| dc.description.abstract | In order to investigate the compositional techniques of skaldic poetry and determine if any oral formulae or other compositional methods played a role in the creation of skaldic poetry, I have collected the alliterating and rhyming words from 1486 couplets by 68 different poets, including 19 anonymous poems, and investigated whether any of these word combinations were repeated within the poetry of different skalds. Many such examples of recurrent word constellations were found in this study; including some couplets by different poets which shared almost word for word similarity within and without the alliteration and hending categories, others couplets which shared a number of similar words within both hending and alliteration contexts, but few or none outside of those categories, and yet others that shared similarities only between alliteration or hending word pairs. While there are many examples of these word constellations of various sizes occurring within the works of different skalds, very rarely do they recur between more than two different poets. From this, it seems unlikely that oral formulae played a significant role in the composition of alliterative and hending word combinations in skaldic poetry. Rather, it seems that skalds may have appropriated convenient alliterating and hending word constellations from each other s works and incorporated these choice word combinations or phrases, often with great subtlety into their own work in an original context. This subtle appropriation allowed for originality in composition while, at the same time, taking inspiration or compositional aide from an earlier skald s work. Appropriation as a compositional technique supports the idea that skalds were very much aware of the skaldic corpus, both from their own time and from earlier centuries. The frequent subtlety of the appropriation which is found in my research could also be a way to avoid being accused of plagiarism by other knowledgeable skalds. Intelligent and original use of these borrowed word constellations also supports the argument for the importance of originality in the composition of skaldic poetry. From my research it appears that the appropriation of alliterative and hending word constellations was likely used as a compositional technique by skalds from the 9th to 11th centuries. The most notable skalds with inter-related alliterative and hending word constellations mentioned in this paper include Glúmr Geirason, Arnórr Þórðarson jarlaskáld, and Óttarr svarti, but a great number of other skalds also share word constellation similarities and I believe that with a more throrough and all encompassing analysis of the skaldic corpus, many more such examples may be found. | eng |