my perversities are never ever gonna change

currently:enjoying the all the series of river cottage on 4od. hugh fearnley-whittingstall gets filed under perfect human beings.also, I just got the river cottage everyday cookbook and its sheer joy; with lots to read, cheerful and simple recipes, beautiful photos and quirky drawings. the kind of book that will get you excited about seasonal, easy food. whole-heartedly recommend it!I dont know when exactly this turned into a bit of a food blog... so heres one of the songs on heavy rotation right now. spring = lykke li.I follow rivers - lykke lisince were taking a turn to scandinavia (oh, while were on the topic... one of my favourite cooks and food bloggers, signe johansen, is releasing her first solo book - scandilicious - on my birthday! hope its going to be good. yes, Ive pre-ordered. (and were back to food again...)) (are you still with me?) I wanted to write about a fascinating little thing called a kenning*, which appears in the norse mythology. back in the viking age, all of the norse heroic and mythic poetry was being transmitted orally by storytellers called skalds. skalds and the audience would participate in a word game of sorts, and this is where these methaphors - kennings - come in. kennings were phrases consisting of a base noun and a possesive noun, i.e. horse of the sea means a ship and swan of blood is a raven (since they ate the battlefield dead). but then it gets a bit more complicated, when a number of kennings are combined... so a leader might be called a spurner of the bonfire of the sea. spurning is about the generosity of said leader, and a bonfire of the sea is a kenning for gold, as there existed stories about Ægir, the lord of the sea, whose "home fires burned red, like gold beneath the sea". basically, a skald would be expected to entertain the audience by constructing very intricate and complex kennings, which would be clear to those who posessed knowledge about norse mythology and society.some of you might have found it boring, but Ive always thought this was a pretty neat concept ;)*all the information and quotes come from the appendix to snorri sturlussons the prose edda, written by jesse l. byock