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Skaldic Slam: Performance Poetry in the Norwegian Royal Court

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Skaldic Slam: Performance Poetry in the Norwegian Royal Court Lokaverkefni til MA–gráðu í Norrænni trú Félagsvísindasvið Skaldic Slam: Performance Poetry in the Norwegian Royal Court Anna Millward Leiðbeinandi: Terry Gunnell Félags- og mannvísindadeild Félagsvísindasvið Háskóla Íslands December 2014 Norrænn trú Félags- og mannvísindadeild 1 Anna Millward MA in Old Nordic Religions: Thesis MA Kennitala: 150690-3749 Winter 2014 DEDICATION AND DISCLAIMER I owe special thanks to Prof. Terry Gunnell for his continued encouragement, help and enthusiasm throughout the process of researching and writing this dissertation. Many of the ideas put forward in this dissertation are borne out of interesting conversations and discussions with Prof. Gunnell, whose own work inspired me to take up this subject in the first place. It is through Prof. Gunnell’s unwavering support that this thesis came into being and, needless to say, any mistakes or errors are mine entirely. Ritgerð þessi er lokaverkefni til MA–gráðu í Norrænni Trú og er óheimilt að afrita ritgerðina á nokkurn hátt nema með leyfi rétthafa. © Anna Millward, 2014 Reykjavík, Ísland 2014 2 Anna Millward MA in Old Nordic Religions: Thesis MA Kennitala: 150690-3749 Winter 2014 CONTENTS Introduction pp. 5-13 Chapter 1. Skálds, Scholar, and the Problem of the Pen 1.1. What is Skaldic Poetry? pp. 14-15 1.2. Form and Function pp. 15-22 1.3. Preservation Context pp. 22-24 1.4. Scholarly Approaches to Skaldic Verse p. 25 1.5. Skaldic Scholarship: post-1970s pp. 26-31 1.6. Early Skaldic Scholarship: pre-1970s pp. 31-36 1.7. Skaldic as Oral Poetry, Oral Poetry as Performance pp. 36-43 1.8. Old Norse ‘Drama’ and Performance pp. 43-52 1.9. The Social and Political Dynamics of Skaldic Court Performance pp. 53-63 1.10. Creative Approaches to Old Norse Poetry pp. 63-71 Chapter 2. Performance Poetry: Practice and Theory 2.1. An Example of Performance Poetry pp. 72-75 2.2. What is a (Performance) Poem? pp. 75-85 2.3. Skaldic Sound: Reading vs. Listening pp. 85-92 2.4. The Meaning of Sound, the Sound of Meaning pp. 92-98 2.5. Skaldic Poetry as Page Poetry pp. 99-103 2.6. Skaldic Sound: Re-Oralising the Written Word pp. 103-107 3 Anna Millward MA in Old Nordic Religions: Thesis MA Kennitala: 150690-3749 Winter 2014 2.7. Native Conceptions of Skaldic Verse pp. 108-123 Chapter 3. Skaldic Poetry in Action: Performance Analysis 3.1. Towards a Definition: Defining the term ‘Performance’ pp. 124-126 3.2. What is Performance? pp. 126-129 3.3. What is Performance Studies? pp. 129-130 3.4. The Skaldic Experience: Poetry as Performance, not as Written Text p. 131 3.5. The Poetic Process: the ‘Proto-Performance’ of Oral Composition and Memorisation pp. 131-138 3.6. The Skaldic Space pp. 138-142 3.7. Under the Spotlight: Presenting the Skáld himself pp. 142-152 Chapter 4. A Performance Studies Analysis 4.1. Poetry in Action: the Performance of Pre-Christian Skaldic Court Poems pp. 153-155 4.2. The Skáld as Storyteller: Shield Poetry pp. 155-173 4.3. Sound Poetry: Ninth-Century Skaldic Verse pp. 173-190 4.4. Poetry and Propaganda: Skaldic ‘Slam’ in the Court of Jarl Hákon pp. 191-202 Conclusion pp. 203-205 Bibliography pp. 206-228 4 Anna Millward MA in Old Nordic Religions: Thesis MA Kennitala: 150690-3749 Winter 2014 SKALDIC SLAM: PERFORMANCE POETRY IN THE NORWEGIAN ROYAL COURT Introduction Slam, simply put, is the competitive art of spoken-word poetry.1 In modern slam contests, performers go head-to-head in a bid to increase their reputation and outshine their opponents, relying on audience interaction and reaction for the final verdict. During a live performance, the slam poet not only engages a distinctive isochronic rhythm and dynamic use of his or her sound and space, voice and visual, but also uses his or her verbal artistry to broadcast twenty-first century social and political issues.2 In short, unlike the ‘academic’ concept of poetry as written literature that lives only in between the silent pages of books, slam poets rely on a wholly oral mode of transmission and therefore these poets compose their poems specifically for live performance on the stage, not on the page.3 Whilst medieval Scandinavian court poetry might at first seem far removed from the modern phenomenon of underground poetry slams, the so-called skaldic praise poems that were composed in the ninth- and tenth-century Norwegian royal court arguably share many similarities with modern-day slam. The most obvious point of comparison lies in the fact that the early Scandinavian court skálds (Old Norse ‘poets’) were composing in a pre-literary oral environment, meaning that their poems were not composed as silent static objects to pinned down on parchment.4 Instead, like modern slam artists, it seems likely that skálds composing in an oral environment would have show-cased their poems as acoustic sound within physical space, as a communal audience experience to be presented before the 1 For examples of live slam performance in both the UK and America, see: SLAMbassadors UK, http://slam.poetrysociety.org.uk/ (viewed 25 November, 2014); Apples & Snakes, http://www.applesandsnakes.co.uk/ (viewed 25 November, 2014); Nuyorcian Poets’ Café, http://www.nuyorican.org/ (viewed 25 November, 2014). For discussions of slam poetry, practice and theory, see: Novak, J., Live Poetry: an Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance (New York, 2011) and Foley, J. M., How to Read an Oral Poem (Urbana, 2002), pp. 3-5. 