reblogged 7 years ago via (source) with 32,920 notes

culumacilinte:

glimmerbulb:

collaterlysisters:

prokopetz:

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 “wave’s horse”; a sword, a “wound-serpent”; a shield, “the shame of swords”, and so forth. Sometimes, kennings could be embedded in other kennings - thus, one might have “feeder of war-gulls” = “feeder of ravens” = “warrior”; this is known as a doubled or extended kenning.

Though many conventions of English literature can be traced back to Old Norse roots, kenning isn’t much encountered these days - at least, not in most genres. There’s one particular genre where the art of kenning is alive and well, though.

I’m speaking, of course, of erotic fanfic.

Whether you’re referring to a penis as a “porn-truncheon” or a vagina as “squish-pocket” (both examples I’ve 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 uninfected 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. “To ride the baloney pony”, for example, employs the act of riding a horse as an allusion to penetrative sexual intercourse - but the contained phrase “baloney pony” is, itself, a kenning of the simple type, with “pony” as the base word and “baloney” 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, it’s kind of fascinating that smutty fanfic has managed to preserve - in virtually unaltered state - a poetic form that’s otherwise been largely extinct in English literature for the better part of a thousand years.

amazing

This is the kind of content I want on my dash!!

*head asplode* Right, I love kennings in old Anglo-Saxon and Norse poetry, I love them, and it NEVER OCCURRED TO ME that that thing that terrible porn does is kenning. *falls over laughing* I LOVE IT.

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