Open Veils · Answer
How would you say "fire heart" or "burning heart" in Old Norse?
No single attested Old Norse phrase maps exactly onto 'fire heart' or 'burning heart,' but the components are well-documented and combinable. The poetic tradition of kenning-craft actively encouraged such compounds, and Norse mythological sources offer striking parallel imagery. A reconstructed compound or kenning is fully within the spirit of the skaldic tradition.
Evidence
- In Old Norse, 'fire' renders most directly as eldr (nominative) or funi (a poetic, archaic word for flame, found in Eddic verse). 'Heart' is hjarta.
- For 'burning heart,' the adjective 'burning' or 'blazing' can be expressed as brennandi (present participle of brenna, to burn) giving brennandi hjarta, or more poetically glóandi hjarta ('glowing heart') from glóa, to glow — a warmer, ember-like register.
- Skaldic kenning logic, documented extensively in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and catalogued in the kenning tradition, would also permit a periphrastic construction: funi brjósts ('flame of the breast') as a kenning for courage or passion — paralleling attested kennings like eldr eygna ('fire of the eyes') for gold.
- A direct compound would yield eldhjarta ('fire-heart') or funihjarta ('flame-heart'), following the same compounding logic seen in attested words like eldhús (fire-house) and hjartablóð (heart-blood).
- The Hyndluljóð, stanza 41, describes Loki finding the hálfbrennt hjarta — the 'half-burned heart' — of a wicked woman (understood to be Angrboða) in a linden-wood fire and consuming it, becoming pregnant with monstrous offspring.