From Court to Classroom: Einarr Skúlason and the Study of the Skaldic Tradition

Abstract

The Icelandic cleric Einarr Skúlason (c. 1090-1160) was a key figure in the transition from the pre-literary to the learned phase of skaldic composition. In the section of the Edda dedicated to poetic language (Skáldskaparmál), his kinsman Snorri Sturluson granted this skald the highest exemplary status, citing him way more than any other poet. In fact, long before Snorri, Einarr Skúlason appears to have been among the first learned Icelanders to engage in a systematic study of the vernacular poetic canon and of its rhetorical figures. Evidence of this activity is found chiefly in the fragments attributed to him in poetic treatises. By means of a systematic imitation of the early skalds, Einarr reinstated the kenning style typical of late-pagan poetry, giving impetus to the medieval reception of the mythological matter of the North. An analysis of these fragments is thus able to shed light on the earliest and least documented phase in the development of the vernacular rhetorical reflection in Iceland, accounting for the strand of studies which, roughly a century later, would culminate in the composition of Snorri’s Edda.