfnir then takes his treasure into the wilderness and turns into a dragon to guard it. And by use of the sword, Gram, Sigurd defeats Fáfnir in his serpentine form. Regi ...
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