Skaldic poetry . Less about the destination ("the king is great") than how you get there o Also defamatory poetry which survives less well - there's even a law against it o It was believed that love poetry could change a girl's affection against her will so it was outlawed · Good poets compared their skill to a physical craft like woodwork; it's complex and hard to approach, using sensical and nonsensical images at the same time. Hearing this aloud without Snorri's handbook you had to think fast to piece the image together o Eg the episode where Gisli confesses a murder in verse and Thordis memorises the stanza and interprets it on the way home o Mark of status if you can understand it o Because of the limited number of subjects, though, you often know where it's going · Meter: fornyr.dislag. Skaldic poetry is adapted from this with extra rules, eg syllable-counting only happens in skaldic. The most common one is drottkv.aett o Eight lines long o Six syllables per stanza o Divides into two equal halves, each one is a complete sentence o Alliteration between each pair of lines o Internal rhyme: full in even lines, half in odd. Half rhyme only needs the same consonant · These constraints means poets needed a huge vocabulary and knowledge of mythology in order to meet the requirements o The reason why Snorri wrote the Edda as a handbook of mythology, but he himself doesn't understand some of the older stanzas o They could also take advantage of the loose word order, because inflections give you the info · Only survives in piecemeal saga quotations because it was meant to be oral and public, so we have lots of stanzas but few whole poems. o We know we're missing something if we can't find a refrain in a drapa This is pretty good. Roberta Frank, 'Why Skalds address Women' kind of shorthand, a mnemonic of masculinity. When he says '0 lady" he really means 'Notice me. Admire me, advise me, advertise me. Look lady, how good I am at being a man.' It · I guess putting a lady there makes him seem more masculine by comparison, as it's implying everyone listening is in the female role. · The interjections go in quite weird contexts, such as expressing a desire to go fishing, but no ladies are acknowledged in the esteemed court poetry where the audience is supposed to be a king. · Identifies Chrétein du Troyes as starting the trend for having lady watchers and after him "no tournament was complete" without them. . It's a motif for showing greatness, same as a bright light or lots of followers.
· There are some unusual things about addressing women: most of it happens in family sagas and a lot uses heiti rather than kennings, who knows why. They don't appear much in love poetry: that's usually men competing with each other for a woman. · Acknowledges women's role in feuding