#Norsebinge

[nimblermortal]

The Saga of Hervor Getting What She Wants

in entertaining light retelling this time

for the poetry in translation, click here

Hervor: WAKEY WAKEY RISE AND SHINE, LICHES! Hervor's here and she's ready! for! gifts!

Hervor: I said WAKEY WAKEY I WANT PRESENTS. There are twelve vikings in this burial mound and I will not stop until somebody answers me.

Hervor: Nobody? Okay, then the curses are coming out on three. One, two -

Angantyr: What are you saying, daughter? You're becoming hysterical. Waking up dead men is not a good idea. None of my other kinsmen made such a scene, and there was no reason to. The magic sword Tyrfing that you're looking for, my killers took it.

Hervor: Liar liar pants on (bale)fire. For shame, holding out on your only child!

Angantyr: It is literally Hel all around you. You should run away.

Hervor: I came here to talk to ghosts and you think I'm afraid of a little fire?

Angantyr: I don't want you to have the sword because it will be the ruin of our entire family. Your son could carry Tyrfing.

Hervor: Jesus, what does a girl have to do to qualify as a man? I didn't ask you for advice, I asked you for a magic sword.

Angantyr: It's, uh, right here. Wrapped in fire. No girl would ever dare to put her hand in -

Hervor: *sticks her entire arm into the fire*

Angantyr: *snatching the fire back* Jesus, girl, grow some self-preservation! Hervor: Sword? Angantyr: Fine. Sword.

Hervor: Sick blade :D

Angantyr: No really, you don't understand, the sword will be the death of your entire family, all your sons -

Hervor: That sounds like a them problem. I've got a sick blade.

Angantyr: Enjoy. Don't touch the edges, they're poison. God, you're drengr, I wish I could give you the lives of every man here, but, uh, we're already dead.

Hervor: Ha, yeah, you all stay in your pussy little "graves," I'm gonna go do some great deeds.

[nimblermortal]

Hervor <3

Okay, so I am translating the Saga of Hervor and Heidrek, also known as the Saga of King Heidrek the Wise by people who a) have met King Heidrek and b) clearly have no taste and are absolutely sleeping on my beloved Hervor.

Hervor is the daughter of a berserk. She's not like other girls. She would rather change with shot and shield* and sword than with needle and thread. She would rather do bad than good, and when bad is banned, she leaps into the forest and starts killing men for money.

Your fave could never. Your fave probably has honor.

Her grandfather the jarl** takes a troop of men to deal with the highwayman, and has an off-screen awkward haha moment of discovering said highwayman is his granddaughter, in front of all his men, and drags her back to his house, where she goes right back to making life miserable for everyone around her.

Eventually the slaves get so fed up with her that one of them tells her of course she's always bad, it's perfectly in keeping with her breeding, her (maternal) grandfather the jarl won't let anyone speak of it but her mother lay with the lowest slave.

Hervor gets rather upset and goes to her grandfather to inquire about the truth of this. She gets a relieved, "Haha no of course not your father was known for being... strong** and his tomb lies on this one island where he lost a duel his brother picked."

"Oh," Hervor replies instantly and in verse, "I want to go there and rob his grave."

Arguably the very next morning she has reworked her entire wardrobe*** and sailed off alone. Where does she go? TO FIND PIRATES†! She sails off to the land of the wild things (pirates) and they make her their king (captain). King because she's crossdressing now, she's tooootally a man named Hervard.

The instant she becomes their leader she says, "Cool, we're going to this island where I hear there's treasure."

"We don't want to go there," say all of her men, sailing there anyway but refusing to get off the boat. "That island is haunted. It's scary. No."

So after a great deal of argument lasting all day until sunset, they drop the anchor and Hervor gets in the boat and rows to shore herself, where she starts interrogating the natives, who are all, "You should not have come here, it's dangerous, we don't go outside at night, you need to go to somebody's house" and she's all, "I didn't ask you if it was scawy, I asked you where the lich king's burial mound is."

