Creating imagery can be confusing. Ancient literature is difficult not just because of archaic words, but also figures of speech that are strange to our ears. These ancient authors were attempting to help the reader see the action. For example, if you translate an early English text, such as Beowulf into completely modern words, students would still stumble over old idioms such as whale road, sail road and swan road. All of these describe the sea. Huge whales and sailing ships travel the ocean, and I suppose the occasional brave swan could be found floating on waves not far from shore. Are our highways, freeways, and interstates any less confusing than whale roads, sail roads and swan roads? For us these types of roads may conjure up distinct images, but in reality they overlap. 

Beowulf also has a person called the breaker of rings, I could see somebody hacking gold rings apart. Could this be a thief preparing his latest heist to be melted? Actually he is a leader, such a minor king or chieftain. Chances are that he obtained these gold rings by legitimate trading more often than he did by attacking villages and stealing their goods. The breaker of rings doesn’t have to be a sneaky thief. Leaders are also called givers of rings as well as breakers of rings. I suppose a more successful king could have obtained enough gold to give his followers entire rings rather than breaking them into parts to have enough for everyone.

Those figures of speech called kennings make it difficult to read words written thousands of years ago. But can you imagine someone from the eighth century reading ordinary writing today? Even if we never mentioned modern inventions such as airplanes, automobiles, computers and TVs, we are constantly using idiomatic phrases. “Hit the road” means to travel and “hit the sack”” means to go to bed, but it sounds like we are slamming our fists into the pavement or the mattress.

Older languages are often more complex than the simplified grammar of our day. Many people fail to realize that the difference between thee and ye is the number of people indicated by these pronouns. Thee refers to one “you” and ye is used when referring to multiple people. Ye is like the southern idiom “y’all” or the northern version “you guys.” However, some of those giver of rings thought that they were big stuff and insisted on being called by the plural ye. If you think of thee as a polite term, you are wrong. It is the familiar and equalitarian version of you.

Learning to understand figures of speech from another time and place is one of the steps to understanding diverse worlds. Our own kennings fill our conversations and writing with phrases that we find familiar. It is hard to see these as not ordinary. So, you can improve the otherworld feeling of histories, fantasies and science fiction stories by developing your own kennings.