Rhyme in dróttkvætt, from Old Germanic Inheritance to Contemporary Poetic Ecology III: The Old Norse Poetic Ecology

Abstract

This paper is the third in a three-part series that develops a model for the background of rhyme in Old Norse dróttkvætt poetry as a formalization of the same form of rhyme found across Old Germanic poetries. The first paper in this series outlined the argument and its background. The second paper explored rhyme in Old Germanic poetries outside of Old Norse. The present paper introduces rhyme in Old Norse eddic poetries in relation to what was found in other Old Germanic traditions. It then turns to dróttkvætt, discussed in relation to the broader poetic ecology in which it emerged and developed, and considers how dróttkvætt impacted that ecology and uses of rhyme in eddic poetry. Although the ultimate origin of dróttkvætt remains obscure, the discussion of rhyme in dróttkvætt requires a discussion of the history of the meter, here situated in relation to other developments in the poetic ecology that point to greater attention to cadence and rhyme under conditions conducive to formalizing a stanzaic structure. However, this exploration of the history of the poetic form highlights that rhyme may have been a secondary development of the basic meter, formalizing what began as an optional added feature that may have had only a marginal metrical role.