[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Swagger. Game. Confidence. No matter what you call it, you know you gotta have it.

Even the Old Norse were into swagger. Just check out their poetry. Edda after edda of braggadocio. In fact, they were so into the concept that they had a whole special form of poetry just for bragging. Check this out:

Saw I lord of leaf’d round
Long did hear the swan’s song
Soaring heaven highward
Hied to warrior’s violence.
Verdant Morguhn met there
Mighty western fighter
Ruin’s head was hewn there
High born Morguhn right won*[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

drot-what?

The word dróttkvætt means “court meter” and describes this poetic form as the form to be used, basically, for recitation at formal courtly events. A dróttkvætt was a brief poem with a precise structure meant to glorify the deeds or lives of the person described. The heyday of the dróttkvætt was from the ninth through fourteenth centuries.

Unlike poetry of the same era written in Romance languages (or English for that matter), the dróttkvætt isn’t heavily dependent on scansion and rhyming lines. Instead, it has just a few rules for stressed syllables and depends on a scheme of internal rhyme and alliteration. Take another look at the dróttkvætt above, and see if you can find the alliteration and rhyme.

The form may not be widely used anymore, but the idea lingers. Just look at Jay-Z’s “Swagga like Us” or Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Testarossa” for more modern examples (and I’m sure you can think of a few others- leave them in the comments if you want!).[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

OK, you win, how do I write this?

A dróttkvætt consists of eight lines, broken down like this: Each dróttkvætt has two stanzas, which are four lines each, or two pairs of two.

This is important because odd and even lines have different rules, and you have to look at each pair of lines to see if they follow the rules together before “pairing your pairs” and assembling them into stanzas.

does it have to scan?

The good news is, you don’t really have to worry about scansion. Just make sure your last two syllables of each line follow a “stressed-unstressed” pattern ( / u for those of you who remember our scansion lesson from last month, or “COFfee” for those who don’t). The other four syllables can have any stress pattern you want.

But it just sounds better in trochaic hexameter, so if you’re good at scansion, try for that. (/u /u /u)

does it have to rhyme?

While the last syllables in the lines of a dróttkvætt don’t rhyme with each other, certain syllables within the lines do have to rhyme.

For odd lines, you can use half-rhymes or full rhymes. (Half-rhymes are rhymes where the consonant sound is the same but the vowel sound is different, like fond and kind, or loose and mice.)

For even lines, use full rhymes, like moon/loon or appeal/zeal.

Now for the tricky part: the first half of the rhyme can be anywhere in the line, but the second half of the rhyme has to be the 5th syllable. That’s right. Not the last syllable but the one before it.

Oh my god, that’s too hard.

No it’s not. Just following the rules for lines that we know so far, we could write a line like this:

I wish I were fishing

See? That wasn’t so hard. Six syllables, the last two following a stressed-unstressed pattern, and the fifth syllable rhyming with something that came earlier in the line (in this case the second syllable, but it doesn’t matter which).[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

OK. Tell me the hard part.

The tricky part of the dróttkvætt is alliteration. Alliteration is that thing you do where all your words start with the same sound, like “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” or “Susie sells seashells by the seashore” or “Rowan roasted the red rutabaga.”

In each couplet, or pair of lines, you must use the same sound three times:

1) the first or third syllable of the first line

2) the fifth syllable of the first line

3) the first syllable of the second line.

If you’re a visual learner, the two lines look like this, with a big A for the syllables that have to match, and a – for all the others. (a) means this is one of two options:

(a) – (a) – A –

A – – – – –

Putting it all together

Now we have rules for the number of syllables, internal rhymes for each line, and alliteration between the two lines of a couplet. Let’s see what that does to our old line about fishing:

I wish I were fishing.

Well, since the 5th syllable doesn’t have an alliteration match with the first or third syllables, that had better be an even numbered line. Let’s write the odd numbered line that goes before it. Since the first syllable of the even line is “I” we need the first or third and the fifth syllables of the line to start with an “I” sound.

I hate this damn island
I wish I were fishing

Let’s see if that’s a proper couplet.

First, we check each line. Does the first line have 6 syllables? Yes. Are the last two syllables stressed-unstressed? Yes. Does the fifth syllable rhyme with anything before it? Yes, the “is” of “island” and “I” rhyme. So it’s a correct line.

We already know the second line has the right number of syllables and the correct rhyme, so now we have to see if the alliteration matches up. We’re looking for “I” sounds in the (first or third) and fifth syllables of the first line, and the first syllable of the second line. Found it!

That couplet is correct. Since it doesn’t have to rhyme or scan with anything else in the dróttkvætt, you’re done with this couplet and ready to move on to the next one!

In fact, let’s take another look at “Testarossa,” shall we?

But I’m rollin, the cartel’s tollin
For the D’s keep folding
Most Cadillac rappers get look and disturb
By the jet black blur
Me, the Testarossa running like it s’pose ta
Don’t try to get closer
Cause you might get lost in the dual exhaust
Don’t ever try to fuck wit’ a boss

Look at all that alliteration and internal rhyme! That’s practically a dróttkvætt, isn’t it?[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Can’t you make it a little easier?

Norse “rhymes”

Let’s talk a little bit about the “rhymes” in Norse poetry. Unlike the usual rhymes in poetry that you read every day, “rhyming” here just means “using the same vowel-consonant sound at the appropriate syllable.” It doesn’t have to come at the end of the word. So “bind” rhymes with the first syllable of “finding” and so on. By using the same sounds anywhere in a word rather than having to use only the ends of words, rhyming becomes a lot easier.

As I said earlier, you can also use half-rhymes on odd-numbered lines, where the consonant sound matches but the vowel sound doesn’t. So for an odd-numbered line, “fish” and “wash” rhyme. Unless you’re one of those people that says “warsh” for “wash.”

kennings

Another really awesome thing about Old Norse poetry is kennings. Kennings are ways of playing with words without using any of the actual words. Think about playing Taboo, or any game where the object of the game is to make the other players guess a word without ever using the word itself or a direct synonym.

Let’s say we want to write about a raven. That’s super duper Norse. Instead of writing “raven” we could call it a “swan of blood.” We could even go a little further and instead of saying “blood” we could say “sword-sweat.” If you think about it for a minute, it makes sense- blood is the liquid dripping off a sword after it exerts itself. So by saying “the swan of sword-sweat” you practically have a whole line of a dróttkvætt, complete with alliteration- and all you’ve written, really, is “the raven.”[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

What about the swagger?

To make a really proper dróttkvætt, you should be writing eight lines bragging about yourself or another person or a specific accomplishment. That’s the whole point of the form: skalds (historian-poets) would stand up and recite a dróttkvætt about a living or dead person to glorify them in court.

To be included in our April poetry slam you don’t have to write your dróttkvætt about your glorious deeds… but wouldn’t it be fun? Tell us about the time you got out of a parking ticket, jumped from a plane, rescued a kitten from a tree, or did the dishes without breaking any. Your deeds can be as awesome or humble as you like, but feel free to brag away![/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

*from Morguhn drápa jnn Langferðamaðr by Tom Delfs, with minor adjustments to clarify internal rhyme scheme

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