Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 37

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artistic impulses at first hand while participating in imperial receptions
and to reproduce and transmit them or instigate other poets to do so. the
Latin poetry actually declaimed at the court need not have been so invo-
luted as the worked-up versions available to us now. Moreover, the salient
features of tmesis and ekphrasis would tend to be conspicuous whatever
one’s Latinity. the tmetic splitting of a familiar proper name would be
readily discernible, while ekphrasis might be signalled by the performer’s
gestures towards the artifact itself, displayed in all its splendour. Paul the
deacon spoke contemptuously in a poem of 783 of sigifridus, who had
abjured his ancestral religion but still had no knowledge of Latin,177 but
more sustained contact in later decades, such as enjoyed by Herioldus and
Rorik on both the diplomatic and the religious fronts, might have led to
greater familiarity. there would have been every incentive to make one’s
way in the official language of both empire and Christianity, or at the least
to have personnel in attendance who could.
Clunies Ross, in her important paper, has laid emphasis upon Heriold-
us’s visit and ermoldus’s ekphrastic panegyric as a key point of contact
that might have fostered the composition of ekphrastic poetry on the part
of the skalds.178 to this we can add the suggestion, in light of the broader
evidence outlined in the present paper concerning contact at prestige
centres and the incidence of ekphrasis and tmesis, that this moment of
transfer at Ingelheim could have been prepared for by previous contacts
and reinforced by subsequent contacts.
tmesis is most characteristically in Carolingian usage a linguistic play
upon naming. ekphrasis and titulus lend themselves to the commemora-
tion of gifting and dedication. naming, gifting, dedication – these are cen-
tral moments of interpellation and transaction where, if anywhere, cultural
transfer from empire to the northern kingdoms might have occurred.
177 Godman, Poets and Emperors, 54. for the text, see Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, 1:50–1,
especially lines 17–20.
178 Clunies Ross, ‘stylistic and Generic definers’, 163.
sCHoLARs And skALds