While I was heating the pan for the daily egg, I had a choice to make: listen to the news, and baptize my mind in the same swill everybody else is obsessed with, or dive back into Beowulf, a thousand-year old poem about monsters.
I don’t have the luxury of wasting time, so I asked myself which would be more relevant to my life today, in the real world? Which is why I picked Beowulf, because if you want a new idea, read an old book.
Beowulf is a very interesting listen — not because of the story, which I know well, but because of the language. It’s full of inventive expressions called “kennings.” The sea is the whale road, the seal bath, and the fish home. A king is a ring giver. A warrior is a shield bearer. Blood is battle sweat, and a monster is a corpse maker. You have to pay attention and keep up to understand what’s going on.
Kennings aren’t unique to Beowulf or to old Anglo-Saxon poetry. Gary Wright sang about the dream weaver, and we use concepts like bookworm, gas-guzzler, and brainstorm in everyday conversation.
What does this sort of fanciful word choice do to content? Shouldn’t we aim for simple, direct language?
Maybe not. Kennings don’t just embellish language — they change the way we experience it.
Figurative language like kennings activates more cognitive regions of the brain than literal language because they create small mental puzzles the reader has to solve. A kenning breaks the predictability of language. The reader has to pause and reconstruct the meaning of the phrase. That deepens engagement with the content. It can also serve to make us see the world more vividly. A whale road or a seal bath conjures up more mental imagery than “ocean.”
Such language is the exact opposite of what AI does. A large language model defaults to the most statistically likely phrase, which can make content predictable and dull. Human creativity thrives on the unexpected. Kennings break patterns, while AI-generated content follows them.
What’s the takeaway? If you want to increase engagement with your readers, make your content pop with fun and inventive words. Spend some time studying kennings and other figurative forms of expression.
Or, eating my own cooking …
What’s the takeaway? If you want to grip your reader’s mind-hoard, grapple with ancient ink-runes. Sharpen your word-blade until it sings. Become a thought-weaver, forging language with the incantations of the bards.
Love this…definitely food for thought as you clearly demonstrated as a breakfast read. Changing up the language, refreshing with publications from a different time is an excellent way to do so.