And that's as far as I've translated so far, but every day reading about Hervor Angantyrsdottir is a fresh gift.

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*side note, why have we stopped using this as a phrase?? It alliterates!

**the jarl has an interesting unspoken story going on. The first part of the saga deals with Hervor's dad's younger brother deciding he's going to marry a Swedish princess, and scheduling a duel over it. While they're preparing for this duel the (twelve, berserk) brothers drop in on a jarl and Hervor's dad Angantyr declares he's going to marry the jarl's daughter. The unspoken undercurrent is that Hervor's mother didn't have anyone to speak up for her, as the Swedish princess did, and her father also did not defend her from this jarl because he was afraid of the berserk brothers. And then said brothers went off, lost a duel, and Hervor was born only after they all died. So Hervor is this living reminder that the jarl wasn't brave enough to stand up to berserks, not even for his daughter, not even for the few months it would have taken for the berserks to die - he didn't even suggest waiting a year or so to have the wedding. Basically just let the berserks ride in and rape his daughter. And then he gets this grandchild who sullies his honor further by being a highwayman... I'm not saying he's a good man, but he's in an interesting position. And it also puts us in the position of seeing this conflict in Hervor: her grandfather the jarl's ought to be the side of her lineage she can be proud of, but her berserk viking father is the one who actually left a bold legacy.

***Privilege of the Sword, anyone?

†I use this word because I can never predict when my audience will have the right association with the word viking. Viking is a summer job for young men, like camp counselor. It's also illegal and disreputable, when it's done to you/inside your kingdom's borders, but cool and honorable when it's done to foreigners who had it coming and also you get their riches now.

[nimblermortal]

I should have thoughts about the many names of the gods, shapeshifting, gender, and transient identity some time.

[nimblermortal]

It must be so annoying to Norse scholars to add lines like "The fact that the horse on the stone has eight legs supports this interpretation, since Odin’s horse Sleipnir had that shape in the Old Norse traditions." Everyone knows about Sleipnir having eight legs. Why do we have to repeat this in every inscription. Can't we just make like a chemist and reference the periodic table of how Loki's effin' children are built. What is this xkcd 2501 BS.

[nimblermortal]

The Saga of Hervor Getting What She Wants

in verse

(preliminary, I haven't reviewed any of these translations yet)

for the modern-style retelling, click here

Hervor: Wake up, Angantyr!* Hervor wakes you, only daughter of your Svafa. Surrender from your (burial) mound the sharp sword, the one that dwarves forged for Sigrlami.

*Angantyr is her dad

Hervor, Hjorvard, Hrani, Angantyr!* I wake all of you under the tree's roots with helm and armor and sharp sword, shield and harness, and orderly spear.

*these are Angantyr and his brothers

Much they are becoming, Angantyr's sons - mighty harm-willing ones - to mold-reek that none of the sons of Eyfura will speak with me in Munarveg.

Hervor, Hjorvard, Hrani, Angantyr! Let it be for you all as if you mourn with an ant's mound inside your ribs unless you give up the sword which Dwalin forged. It is always/not fitting for ghosts to carry a costly weapon.

Angantyr: Hervor, daughter, what are you saying? You go toward evils full of your own ills. You are becoming frantic and hysterical willfully you wake up dead men.

My father did not dig for me, nor did any of my kinsmen - Those two* have Tyrfing** who lived though only one became its possessor in the end.

*two men fought Angantyr and his eleven brothers; one died, and so did all twelve brothers. Don't feel bad for them, they were berserks and vikings. **magic sword

Hervor: You do not tell the truth - so let the god make you whole in your mound, as you do not have Tyrfing with you. You are loth to grant an inheritance to your only child!

Then the mound opened, and it was as if fires and wildfires were all over the mound.

Angantyr: Hither to the gate to Hel the mound opens all the flowering island trees you see are in the fire. It is savage outside, that you see around you. Go, girl, if you are able, to your ship.

