Key
Alliterations
Kenning Definition
Heraldic Latin
And Ro Honig Regal Route of RÁN QUEEN/GODDESS
In collusion with the clever claws of
The Blue Trickster-Beast SPARKY of the East Kingdom
Together Take in tasks done by folk
One Aesa Ormstunga called Jotunsbane
Rationer of ravens WARRIOR rallys Our guard.
Has solid stood. Sorrow-thief HELPER of sovereigns
We put Pot of the Hair-Part HAT on their brow
Affording aforesaid a court barony
Purpure, a chevron rompu inverted and in chief a serpent in annulo vorant of its own tail argent
Ergo We ever call Jotunsbane Excellent
Completed at Our closing court
All done on April 9th, AS LVI
This afternoon of ascension at Coronation in Østgarðr
Smash a glass and sing: Too Much BLOG!
The recipient didn’t have much information in their wiki, nor much about them from the recommendation. As such I decided to follow the example of their Norse name and use the Alliterative language of Beowulf.
When I make the decision to use a language form that uses kennings, the first thing I do is go to the Skaldic Project and just start writing down kennings. I roamed further afield and found Beowulf: Language and Poetics and even the Cliffsnotes for Beowulf.
In particular, I found the kenning “Word-Hoard” meaning “VOCABULARY”, and while I didn’t find a use for it in this scroll I fell in love with it. As a reflection of what I do as a wordsmith it's perfect.
Then I found the kenning The Loop of the Earth (SNAKE). I was incredibly excited by this find! The recipient has a snake eating its own tail as a part of their registered arms!
I desperately wanted to include it in the scroll.
I tried so hard. But it is a kenning for snake and I couldn’t work an animal reference into the scroll. There are a multitude of rough drafts on the computer’s floor, so to speak, and in the end I had to give it up. As the saying goes, “Don’t be afraid to kill your darlings.”
And I did.
Our Leading Lord of the Land (KING) Ioannes
In searching through Kennings, I found: lord of the land (KING) and I chose that for my opening. I quickly decided it needed another modifier. While it may be perfectly suitable in Beowulf, “lord’ has a much different rank in the East. At first I chose ‘highest’ as the adjective, but in the end I went with “leading,” for the additional alliteration.
And Ro Honig Regal Route of RÁN (QUEEN/GODDESS)
I was looking up options for Kennings for her Majesty. Finding such a straight correlation between Kenning and queen is rare. I remembered one of the first conversations I had with Grimm about Norse writings. One of the things that has stuck with me is that I could use any Goddess as a kenning for the queen.
There is a kind of balance that I strive for in scroll compositions. As I had chosen the kenning for the King to reference the land, a sea goddess matched my inner themes of 2 matching halves of the kingdom.
I found in Norse mythology, Rán, a goddess and a personification of the sea. I will note that her husband her husband is a jötunn, and part of the recipient's name is "Jotunsbane." Oops.
However the name was too perfect to resist when I found the Kenning for the sea ''The path of Rán.” I changed path to route for alliterative reasons and added Regal to it. En toto, I am essentially calling their Majesties "rulers of the land and seas.”
In collusion with the clever claws of
I realized that I needed a transition sentence to lead into the following Sparky sentence. While all three of the alliterative words are adequate, I’m quite proud of “clever” and “claws” They both started with a cl. I tried to think of another c-word with an l following it. But in the appropriate part of the sentence, I didn’t come up with one, as happens.
The Blue Trickster-Beast (SPARKY) of the East Kingdom
Further delving into the Skaldic project added more depth to my understanding of the kenning for cat. The dark betrayer of the wood-bear of old walls (CAT) was what I based my adaptation of the Kenning into “Blue Wood-Beast” in the words for another pending scroll I wrote. With the changes to the Skaldic project website, I was able to discover that this is actually 2 Kennings that should be broken down thusly:
the dark betrayer (CAT)
wood-bear of old walls (MOUSE)
I started thinking about betrayer and how, out of context with the mouse kenning, that this was not an attribute that I wanted to include as an aspect of Sparky with respect to The East Kingdom. I took to my tried and true thesaurus to see if there were other options. The best one I could find was Trick, or Trickster. Which evokes Loki, especially considering the current popular representation of Loki in the current Marvel movies. Also the goddess Rán once loaned her net to the god Loki, a small connection in this scroll that I found appropriate.
I decided to go with this.
Repeating the Change of Dark to Blue, as I had previously, I came up with Blue Trickster-Beast. Which is definitively evocative of cats of any size or color! Trickster can shorten nicely to Trick, depending on the syllable count. I think this is both similar to the one I came up with on the earlier scroll I wrote to make a more accurate Sparky/East Kingdom kenning for future usage.
Together Take in tasks done by folk
I like that “together” here can reference just Their Majesties or, Their Majesties and Sparky. It’s all up to the interpretation of the listener. As a transition sentence, this led into the next few ones that described the recipient and their accolades.
One Aesa Ormstunga called Jotunsbane
The recipient listed their pronouns as they/them. Afterward I referred to them as Jotunsbane alone.
Rationer of ravens (WARRIOR) rallys Our guard.
Feeder of Ravens (WARRIOR) was the original kenning. I changed the Feeder to Rationer to fit the alliteration. “Rationer,'' in this kenning has no bearing on the recipient’s service, but it felt in kind with the deeds they were being praised for. Which are alluded to in the next sentence.
Has solid stood. Sorrow-thief (HELPER) of sovereigns
The recommendation specifically mentions that the recipient is the type of person to get every task accomplished and accomplished well. Sorrow-thief was the perfect kenning for that. I also appreciate any sentence where I can get more than 3 alliterations!
We put Pot of the Hair-Part (HAT) on their brow
The last kenning of the scroll and it too went through a few iterations to make the alliterations work. The thesaurus is the wordsmith’s best friend. When the thesaurus isn’t even enough I have been known to google the word I want to replace and see what happens. I put a lot of effort into getting the exquisitely correct word. I really do think that “word-hoard” is the best name for any kind of author out there!
Affording aforesaid a court barony
Purpure, a chevron rompu inverted and in chief a serpent in annulo vorant of its own tail argent
Ergo We ever call Jotunsbane Excellent
These next lines were describing the recipient’s awards and their arms. For a person with gender neutral honorifics this became more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I looked through the entire List of Alternate Titles hoping to find anything usable for this particular award, and turned up empty handed. Baron/Baroness are very gendered titles.
I ended up reaching for advice from Leonette who suggested “We award the aforesaid a court barony and henceforth call them excellent.”
I simply broke that down into 2 lines, used their preferred name, and adjusted some of the words for alliteration. Then I put the recipient’s arms in between the lines, where it would make the most sense for reading aloud.
Completed at Our closing court
All done on April 9th, AS LVI
This afternoon of ascension at Coronation in Østgarðr
The last three lines of the scroll are filled with the date/place.event information that all scrolls have. In retrospect I seem to have created a kenning for Coronation with Afternoon of Ascension. Had I my druthers I would have let it go at that. But to not include the event by name is not done for scrolls.
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