Love Poetry in the ‘Skald Sagas’
Professor Inna Matyushina

Abstract
The main aim of the article is to analyse skaldic love poetry (mansǫngr), which has not been adequately studied before due to its bad state of preservation. The origin of skaldic love poetry is traced to libellous verse (níð), which is related to mansǫngr through its semantic similarity as well as its contextual role in the saga (the motivation of conflict); its fragmentary nature and deficiency as information, necessitating prose commentary; the complexity and obscurity of language, following from the deliberate aim of concealing meaning, which is usually fictional. An attempt is made to trace the ways in which skaldic love poetry is transformed into lyric (such as the discovery of the verbal means of expressing the poet’s feelings, appearance of a woman, natural landscape).

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