Battle as a sacred game

Abstract

In my research, I propose a linguistic approach to skaldic praise poetry pursued and explained in the framework of Eugeniu Coseriu´s text linguistics. My study aims to demonstrate the different degrees of integration of battle’s proper meaning, from a calculated strategy in pre-Christian poems, to performing a sacred game in later Christian skaldic poems and eventually to the insertion in a ready-made structure as a unit of repeated speech. Considering kenning metaphors as sequences of repeated speech, I will also investigate to what extent the idiocultural class of battle, employed in some biblical circumstances (1 Corinthians 9:24.26; 2 Timothy:2-5; 2 Timothy 4-7, etc.), suggests a cultural model engaged in a semantic tension with the old Norse setting of the eleventh century. In my study, I will identify and discuss the sequences of repeated speech (kennings) which designate the battle and I will clarify these tensions. Taking the theory of repeated speech as a point of departure, the discussion of these issues will be structured around three types of kennings for battle: battle is storm, battle is senna (fierce verbal duels), battle is a game to play.