Hervor: Y'all do not burn such balefires at night that I would be afraid of others' fires. The breast in the maid is untrembling at the thought, though she see a ghost standing at the door.

Angantyr: I tell you, Hervor, listen a while longer to be shown, daughter, what will happen. Tyrfing will, if you can believe it, ruin everything for your family, girl!

You will beget a son. He will later have Tyrfing and trust in his strength. Then Heidrek will lead people; he alone will be the most powerful under the sun's tent.

Hervor: I thought myself a manly man until I came to your hall seeking no counsel; give me from your mound that which hates armor, what is dangerous to defense, doom of Hjalmar.*

*of the two who killed Angantyr and his brothers - the one who died

Angantyr: Hjalmar's bane lies under my back everything around him wrapped in fire. I know no girl on the earth overhead who would dare carry that sword in her hand.*

*this may actually be 'who would touch it, since it's covered in fire'. Or not; note that in the Ring cycle, Brunhilde is wrapped in fire using the same terms as here describe the sword

Hervor: I can care for and take in hand that sharp sword; if I could not I do not fear the burning fire. Suddenly I see wildfire overhead.

Angantyr: You are foolish, Hervor, possessing courage, eyes bigger than your stomach you tumble into the fire. I would rather give you the sword from the mound. Young maid, I cannot deny you.

Hervor: You do well, son of vikings, now you give me the sword from the mound; hero, I think it better to have now than if I had all of Norway.

Angantyr: You don't get it - you are wretched of speech, most wicked woman - what you celebrate - you will see, Tyrfing will, if you trust in strength, entirely ruin all of your family, girl!

Hervor: I will go to the gull of the swelling waves (ship). Now the helmsman's maid (me) is in a good mood! I couldn't care less, friend of princes, what my sons deal with later.

Angantyr: You shall own/not* and long enjoy having in hiding Hjalmar's bane. Do not grasp the edges; poison is on both of them, that which is a man's bane, worse than maiming.

*another case where the opposite is the same word :(

Farewell, daughter - in a heartbeat I would give you the life of twelve men if you trust in strength, might, and endurance - all that is good that the sons of Arngrim leave to you.

Hervor: You all stay - I wish to be abroad. Whole in your mound - I want to go from here swiftly. I seemed now to be between worlds; fires burned all around me.

[nimblermortal]

Angantyr, lich: You don't get it, please don't take the sword, it will destroy your entire family! Hervor: I'm in a good mood. Hervor: Don't harsh my vibe Hervor: That sounds like my sons' problem Hervor: Fuck those guys, tbh

[nimblermortal]

He's at it again

Þó munk mitt ok móður hrør fǫður fall fyrst of telja; þat berk út ór orðhofi mærðar timbr máli laufgat.

My rearrangement for syntax (this one was actually pretty straightforward):

Þó mun-ek mitt fǫður ok móður fall hrør fyrst of telja; ek bera þat út ór orðhofi mærðar timbr máli laufgat.

My translation word by word:

Nevertheless prefer-I me father and mother fall corpse first of counting; I bear it out of word-building praise's timber speech [become leafy]

My smoother translation:

Nevertheless I would prefer that father and mother fall to corpses first in the reckoning. I bear* it out of my word-court to make praise's bare timber leafy with my speech.

*the pun with 'bare', as in bare branches**, translates and is doubtless intentional

**or, a verse earlier, naked bloated drowned corpse

[nimblermortal]

Lastalauss, es lifnaði á nǫkkvers nǫkkva bragi; jǫtuns hals undir þjóta náins niðr fyr naustdurum.

My attempt at rearranging for more logical syntax:

Lastalauss, es bragi á nǫkkvers nǫkkva lifnaði; jǫtuns hals þjóta undir náins niðr fyr naustdurum.

