Jeremy Arden

4 Kennings

The Exeter Book is a collection of many different writings and is generally acknowledged to be one of the great works of the English Benedictine revival of the tenth century. Among the other texts in the Exeter Book, there are over ninety riddles or kennings. The difference between a riddle and a kenning, is that the answer to a riddle is in itself meaningless - a means to an end, a guessing game. The Kennings of the Exeter Book, on the other hand, are part of an ancient tradition of learning through memorable metaphor, much valued in the Anglo-Saxon world. They riddles are written in the style of Anglo-Saxon poetry, muscular and vivid, and range in topics from the religious to the mundane, nature, God and sex. .