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Abstract
The name of the virtuoso Old Norse-Icelandic meta-metaphorical rhetorical trope ofljóst is generally understood, ironically, as “too clear”, when the stylistic device actually requires considerable cultural capital, and an appreciation of word play and word-interplay for comprehension. The essay establishes that it is not the clarity and ease of understanding that is referenced by the name but the dazzling lexical and imagistic technique of the medieval skáld. This contention is supported by an examination of familiar name encryption in the longer poems of Egill Skallagrímsson.
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Notes
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Clunies Ross, Gade, and Wills (2022, pp. cxxviii-cxxi). Insightful discussion of Norse poetic practices also in Clunies Ross (2022a); Frank (2022); Guðrun Nordal (2001, 2012); Lindow (1975); and Quinn (2020).
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Snorri Sturluson (Faulkes, 1998, vol. 1, p. 109, and Faulkes, 2007, p. 12, 40). Ofljóst is mentioned but not exemplified in Sturla Þorðarson’s grammatical treatise (Óláfr Þórðarson, 1884, pp. 66, 89, 171-172).
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Clunies Ross, Gade, and Wills (2022, pp. cxxviii-cxxi). The editors also discuss the rare use of the device in other sagas and in the treatment of placenames. See too Frank (2022, pp. 104–108), in which the term is mistakenly applied to poetic riffs on proper names where the name itself is explicitly given in. In these instances the name leads to the pun, while in a true ofljóst construct the pun leads to the name.
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More detailed discussion of the stanza in William Sayers “Reading Egill Skallagrímsson”s Hǫfuðlausn (Head-Ransom) as Parody”, Mediaevistik. forthcoming. Snorri has the variant form Managarm in Skáldskaparmál, verses 335–336.
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Sayers, W. The Old Norse-Icelandic Metaphorical Trope Ofljóst. Neophilologus 109, 253–261 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-025-09835-1
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- DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-025-09835-1
Keywords
- Poetics
- Onomastics
- Word play
