Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Page 13

þorgeir sigurðsson
Haustlǫng
How syntax and rhyme interact in early Old Norse dróttkvætt

1. Introduction
Through his work, Þjóðólfr ór Hvini may have defined two Old Norse
meters, known to posterity as dróttkvætt and kviðuháttr, during the reign of
Haraldr hárfagri (c. 850–c. 932).1 His kviðuháttr poem, Ynglingatal, does
not mention Haraldr, but it gives his Yngling-family a divine ancestry. No
older poem exists with regular kviðuháttr features, and Ynglinga tal may
have been a model for all later poetry in that meter. Scholars assume that
the meter of Þjóðólfr’s other main poem, Haustlǫng ‘autumn-long’, is in an
early evolutionary state. I argue, however, that it is in the standard dróttkvætt
meter of the 10th century, and that the apparent irregularity in the dróttkvætt
rhyme is due to a conditional poetic license that relates syntax and rhyme.
It allows odd-numbered lines that are clause-lines to be without rhyme. A
clause-line is a metrical line, syntactically capable of beginning a half-stanza.
It has specific properties that need to be described.
In this article, I establish the existence of this license and the normalcy
of Haustlǫng among poems of the 10th century. In Section 2, I describe
the dróttkvætt rhyme and I explain how to recognize clause-lines. In
Section 3, I demonstrate that the license was effective both in Haustlǫng
and younger poems of the 10th century. Afterwards, in Sections 4 and 5,
I detail the difference between these poems and poetry in what I call
proto-dróttkvætt, and I show that Haustlǫng has none of the features
that make proto-dróttkvætt different.

2. Preliminaries
The dróttkvætt meter derives from a pan-Germanic alliterative meter. It
has some innovations; among them is a syllable rhyme. Each metrical
Íslenskt mál 43 (2021), 13–31. © 2021 Íslenska málfræðifélagið, Reykjavík.
1 I thank my two reviewers for their helpful criticism and comments, one of whom
made me aware of Klaus Johan Myrvoll’s JEGP 2020 article and its relevance to this article.