The purpose of this website is to educate our target audience of high school age students about kennings, their use, and their evolution from Scandinavian literature through Anglo-Saxon and into modern times. Along with this, the ways that Scandinavian language infiltrated and influenced English will also be investigated, giving a broader foundation for students’ understanding. We believe that doing a short unit on kennings in a secondary classroom would be an easy/fun gateway into topics in linguistics and the evolution of language. Kennings also provide an interesting multi-faceted perspective on language and the many ways that it can be used to convey concepts. Other aspects of language that could be investigated via kennings are metaphor, simile, paraphrase, circumlocution, etc. Along with these areas of focus, the nature of the form will allow students to contribute their own original kennings and be able to pick them out from different modern media outlets – making the unit more relevant to their everyday experience.
We begin with the “broad strokes”, providing pages that explain what kennings are (which would probably be useful) and a page giving examples of them. We then move onto the more detailed investigations with pages on how they are used in Scandinavian literature (focusing on the Eddas, or Norse Mythological poems) and in Anglo-Saxon literature. Then, to give a more full understanding of how language and the forms of language (such as kennings) evolve and blend over time, we have a page that describes the ways in which Scandinavian language influenced English. Following this we have a page highlighting a current “debate”, or “controversy” in linguistics concerning this influence.
Some questions to ask yourself as you navigate this page could be: Why would the use of kennings be a practice in both Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon literature? Why would the practice carry over to today, and why are they much more of a colloquial “common speech” feature rather than a “poetic device”? How can coming up for “roundabout” ways to reference something else be useful in your life? How many examples can you pull out of your life and from the media that could be defined as kennings and how are these phrases used? What other aspects of art-forms have been assimilated from different cultures and how have they changed through that assimilation?
We begin with the “broad strokes”, providing pages that explain what kennings are (which would probably be useful) and a page giving examples of them. We then move onto the more detailed investigations with pages on how they are used in Scandinavian literature (focusing on the Eddas, or Norse Mythological poems) and in Anglo-Saxon literature. Then, to give a more full understanding of how language and the forms of language (such as kennings) evolve and blend over time, we have a page that describes the ways in which Scandinavian language influenced English. Following this we have a page highlighting a current “debate”, or “controversy” in linguistics concerning this influence.
Some questions to ask yourself as you navigate this page could be: Why would the use of kennings be a practice in both Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon literature? Why would the practice carry over to today, and why are they much more of a colloquial “common speech” feature rather than a “poetic device”? How can coming up for “roundabout” ways to reference something else be useful in your life? How many examples can you pull out of your life and from the media that could be defined as kennings and how are these phrases used? What other aspects of art-forms have been assimilated from different cultures and how have they changed through that assimilation?