One of the distinctive features of Old Norse poetry is the use of kenning: a circumlocutory device in which a straightforward noun is replaced with an allusive phrase.
For example, a ship might be referred to as a âwaveâs horseâ; a sword, a âwound-serpentâ; a shield, âthe shame of swordsâ, and so forth. Sometimes, kennings could be embedded in other kennings - thus, one might have âfeeder of war-gullsâ = âfeeder of ravensâ = âwarriorâ; this is known as a doubled or extended kenning.
Though many conventions of English literature can be traced back to Old Norse roots, kenning isnât much encountered these days - at least, not in most genres. Thereâs one particular genre where the art of kenning is alive and well, though.
Iâm speaking, of course, of erotic fanfic.
Whether youâre referring to a penis as a âpork-truncheonâ or a vagina as a âsquish-pocketâ (both examples Iâve seen employed in all apparent seriousness, incidentally), that perfectly fits the form and function of a kenning. Indeed, these examples even adhere to the idiosyncratic grammatical structure of many Old Norse kennings, with the base word being modified by an uninflected noun determinant inserted as a compound prefix.
Euphemisms for sex acts, meanwhile, can be even more baroque, forming multi-level allusions in the manner of doubled/extended kennings. âTo ride the baloney ponyâ, for example, employs the act of riding a horse as an allusion to penetrative sexual intercourse - but the contained phrase âbaloney ponyâ is, itself, a kenning of the simple type, with âponyâ as the base word and âbaloneyâ as the determinant, making the whole phrase a doubled kenning.
There are practical reasons for this sort of practice, of course; e.g., complex euphemisms can help sexually explicit works sneak through content filters. Still, itâs kind of fascinating that smutty fanfic has managed to preserve - in virtually unaltered state - a poetic form thatâs otherwise been largely extinct in English literature for the better part of a thousand years.
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