Death in Place
Kate Heslop
Poetry in <italic>kviðuháttr</italic> shares a common interest place-based commemoration. <italic>Ynglingatal</italic> re-mediates topographically anchored memory poetic form by recounting local tales of royal death- and grave-sites, most importantly the site Uppsala, where destroyed great hall left memorial scar on landscape. <italic>Ynglingatal</italic>’s many placenames mnemonic itineraries along land sea routes as sequence doomed kings is traced from temporally spatially distant rulers Svíþjóð to recent Viken. The speaker’s autopsy gravesites Viken claims an authority which retrojected over entire sequence, attaching communal memories name his patron, Rǫgnvaldr. Carolingian iconography probably influenced development commemorative media Scandinavia, patterns identified can be subsequent history poetry for Christian patrons.
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