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Skalla-grimrSkalla-Grmr Kveldulfsson (9. and 10. centuries) was a Norwegian, who was forced to emigrate to Iceland in the days of Haraldr hrfagri. His main claim to fame is that he was the father of Egill, but he also deserves a footnote in the history of Nordic literature for having composed the following stanza: - N's hersis hefnd
- vi hilmi efnd;
- gengr ulfr ok ǫrn
- of ynglings bǫrn.
- Flugu hǫggvin hr
- Hallvars s.
- Grr sltr undir
- ari Snarfara.
"Now the nobleman (Kveldulfr) has exacted revenge upon the king (Haraldr hrfagri); now wolf and eagle tread on the king's children. The hewn corpses of Hallvarr (Hallvarr harfari and his people, that is the enemies) flew into the sea; the grey eagle tears the wounds of Snarfari (Sigtryggr snarfari was the brother of Hallvarr harfari)." If the saga is to be believed, this is the first attested instance in the Nordic canon of a stanza with end rhymes. Of course, there are serious doubts about that. End rhymes didn't occur in Norse poetry until his son Egill composed the poem Hǫfulausn. It is mostly agreed that Hǫfulausn is correctly attributed to Egill, and he might have got impulses from England, where end rhymes did occur in Latin poetry. It is not impossible that his father invented the metre. Skalla-Grmr surely knew how to put a stanza together, there are others more likely attributed to him, and Egill, of course, inherited his genius from someone, but the consensus now is, that Egill most likely put the words in his father's mouth, when he regaled later generations with stories of his beginning.
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