This Week's Requests (05/15) (Patreon)

It looks like I've been forgetting to post here about what videos have been going up for the past few weeks, so I'll try to make up for that now. Since April 24th, I've talked about how very few people would have been professional soldiers in the Viking world (but almost all men would have had combat experience), Óðinn's horse Sleipnir and the Vanir gods' boar Gullinbursti, the word "berserkr," the Old Norse vocabulary for describing human beauty, getting into the top ten audiobooks on Audible, and how runes were an alphabet of letters representing sounds rather than a set of icons representing concepts. In the last connection, today I posted an interview with Ph.D. Candidate Scott Shell at UC Berkeley about his dissertation research into runes and magic. Scott was once my student at Berkeley, and now brings a different perspective and background to runes than I do.

Tomorrow my brother will get here from Arizona, and then he and I will take a road trip that will probably keep me from looking at the computer much for a week and a half or more. I'll still aim next Wednesday to get to any translation requests you send Stella before Tuesday, but I can't absolutely promise that this post will happen on time next week and I appreciate your patience if not. 

When making translation requests, keep in mind the tips I made in this video, and please respect the once-a-month limit and the word limits in the description of your tier on Patreon. This kind of translation is a much more time-consuming and intensive process than most people imagine, which is why I charge a lot more to do it for the movie companies etc. Also please keep in mind that writing words and names in any language other than Old Norse in Younger Futhark is virtually impossible. I've used this example before but, for instance, Old Norse has no “sh-/sch-“sound, and it’s impossible to know what that sound would have sounded like to an Old Norse speaker or  how they might have written it in runes. Nor is there an equivalent rune  to the letter /c/, with its many possible meanings depending on context (or vice versa with the many runes that can represent multiple sounds).

The photo in this post is from a previous trip I made to Arizona. From beautiful Colorado or somewhere in the general Mountain-States vicinity, rest assured that I'm wishing you all the best while I'm on the road for a little while.

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—> Joe Walker requests "Goonies never say die" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark (If 'Goonies' is untranslatable, 'never say die' is fine).

You’re right to anticipate that I have no idea how to translate “goonies,” but there are two things you could do with “never say die.” If you’re using it descriptively, “(goonies/ certain men) never say die,” I’d do this:

ᛅᛚᛏᚱᛁᚴᛁ  ᛋᛅᚴᛁᛅ  ᛏᛅᚢᛁᛅ
aldrigi segja deyja
never say die

But if it’s more like an exhortation or encouragement to someone (“Don’t give up, (Walt)!”) I’d do this:

ᛅᛚᛏᚱᛁᚴᛁ  ᛋᛅᚴᚦᚢ  ᛏᛅᚢᛁᛅ
aldrigi segðu deyja
never say die

—> Anders Torgersen requests "One fast goat" or "One powerful goat" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark.

Old Norse uses distinct vocabulary for male vs. female goats:

ᛅᛁᚾ  ᚠᛚᛁᚢᛏᛦ  ᚼᛅᚠᛦ  / ᛅᛁᚾ  ᚠᛚᛁᚢᛏ  ᚴᛅᛁᛏ
einn fljótr hafr ♂ / ein fljót geit  ♀
one fast goat

ᛅᛁᚾ  ᛘᚬᛏᚢᚴᛦ   ᚼᛅᚠᛦ  /  ᛅᛁᚾ  ᛘᚬᛏᚢᚴ  ᚴᛅᛁᛏ
einn máttugr hafr ♂ / ein máttug geit  ♀
one powerful goat

—> Jeffrey Shepherd requests “That will stonner you” in Old Norse and Younger Futhark (with “stonner” apparently being an old family expression for something that intoxicates a person)

Probably the closest thing to the sense of “stonner” in this phrase in Old Norse would be “ginna.” This root also forms the noun “ginning,” so that you could call the main part of the Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, “The Stonnering of Gylfi” (which if anything gives more of the authentic sense of that word than the usual translations like “The Delusion of Gylfi”).

“Stonner” sounds vaguely familiar to me. I wonder if it’s from “astonish”?

ᚦᛅᛏ  ᛘᚢᚾ  ᚴᛁᚾᛅ  ᚦᛁᚴ
þat mun ginna þik
that will stonner you

—> Celine Butler requests "fire and blood" and "winter is coming" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

ᛅᛚᛏᛦ  ᛅᚢᚴ  ᛒᛚᚢᚦ
eldr ok blóð
fire and blood

ᚢᛁᛏᚱ  ᚴᚢᛘᛦ
vetr kømr
winter is coming

Note that there is no equivalent to the progressive tense of English or Modern Icelandic in Old Norse (phrases like “is coming”); Old Norse just says the equivalent of “winter comes.”

—> Daniel Schaefer requests "Where is your spirit?," "Strong legs!" and "Let's go!" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark (for weight training, could be to a man or a woman)

ᚼᚢᛅᚱ  ᛁᛋ  ᚼᚢᚴᛦ  ᚦᛁᚾ
Hvar es hugr þinn?
Where is your spirit?

(“Spirit” is a notoriously hard word to translate in Old Norse since the idea of a soul separate from the body is not particularly Norse; I prefer “hugr” when translating this since it is used for the “heart/mind” but also metaphorically as “courage” in a similar way to how English “spirit” is used here.)

ᛋᛏᛅᚱᚴᛁᛦ  ᛚᛅᚴᛁᛦ
Sterkir leggir!
Strong legs!

ᚠᛅᚱᚢᛘ  ᚢᛁᛏ
Fǫrum vit!
Let’s go!

(In the latter case, I’m assuming a trainer talking to another person so I’m using the forms that are applicable to two people rather than one or three. All of these phrases are equally applicable to men or women.)