Among the Sagas

While spending time among the extensive saga collection at Bókin, a memory resurfaced from an earlier discussion at University of Iceland on the Eddas and the remarkable world of kennings.

Kennings, are dense and playful poetic metaphors of Old Norse verse that compress meaning, image, and emotion into a few charged words, transforming it into some riddle like new expression Revisiting them feels a like opening a long-forgotten treasure chest;

Eyes become the "heavenly bodies of the brain" ( himintungl heila ).
Air turns into the "vulture-path" ( gammleið ).
Fever burns as the "furious fire of sickness" .
Angels appear as “people of the moon's path” ( þjóð mána stiettar ).
And wine is called the "soothing balm of all torments ". (We couldn't agree more :-))

These expressions do more than decorate language, they are highly sophisticated and one single theory can hold cosmology, humor, and historical knowledge at once. They tell us how richly words can work.