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Alliterative verse
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==== Meter and rhythm ==== The terseness of the Norse form may be linked to another feature of Norse poetry that differentiates it from common Germanic patterns: In Old Norse poetry, syllable count sometimes matters, and not just the number of lifts and dips.<ref name="Poole 2005 Metre and Metrics">{{cite book |last1=Poole |first1=Russell |chapter=Metre and Metrics |pages=265–284 |editor1-last=McTurk |editor1-first=Rory |title=A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture |date=2005 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-0-631-23502-6 }}</ref> That depends upon the specific verse form used, of which Old Norse poetry had many. The base, Common Germanic alliterative meter is what Old Norse poets termed ''fornyrðislag'' ("old story meter"). More complex verse forms imposed an extra layer of structure in which syllable count, stress, alliteration (and sometimes, assonance and rhyme) worked together to define line or stanza structures.<ref name="Poole 2005 Metre and Metrics"/> For example, in kvi''ðuhattr ("lay form")'', the first half line had to contain four, and the second half-line, three syllables, while in ''ljóðaháttr'' ("song" or "[[ballad]]" meter), there were no specific syllable counts, but the lines were arranged into four-line stanzas alternating between four- and three-lift lines. More complex stanza forms imposed additional constraints.<ref name="Poole 2005 Metre and Metrics"/> The various names of the Old Norse verse forms are given in the [[Prose Edda]] by [[Snorri Sturluson]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Prose Edda |publisher=Penguin books |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-140-44755-2 |language=Old Norse |translator-last=Byock |translator-first=Jesse}}</ref> The ''[[Háttatal]]'', or "list of verse forms", contains the names and characteristics of each of the fixed forms of Norse poetry.<ref>Nordal, Guðrún, and Nordal Guðrún. ''Tools of literacy: the role of skaldic verse in Icelandic textual culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries''. University of Toronto Press, 2001.{{page needed|date=December 2023}}</ref>
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