Forgotten Ground Regained

Ash of the Oathbreaker

Blades brood over the broken promise. Steel does not sleep. Storms find the false; fangs find the soft: No hall holds lies.
Note from the Editor:
One of the ways that Old Norse poetry differs from other Germanic verse traditions is that it allows the poet to build stanzas using short, three-stress lines with internal alliteration.
Joshua Walker’s “Ash of the Oathbreaker” is modelled on an Old Norse form that takes advantage of these three-stress lines: ljoðaháttr (song meter). A ljoðaháttr stanza can be described as having six lines. Lines 1 and 2 are normal fornyrðislag lines, joined by alliteration, as are lines 4 and 5. Lines 3 and 6 are short three-stress lines with internal alliteration.
If you write lines 1 and 2 as a single line, and lines 4 and 5 as a single line (as in Old English alliterative verse), you get a 4-line stanza with 4 stresses, then 3, then 4, then 3, rather like a ballad. If you add a rhyme scheme to this pattern, as in some forms of Icelandic rimur, the resemblance to ballad form is very close, indeed.
Part of Forgotten Ground Regained: A Journal of Alliterative Verse, Issue 8, Fall, 2025: Norse and Icelandic Forms
Copyright © Joshua Walker, 2025
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