The Vocabulary of Wisdom in the Old Norse Poetic Corpus

Wisdom was highly valued in Old Norse society. We see its importance evidenced in the prominence of wisdom contests and gnomic poetry, as well as in its attribution to important and impressive figures, both mortal and supernatural, in the poetry and prose. This book takes a unique approach to the study of wisdom by conducting a literary study of Old Norse poetry guided by wisdom’s semantic field. As such, it includes texts that have otherwise been overlooked in wisdom studies to date. The book follows the adjectives fróðr, horskr, snotr, spakr, svinnr, vitr, and víss through the eddic and skaldic corpora, and addresses the representation of wisdom in pre- and post-conversion poetry, the differences and similarities in the words used for the wisdom of women and men, and how the lexicon of wisdom changes (or, indeed, how it does not) across the two poetic corpora. The study ultimately demonstrates the enlightening and unexpected results that a lexical-semantic approach to a poetic corpus can yield, and how these discoveries can inform our understanding of the culture and society in which that poetry flourished.