This Week's Requests (for 10/02) (Patreon)

My edition and translation of Hávamál in Old Norse and English, The Wanderer's Hávamál, is due out in November. It will also be released on Kindle and other ebook platforms, and the picture here is a sample of what that format will look like. In the printed book, the Old Norse will be on the even-numbered pages and the English translations on facing odd-numbered pages, with Commentary in the back. On Kindle, each stanza will be printed in order, with the Old Norse and then the English, with a link you can click after each stanza to see my comments on that stanza.

If you're interested in coming to my talk and book signing when the new book is published, the event at Boulder Book Store in Boulder, Colorado has been pushed back from November 19th to Monday, December 9th (beginning at 7:30 p.m.). I will also make a video announcement about this closer to that date. In a sense this delay is good news, since apparently my publisher is having a hard time getting enough copies printed to meet demand.

I ought to name it "Crawford's Law" -- Norse myth is very popular, but only people who are interested in it realize it's popular.

This week's videos have included a recording of the Crowdcast with Mathias Nordvig and a look at some of the linguistic criteria used to date Old Norse poems.

As always, thank you for your support, and all the best,

Jackson Crawford

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Things to keep in mind about translation requests:

1. Send them to Stella at admin@jacksonwcrawford.com (remember the "w").

2. I'll respond to them in a weekly post on Wednesdays (or as near to that as I can).

3. Limit one request per month. Limit 18 words at $10 tier; 9 words at lower tiers.

4. This is not a commercial transaction. I reserve the right to refuse requests for any reason. Small translations are done for supporters as a personal favor. No translations for commercial purposes.
5. Please don't ask Stella to "hold" part of a translation for later; just submit it piece by piece.

6. Old Norse is a gendered language. Please specify male, female, or both for any adjectives.

7. Old Norse can't be written in Elder Futhark. Nor can modern names be written in any Futhark.
8. Old Norse is weird. Not everything you can say in a modern language can be translated very well into it. For one thing, it is a very concrete language. There may be no translation for some abstract words or even for unexpected things that speakers of Old Norse simply never conceived of.
 Surprisingly, military terms (even "soldier") are fairly hard to translate because the Norse were fighters but not much on professional, organized warfare.
9. I take no responsibility whatsoever for anything you do with these requests, including anything you or anyone else gets tattooed.

10. I write Old Norse in runes in a more archaic form than I typically write it in the Roman alphabet. This includes e.g. es instead of er for "is," vas instead of var for "was," umb instead of um for the filler word, etc.

—> Casey Calhoun requests "Your mind is a battlefield, be its commander, not its soldier" (f to mixed m/f) in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

There’s a lot here that’s foreign to the Old Norse way of putting things, particularly the organized way of talking about warfare and ranks of professional soldiers (see: https://youtu.be/UssWTGic8Rw ). It seems that the point of the quote is something close to “Be the one giving your mind orders, not the one taking your mind’s orders.” It’s more natural to rephrase this in the language of social status than military rank, but if the military analogy is necessary, the closest you might get to soldier is málamaðr, roughly “a man fighting (for someone else) in exchange for pay.” For “commander” one might use herstjóri “army-director,” which occasionally occurs in old writers.

The closest thing to “mind” is hugr, though it’s rarely analogized to landscapes. With all of this together, maybe the closest acceptable translation to this in Old Norse would be something like:

ᚼᚢᚴᛦ  ᚦᛁᚾ  ᛁᛋ  ᚢᛁᚴᚢᛅᛚᛦ  ᚢᛁᛋᛏᚢ  ᚼᛅᚱᛋᛏᛁᚢᚱᛁ  ᚼᛅᚾᛋ  ᛁᚴᛁ  ᛘᚬᛚᛅᛘᛅᚦᛦ  ᚼᛅᚾᛋ
Hugr þinn es vígvǫllr. Vestu herstjóri hans, eigi málamaðr hans.
Your mind is a battlefield (lit., “battle-field”). Be its commander (lit., “army-director”), not its soldier (lit., “[fighting] pay-man”).

—> Joachim Hansen requests "brotherhood", "integrity", "simplicity"; "en gang kriger alltid kriger"(once a warrior, always a warrior), and "aldri tvile, alltid kjempe"(never doubt, always fight) in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

ᛒᚱᚢᚦᚱᛅᛚᛅᚴ
brǿðralag
brotherhood

ᛏᚢᚴᚦ
dygð
integrity

(There’s never going to be an exact Old Norse equivalent of such an abstract idea, but dygð probably gets close in the sense of the ability to follow through on what one might promise.)

ᛅᛁᚾᚠᛅᛚᛏᛚᛅᛁᚴᛦ
einfaldleikr
simplicity

(Literally, “one-folded-ness,” a term attested in some Christian texts.)