My attempt at a literal translation:

Faultless, that Bragi/man to any boat for his life; jotun's neck gushes under the close kinsman at the boathouse door

My attempt at a more accurate translation:

Faultless, that man went toward any raft to save his life; the sea* gushing beneath the close kinsman at the boathouse door/cliffs

*kenning on the creation story about Ymir; if you don't know it, take my word for it that a giant's blood is the sea

Side note, þjóta, to whistle or gush, is very easy to spell ambiguously as flota, to float.

[nimblermortal]

The alternation between present and past tense throughout the Rök text should be seen in this light.

(x)

The alternation between present and past tense should be seen through the light that Old Norse just does this. It's called the historical present and basically just means when people get really excited they switch into the present tense. It's like saying, "Harriet Tubman worked with the Underground Railroad and freed many slaves. But in 1863, get this, she freakin' commandeers a gunboat and leads a mini-armada up the river to torch plantations and free seven hundred slaves in one night."

[nimblermortal]

Instead, these memories are ritual acts of social and religious significance relating to the past, present, and future, that together contribute to the maintenance and renewal of the world (cf. Lincoln 1986

(x)

This feels like it could be revolutionary to someone other than me.

[nimblermortal]

Okay, so background, first I gotta crosspost this from Pillowfort, when someone asked me for "my" medieval Scandinavia rant

The biggest ones currently are about the eruption of that one volcano in El Salvador; the way you can get a sense for when a scribe had a break (or really needed one) from copying their work; and the idea of writing as a public vs private work vis-a-vis runestones.

The first and last being because I have just discovered Neil Price and I am in scholarly love. I am adding him to my harem. Perhaps a step behind Shannon entropy and the marine reservoir effect, which is its own medieval Scandinavia rant.

So let's talk about writing as a public practice, which is drawing on Price's description of literacy in Children of Ash and Elm, the chapter The Performance of Power, around page 193 in my copy, because I have a copy now, because as soon as I returned my library copy I went and asked the bookstore to order one for me.

Price is coming at the subject of literacy as an archaeologist*, and notes that we have found many thousands of runic inscriptions - wait. Back up.

Saga Thing talked some months or years ago about literacy in the viking age, and how we have a lot of runestones, but we don't have books, and this doesn't actually give us an idea of how literate people were. If they were writing on very degradable things like, say, cheese, we would have no idea. Maybe all women signed their cheese! We wouldn't know! And they also noted that one common find in viking** burials is an amulet with the runes "alu," meaning ale. Which, if that ain't the most frat boy thing. And of course it is, because the demographic of vikings was exactly the demographic of frat boys! Young men, upper teens to twenties, from rich families, away from home for the first time, showing off for each other, forming insuperable bonds...

Anyway, so there's one way to look at literacy. Price notes that we have thousands of runic inscriptions, mostly on runestones, mostly as commemorations of the dead BUT in the mid-twentieth century excavations in Bergen and Trondheim, harbor towns, discovered thousands of small wooden slips inscribed with runes that had been preserved in the water. And these were covered in writing about stupid crap. Day-to-day life - shopping lists, dick jokes, "Sigmund owns this sack," apologies for not getting one's chores done... Price concludes "Not everyone was literate, but a lot of people obviously were, perhaps even children."

So now we get a little bit into the realm of speculation. Here is a people with a largely literate populace, who are regularly encountering literate cultures that produce books. They're raiding monasteries from 793! They have seen gospels. So what stops them from writing their own?

Well... it just. Didn't suit their needs. They needed shopping lists and name tags, and big public monuments indicating how rich they are, for the sake of the dearly departed of course. They weren't people who sat down and read, which of course wasn't a thing in Europe for centuries yet - note the history of the novel in Europe and the parallel to the advent of lounging furniture - but relatively-southern Europe at least had a class of people to do it for them. When we're looking at eighth to eleventh century Scandinavia, there aren't monasteries full of monks writing prayerbooks yet.

