Kormákr Ögmundarson (

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was 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 ...

: ;

Modern Icelandic Icelandic ( ; , ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Since it is a West Scandinavian language, it ...

: ) was a 10th-century

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

skald A skald, or skáld (Old Norse: ; , meaning "poet"), is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally compo ...

. He is the protagonist of '' Kormáks saga'' which preserves a significant amount of poetry attributed to him. According to ''

Skáldatal ''Skáldatal'' (''Catalogue of Poets'') is a short prose work by Snorri Sturluson in Old Norse. It was preserved in two manuscripts: DG 11, or ''Codex Uppsaliensis'', which is one of the four main manuscripts of the ''Prose Edda'' (first quarter of ...

,'' he was also the court poet of Sigurðr Hlaðajarl and fragments of a ''

drápa A skald, or skáld (Old Norse: ; , meaning "poet"), is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally comp ...

'' to the jarl are preserved in ''

Skáldskaparmál ''Skáldskaparmál'' (Old Norse: 'Poetic Diction' or 'The Language of Poetry'; ; ) 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 Bra ...

''. The following stanzas represent some of Kormákr's love poetry. He tells of the first time he met Steingerðr, the love of his life
Read aloud with modern Icelandic pronunciation.

References

* Einar Ól. Sveinsson (Ed.) (1939). ''Íslenzk fornrit VIII - Vatnsdœla saga''. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. * Hollander, Lee M. (Ed.) (1949). ''The Sagas of Kormák and The Sworn Brothers''. Princeton: Princeton University Press. * Viðar Hreinsson (Ed.) (1997). ''The Complete Sagas of Icelanders'', Volume 1. Reykjavík: Leifur Eiríksson Publishing. .

External links

All of Kormákr's poems in the original language
* Russell Poole
"Composition Transmission Performance: The First Ten ''lausavísur'' in ''Kormáks saga''"
''Alvíssmál'' 7 (1997): 37–60. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kormakr Ogmundarson Icelandic male poets 10th-century Icelandic poets