The genres of skaldic poetry

As with eddic poetry, agonistic speech acts are never far from the surface of the classificatory vocabulary of the genres of skaldic verse. Thus it will come as no surprise that there are many Old Norse literary terms for poems of praise and blame, which point to one of poetry's main social purposes, to serve as a public endorsement of the dominant values of early Norse, especially Norwegian, court society and of the figure of its ruler, in particular, as a leader in war, a tough fighter himself, and a generous rewarder of his personal entourage. Encomium or praise poetry, in the form of eulogy (hróõr, mærõ, lof, lofkvæõi) and memorial lay (erfikvæõi) are the modes of much skaldic verse composed by Norwegian and Icelandic poets whose patrons included kings and princes in Scandinavia, a small number of Icelandic chieftains, and rulers of England and the Orkneys. Praise poetry was the dominant skaldic mode of the period between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, at least in court circles or circles with courtly pretensions.

There also exists a small number of examples of court poems in which poets express criticisms of their royal or aristocratic patrons, and I have already canvassed the view that the dangers inherent in composing and then recording poetry that was critical of its subject was the main reason why such a small number of examples of this kind have survived in written form. The other side of praise, insult or shaming slander (níõ), lampooning or satire (flim or flimtan), mockery (spott) or blame (háõ, ‘ridicule’) is, however, well represented in the corpus of skaldic verse, though less often in extant court poetry than in a variety of personal and public contexts recorded for Icelandic society between c.900 and 1300. Níõvísur or verses of insult and calumny are reported in various contexts, from the verbal ammunition of the pro-pagan opponents of foreign missionaries in Iceland c.1000 to the numerous personal quarrels represented in family sagas (see Almqvist 1965–74). They are presented in both the oldest Norwegian and Icelandic law codes as serious offences which, if proven, led to outlawry and possible death for the slanderer.