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dancers.29 There is general scholarly consensus that the name, dance, and
basic principles of vikivakakvæði are of foreign origin.30 Vikivakakvæði
are therefore comparable to the Icelandic ballads (sagnadansar), which are
similarly part of a broader continental tradition; moreover, both varieties
of poetry were intended to be danced to, and both were used within the
same social context.31 The vikivakakvæði begins with the refrain (viðlag),
which is then interspersed (in whole or in part) throughout the stanzas of
the poem’s body; this is a feature shared with the sagnadansar as well as
continental models.32 Especially characteristic of the vikivakakvæði stanza
is the connection between stanza and refrain by rhyme, and in particular,
its adherence to traditional Icelandic forms of metre and diction not found
in ballads.33 The general scheme of the vikivakakvæði stanza is as follows:
the stanza had two parts. the first, consisting of two lines (¼ a),
could be expanded by adding lines with the same (aaaa) or alternat-
ing (abab) rhyme. the second part was repeatable (¼ r), with the
first line always rhyming with the line preceding it, followed by two
lines rhyming cc, dd, ee, ff, etc., the second of which was always the
refrain. Adherence to strict rules of alliteration and syllable count
was also expected.34
though strictly speaking the vikivakakvæði was accompanied by dance,
and tended to be performed within the context of gleðir, the popularity of
the vikivaki “…led to it becoming the vehicle for poems on a wide range of
topics and with no connection to the dance poetry of the gleði.”35
the refrain of “Sprundahrós” prefaces the poem and is then extracted
and interspersed throughout the stanzas. as is typical in vikivakakvæði, the
metre of the refrain is different from the rest of the poem’s stanzas:
29 Vésteinn ólason, The Traditional Ballads of Iceland, 44; Vésteinn Ólason, “Vikivakakvæði,”
Íslensk þjóðmenning VI, Munnmenntir og bókmenning, ed. frosti f. Jóhannsson (reykjavík:
Þjóðsaga, 1989): 390–400 at 390.
30 on the etymology and origin of the word vikivaki, see Michael Chesnutt, “on the origins
of the Icelandic vikivaki,” Arv 34 (1978): 142–51.
31 Shaun Hughes, “Late Secular Poetry,” 212, 215.
32 Vésteinn ólason, The Traditional Ballads of Iceland, 44; Shaun Hughes, “Late Secular
Poetry,” 214.
33 Vésteinn ólason, The Traditional Ballads of Iceland, 44–45, 48.
34 Shaun Hughes, “Late Secular Poetry,” 216.
35 Shaun Hughes, “Late Secular Poetry,” 215–16.
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