dróttkvaettn.
/ˈdrəʊtkvʌɪt/ Court metre, a complex verse-form employed by the scaldic poets of early Scandinavia.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > literature > poetry > versification > metre > [noun] > variety of > court-metre (Old Icelandic)
dróttkvaett1779
court-metre1883
1779 J. Strutt Chron. Eng. II. iii. 253 The droquæt..was most generally used, each verse of which consisted of six syllables.
1843 G. W. Dasent tr. R. K. Rask Gram. Icelandic v. 218 Dróttqvæði has three trochees, or properly spondees in each line; but dactyls may also be used in the two first places.
1870 G. Bayldon Elem. Gram. Old Norse v. 115 The metre usual in laudatory poems is called Drótt~kvæði..or ‘heroic verse’.
1881 Encycl. Brit. XII. 623/1 The change in the phonesis of the language is well illustrated by the new metres as compared with the old Icelandic Drott-kvædi in its varied forms.
1911 Encycl. Brit. XXVII. 1046/1 In Icelandic poetry there was a highly artificial verse-system known as court-verse (dróttkvaett), which consisted of alliterative groups of two lines each, arranged in staves of eight lines.
1927 E. V. Gordon Introd. Old Norse 295 The favourite metre of the skalds was dróttkvætt (also called dróttkvæðr háttr).
1951 G. Turville-Petre Heroic Age of Scandinavia xv. 165 The most popular of the scaldic verse-forms was called the Court Metre (Dróttkvætt)... The line of the Court Metre contained three stresses, and these were generally distributed between six syllables.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online December 2020).
<
n.1779