Editing Kenning (section)

===Word order and comprehension===
[[Word order]] in Old Norse was generally much freer than in Modern English because Old Norse and [[Old English]] are [[synthetic language]]s, where added prefixes and suffixes to the root word (the core noun, verb, adjective or adverb) carry grammatical meanings, whereas Middle English and Modern English use word order to carry grammatical information, as [[analytic language]]s. This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between a base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word ([[tmesis]]). Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is usually less than it would be if an English text were subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] of Old Norse.

Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to the same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an "enemy of gold", "attacker of treasure", "destroyer of [[Arm ring|arm-rings]]", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional,<ref>Faulkes (1997), pp. 11–17,</ref> and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake.<ref>Faulkes (1997), p. 15.</ref>