Narrative Voice and the Voice of the Poet

One of the most significant characteristics of skaldic poetry as a literary form is its combination of interiority and exteriority. In narratological terms the combination manifests itself in the mixture of impersonal or third-person narrative forms on the one hand and, on the other, those that utilise the first-person voice of the speaker of the poetry, usually identified with that of the composer himself (rarely, herself). This combination of the personal and the impersonal appears to have characterised skaldic verse from the beginning, as witnessed by the earliest Norwegian court poetry from the late ninth and early tenth centuries, but in that early corpus it is clear that the third-person mode was dominant, while the first-person form (as well as being sometimes a form of direct address to the poem’s recipient) was used as a marked, and therefore special, emphatic intervention on the part of the poet, who entered into his discourse to connect with his audience and clarify the emphasis he wanted to place upon the content of his verse. Sometimes that was a particular slant upon the subject matter itself, sometimes an indication of the speaker’s own position with regard to the narrative or towards the patron for whom he was composing.

One particular trope for which the first-person form was frequently used, often in combination with direct address to the patron, was the skald’s reference to his own role as a poet and sharer in the divinely-acquired mead of poetry, as in Einarr skálaglamm [Tinkle-scales] Helgason’s Vellekla [Lack of Gold] (Eskál Vell 1):

The Old Norse myth of the god Óðinn’s acquisition of the mead of poetry from the giant Suttungr and his daughter Gunnlǫð, to which Einarr’s helmingr alludes, laid the foundation for the claim of human poets to tell important truths and provided them with ready-made status as authorities to whom elite audiences were expected to listen with respect.