2 For example, see: Makkai, K., Pretty, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7TS2Z6lAI4 (viewed 25 November, 2014). 3 It is important to point out that the dichotomy between poems composed for the page and poems composed for live performance is by no means black and white. Modern poetic composition, for example, often engages a fluid process involving a combination of oral (such as acoustic, aural sound), performative (engaging the body, audience and performance space) and literary (writing) techniques. This complex subject area has been dealt with extensively by both oral and modern poetry scholars, and is discussed in Chapter 2. 4 According to the written tradition of thirteenth- and fourteenth- century Icelandic manuscripts, many Norse skálds (poets) were composing in a wholly oral period before the arrival of Christianity and thus before literacy. Nonetheless, whilst most scholars generally agree on the oral pre-history of skaldic verse, there is still a great deal of debate regarding the dating and authenticity (i.e. as early oral poems and not medieval literary creations) of various verses and poems. This is a huge subject area, and one that I deal with more thoroughly in Chapter 1.1-1.9 below. 5 Anna Millward MA in Old Nordic Religions: Thesis MA Kennitala: 150690-3749 Winter 2014 judgement of the court. In short, we should never forget that like modern slam, skaldic poetry was performance poetry, and the poet was a performer. Although pre-Christian Scandinavian skálds operated in a time and culture that was completely different from the culture of coffee-shop slams and national spoken-word contests of today, it nonetheless seems that the competitive nature of spoken-word poetry thrived in ninth- and tenth-century Scandinavia (see Chapters 3 and 4). In particular, rulers such as the ninth-century Norwegian King Haraldr hárfagri (‘fine-haired’) and the tenth- century Jarl Hákon harboured their own poetic empires of court skálds whose performances of praise poetry functioned as an important part of court culture and, particularly in Hákon’s reign, political propaganda.5 As such, like modern slam there must have been a strong element of competition for royal favours among these court skálds. There are thus good reasons to consider what the function and effect of these poetic performances must have been, and question how professional skaldic poets, like slam poets, used live performance as a means to distinguish themselves from other skálds.6 As will be noted in more detail in Chapter 1, the performance of pre-Christian skaldic verse has received comparatively little attention in recent Old Norse scholarship, despite oral recitation or ‘spoken-word’ having been the dominant mode of verse transmission in pre-literate Scandinavian society.7 Skaldic ‘oral’ poetry appears to have been one of the most popular forms of poetry in Norway and Iceland from the late-ninth to early-fourteenth century.8 Since most scholars seem to agree, if somewhat cautiously, that ‘all medieval 5 We know that skálds were active in kings’ courts due to a wealth of written sources such as the Icelandic sagas (especially the Konungssǫgur and Íslendingasǫgur) and the medieval list skáldatal (‘tally of poets’) in the thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript Codex Uppsaliensis. For further discussion see, for example, Nordal, G., Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Toronto, 2001) or see below (Chapter 1.1-1.9 and Chapter 3.4-3.7). 6 Whilst there is evidence of female skálds composing poetry in the pre-Christian era, the majority of strophes that we have preserved are usually attributed to male poets. Although it seems reasonable to argue that women may have been lively poets and performers, the poems that I discuss in this thesis are all attributed to male skálds. For the sake of ease I will therefore use the pronoun ‘he’ when referring to the skaldic performer. For more information regarding female skálds, however, see: Ballif Straubhaar, S., Old Norse Women’s Poetry: the Voices of Female Skalds (Cambridge, 2011). 7 Spoken word is a popular modern term used to describe performance poetry, whether slam or otherwise.
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