Because a book is inherently a private thing, which one person reads at a time, even if they read it aloud to a party. A runestone is inherently a public thing, which everyone passing notices and, if they're bored from walking for the past few hours, stops to read. So it's not a big leap from writing in stone with a chisel to writing on paper with a quill, but... there's no cultural reason to do so.

Never mind all of the fascinating ways that writing can happen on a runestone, such that it's notable when there's one written left to right and up to down in a rectangular block of text. (Bro church runestone, my beloved!)

...and I picked this rant because I thought it would probably be shorter.

*he led! the team that re-sexed the Birka warrior!

**which is a profession, not an ethnicity - it's a bit of a summer job for young men, like camp counselor but more violent

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Addendum: The Bro church runestone is my beloved not because I know enough runestones to justify the opinion, but because it's the one I've translated, and I love the way it's written. (I have only read/translated the one, but it would be a fun project. It's #617, so there's enough to keep me busy for a while, but they're usually short. It was also probably chosen for my textbook for being complete and clear.)

Anyway, the picture above shows how it's laid out. There's a curling arch over the top that reads, "Ginnlaug, Holmgeir's daughter, sister of Sigurd and of Gaut and his brothers, had this bridge built and raised this stone for her husband Ozur."

The part that drives me nuts is the loop below that: "Son of Earl Hakon, he was a viking watchman with [gæti]. God help his spirit and soul now." But the fact that it's written in a loop means it starts again the instant it stops: "God help his spirit and soul now, son of Earl Hakon, he was a viking watchman..." So the format in some sense makes it an infinite prayer in a way you can't do with textbook writing.

And maybe you can with graphic design, and certainly runestones are closer to works of art than to books, but. The options this sort of freedom opens up make me a little bit crazy.

Beyond, you know, the general medieval Scandinavia special interest crazy.

[nimblermortal]

All right folks, in the context of Sonnatorrek verses 13-14,

drengr definition

[nimblermortal]

...others would have [the Viking Age] drw to a close with the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on September 25, 1066, when King Harald Hard-Ruler of Norway died leading the charge against the English line, an arrow in his throat.

Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price

Yeah! That's my boy! Drawing the entire Viking Age to a close by himself!

[nimblermortal]

It also appears this [public ritual sacrifice of bulls] was done in the second half of June; these were the summer rituals during the period of summer sunlight.

Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price

The virgin neopagan: Offerings in midwinter to ensure the sun rises again

The chad Icelandic pagan: Offerings in midsummer to make the sun go away

[nimblermortal]

Neil Price: There is Aud the Deep-minded, stranded as a widow in Caithrness on the north Scottish shore, who commissioned her own ship and captained it... Me: Score one for Laxdælasaga! NP: And Flosi Thordarson, who burnt his enemies in their hall... Me: Njal's saga, yes. Interesting choice. NP: Gudrún Osvífsdóttir, widowed four times after a tangled cycle of love, vengeance, and feud... Me: Score two for Laxdælasaga! I am winning! NP: Thorodd the Tribute-Trader, who drowned with his men on a fishing expedition, their bodies never found; every night of the funeral feast, he had his companions walked in to sit by the hearth... Me, nodding: Eyrbyggjasaga NP: And Gunnhild, sorceress-queen of Jorvík, who once perched in a window in the shape of a bird, twittering all night trying to break a poet's concentration Me: Egil's saga, I think? Again, interesting example. I see what you are doing here, trying to alternate male and female personages, but the end result is still me (Laxdælasaga) winning :) NP: Then there's the outlaw anti-hero Grettir Ásmundarson, who fought the terrrible revenant Glam, and always said the only thing that ever frightened him was the sight of the undead man looking up to stare at the moon. Me: It's more complicated than that, but sure. Grettir's saga, obviously.

[nimblermortal]

Neil Price: the incredible violence of this culture Nimbler: mmhm :) Neil Price: the international exchange of dried fish products Nimbler: you sick bastards D: