The poetic appositive in Old English
From Beowulf and the Appositive Style:
Etymologically The Harbrace College Handbook is correct in saying that an appositive is “set beside” another noun, for the Latin appositus means “placed (next) to.” But in practice appositives can sometimes be separated from the word to which they refer, as in “Beowulf was there, the king of the Geatas.” Also, some grammarians extend the meaning of “appositive” to include parts of speech other than the noun and to include even phrases and clauses. ...
“Appositive” in this broad sense describes fairly accurately what Anglo-Saxon scholars term “variation” in Old English poetry. “Variation” has been defined as “syntactically parallel words or word-groups which share a common referent and which occur within a single clause.” A ubiquitous feature in Old Germanic poetry, variation is, according to Frederick Klaeber, “the very soul of the Old English poetical style.” ...
In Old English poetry, where apposition is used so heavily, the construction often seems especially rich in implicit meaning, as the following examples from Beowulf may suggest.
nealles him on heape handgesteallan
aethelinga bearn ymbe gestodon [2596-97]
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