An anonymous, formulaic Old Norse verse form used for the mythological and heroic narrative poems collected in the Poetic Edda, plainer and more strictly alliterative than the ornate court poetry of the skalds, and closely related to the alliterative verse tradition shared across the early Germanic languages.
Facts
Place of OriginIceland and Scandinavia, composed orally over centuries and written down chiefly in the 13th-century Codex Regius. 1 StructureMost often composed in fornyrdislag meter: unrhymed lines linked in pairs by alliteration, with two stressed syllables per half-line. 1 Notable ExampleThe Voluspa and other mythological and heroic poems of the Poetic Edda. 1 Connections
Form Of Genre
Epic, Genres Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Influenced
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sources
1. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press
Encyclopaedia Britannica
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