Existential Verse-Capping between a Female Troll and the Poet Bragi

Two formally similar stanzas of verbal contention between a troll woman and the poet Bragi Boddason display auto-definitions, one of a paranormal being antagonistic toward, and destructive of, human life, another of a creator of order and its pre-eminent expression, skaldic verse. In the irony so often deployed in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, the troll, the initiator of the contest, uses what is, for her, the antithetical medium of verbal art to proclaim her attack on it. Bragi replies in more straightforward manner and seems to be the immediate winner of the contest, since he is allowed the last word. In this, the poet’s craft may forestall Ragnarǫk, the epitome of the troll’s objectives of chaos. The contest has affinities with the