Did you know that in medieval epics, warriors sometimes instigated duels by spinning poems?
In the Saga of Gunlaug Serpent-Tongue, Gunnlaug and a fellow Icelander have the medieval equivalent of a rap battle in the court King Olaf the Swede. Their conflict actually begins with a passive-aggressive disagreement about who should present a poem of flattery to the king first. They end up trading insults about each other’s’ poems, which escalates quickly and results in horrific consequences: Gunnlaug’s countryman returns to Iceland before Gunnlaug does and essentially steals Gunnlaug’s betrothed in revenge. Unsurprisingly, the two men eventually come to blows, and ultimately kill each other in a duel.
Because of their poems.
But there was more to poetry in the Norse tradition than throwing down verbal gauntlets.
When Gunnlaug first leaves his home in Iceland to travel the world, he presents himself at the court of King Ethelred in Britain, where he asks for permission to recite a poem he has composed on his journey specifically for the king. Although Gunnlaug does not seem to have needed the hearing to gain access to the court in general, his request suggests (and what follows demonstrates) that reciting original poetry for a ruler was at least not an uncommon phenomenon, and could be used to gain special access to the ruler in question.
Ethelred agrees to hear the poem, which he likes enough to reward Gunnlaug with “a cloak of scarlet lined with the finest furs and with an embroidered band stretching down to the hem.” And Ethelred is not the only ruler to hear Gunnlaug present a poem, and to reward him for it with fine clothes, jewelry, or equipment. Everywhere Gunnlaug travels, he presents himself to the local ruler and asks permission to recite a poem he has written just for them, resulting in gifts such as a “new suit of scarlet clothes, an embroidered tunic, a cloak lined with expensive furs and a gold bracelet which weighed a mark,” and a “broad axe, decorated all over with silver inlay.” Poetry, it seems, was a legitimate and, perhaps depending on the skill of the poet, reliable method of accumulating wealth. In fact, it is a common enough practice that when Gunnlaug has recited his poem for King Stigtrygg Silk-beard in Dublin, even though this particular king has never been entertained by a poet before and is not sure how to reward Gunnlaug, his treasurer knows exactly what the standard practice is.
Poetry also functions in The Saga of Gunnlaug as a means of avoiding conflict (unlike the "rap battle" mentioned earlier), at court and in the wider world. During one of Gunnlaug's visits with an earl, two parties begin to argue about who is better: their host, Earl Sigurd, or the visiting Norwegians’ Earl Eirik. They ask Gunnlaug’s opinion as an impartial third party, and he settles the matter by reciting an apparently ad hoc poem that pleases both parties and thus ends the argument.
Finally, The Saga of Gunnlaug demonstrates that poetry could open a path into a lord’s retinue. When Gunnlaug recited his poem for King Ethelred, he did not just receive a cloak—the king made Gunnlaug one of his followers. Service in a lord’s retinue as a follower included functioning as a fighting man—when Grunnlaug asks Ethelred for permission to go home to Iceland at a time when war with the Danes was a looming possibility, Ethelred denies Gunnlaug the leave, saying “’Since you are my follower … it is not appropriate for you to leave when such a war threatens England.” While there are a number of reasons Ethelred may have been unwilling to let Gunnlaug leave while on the brink of war, the implication is that Gunnlaug was serving the king as a warrior—and his first step to getting this position was reciting that first poem.
This makes me want to undertake an analysis of the role of poetry in Tolkien's work—as far as I can recall, they primarily served to convey history and memorialize the dead. But perhaps there's more to it; only a close reading of the poems in his works will tell.
Source: The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, trans. Katrina C. Attwood (Milton Keynes: Penguin Books, 2015), from Sagas of Warrior-Poets (Penguin Classics, 2002).