ᛅᚦᚱ  ᛏᚱᛁᚴᛦ  ᛅ  ᛏᚱᛁᚴᛦ
áðr drengr æ drengr
en gang kriger alltid kriger

(“Warrior” really doesn’t exist as a discrete professional term in Old Norse (see: https://youtu.be/UssWTGic8Rw ). I’d propose that the spirit of the term is probably best rendered by Old Norse ‘drengr’ (see: https://youtu.be/p8o1Z_pwi0I ). “One time” (“en gang”) also isn’t used in a past tense way in Old Norse, so I just used “before” (áðr).)

ᛁᚠᛅᚦᚢ  ᛅᛚᛏᚱᛁᚴᛁ  ᛋᛚᛅᚦᚢ  ᛅ
ifaðu aldrigi sláðu æ
aldri tvile alltid kjempe

—> Emil Becker requests: Translation Check: "seieren er min" (Norwegian) as "sigr(inn) er mín" in Old Norse

Sigr is masculine, so you’d want:

sigr(inn) er minn

—> Kyle Braaten requests "Flourishing and Protected by God" (Blomstrende og beskyttet av Gud) and "Hope for all mankind" (Håp til hele menneskeheten) in Old Norse and Younger Futhark (both referring to F subject)

Thanks for the extra context, which helps make this easier on me.

ᛒᛚᚢᛘᚴᚢᚦ  ᛅᚢᚴ  ᚼᛚᛁᚠᚦ  ᛅᚠ  ᚴᚢᚦᛁ
blómguð ok hlífð af Guði
flourishing and protected by God

ᚢᚬᚾ  ᚠᚢᚱᛁᛦ  ᛅᛚᛅ  (  ᛘᛅᚾᛦ  )
ván fyrir alla (menn)
hope for all mankind

The use of a masculine plural adjective for “all” implies that the object is “all (mankind/men),” but the word ‘menn’ (which while grammatically masculine is applicable to men and women) can make it more explicit. I’ve taken to writing ‘menn’ in runes in an archaic, Viking-Age form well-attested in real runic inscriptions: ‘mennr.’

—> Norman Thomas requests "We're no awa tae bide awa" (Scots) in Old Norse and Younger Futhark 

For those unfamiliar with Scots, this would be something like “We’re not going away to stay gone.”

ᚢᛁᛦ  ᛋᚴᚢᛚᚢᛘ  ᛁᚴᛁ  ᚬ  ᛒᚱᛅᚢᛏᚢ  ᛏᛁᛚ  ᚦᛁᛋ  ᛅᛏ  ᛒᛁᚦᛅ  ᚬ  ᛒᚱᛅᚢᛏᚢ
Vér skulum eigi á brautu til þess at bíða á brautu.
We’re no awa tae bide awa.

—> Rebecca Sonta-Rodenbaugh requests ”Crazy Norse" (in the sense of a name or title) in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

I’m not sure this can be made a name or title per se, since neither word is particularly much used in names. There is an adjective for “mad/crazy/possessed,” óðr  ᚢᚦᛦ  masculine,  óð ᚢᚦ feminine,  which of course is in Óðinn’s name.

The Norse rarely talk about “Norse” and even more rarely talk about someone as “Norse.” At best they call a Scandinavian danskr  ᛏᛅᚾᛋᚴᛦ  masculine, dǫnsk  ᛏᛅᚾᛋᚴ feminine (literally “Danish”) to distinguish him from someone from somewhere south of Denmark, and within Scandinavia the term norrǿnn  ᚾᚢᚱᚢᚾ  masculine, norrǿn ᚾᚢᚱᚢᚾ feminine (literally “northern”) is sometimes used to mean Norwegian/Icelandic specifically (especially concerning the language we’d know as Old West Norse or “Classical” Old Norse).

Probably the closest I could get to a name, with all that said, would be a man’s name that would be something like Óðdan  ᚢᚦᛏᛅᚾ  , roughly “crazy-Dane”/“crazy-Scandinavian,” though that name isn’t attested anywhere. But -dan is seen in some names like Hálfdan (literally “half-Dane”).

—> Adam Legatt requests "Each a mighty warrior by himself, but fearsome together." (m) in Old Norse

As I’ve mentioned before (including here: https://youtu.be/UssWTGic8Rw ), Old Norse barely has a word that means “warrior” in the sense that we use it, since few men were professional soldiers but most fought at some point in their lives. I often substitute the word drengr (see: https://youtu.be/p8o1Z_pwi0I ) for this kind of thing, since it has more of the cultural cachet of English “warrior” than an Old Norse word like hermaðr “army-man.” With that in mind, you could get something like:

ᚼᚢᛅᛦ  ᛅᛁᚾ  ᛘᚬᛏᚢᚴᛦ  ᛏᚱᛁᚴᛦ  ᛁᚾ  ᛋᛅᛘᛅᚾ  ᚴᚱᛁᛘᛁᛦ
Hverr einn máttugr drengr, en saman grimmir.
Each a mighty warrior alone/himself, but together fearsome.