This Week's Requests (for 10/16) (Patreon)

(photo of Red Rocks Amphitheater from jacobs.com)

I'm sure some of you are heading to Wardruna's only U.S. show this year, here in Colorado at Red Rocks Amphitheater. I almost certainly have too much work to do to go, though Einar Selvik kindly said there's a seat held for me anyway. I guess that's what the kids call a humblebrag.

This week in videos, I've talked about why some Scandinavian last names end in -son and some in -sen (the Andersen vs. Anderson question) and taken a deep dive into the story of Óðinn hanging himself. I also rose to the occasion and suggested the name of Fjǫrgyn, Thór's mother, as the name of one of Saturn's newly discovered moons.

Below are this week's requests, as delivered to Stella at admin@jacksonwcrawford.com by Tuesday of this week.

Thank you all for your support this week, and for now, all the best,

Jackson Crawford

*

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 (like "soul").
 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.

 —> Christopher Grabarkiewctz requests "Ottar, the mountain champion/hero" using "Ottar Fjall Kappi," "Heiðr, the woman of the forest-land" using "Heiðr Skogr Landi Kona," "So be it" or "It is so" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

ᚢᛏᛅᚱ  ᚠᛁᛅᛚᛅᚴᛅᛒᛁ
Óttarr fjallakappi
Óttar, mountain-champion

ᚼᛅᛁᚦᛦ  ᛋᚴᚢᚴᛅᛦᛚᛅᛏᛋ  ᚴᚢᚾᛅ
Heiðr skógarlands kona
Heiðr, woman of forest-land

(Skógarland isn’t an attested compound but seems the most natural way of using the pieces you request.)

ᛋᚢᛅ  ᛁᛋ  ᚦᛅᛏ
Svá es þat.
It is so.

—> Christopher Villamil requests "Axe of General Respect" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

ᚢᚴᛋ  ᛅᛚᛘᛅᚾᛚᛁᚴᛦᛅᛦ  ᚢᛁᚱᚦᛁᚴᛅᛦ
øx almennligrar virðingar
axe of general respect

(I’m assuming “general” here means something like “common, widespread,” so I’m translating it with an adjective that means that—almennligrar).

—> John Cottle requests a translation Check: "Einn ýtrster hestr leggja á eista, varnaðr Minnesota, hann, fimbul-vetr karl, koma at fimm mánaðr —heðan af. Jón Kyrðil" (“One last kick in the nuts before warning Minnesota that he (Old Man Winter) will be back in 5 months”. John Cottle-- Literally: One last time the stallion kicks the testicles, warning Minnesota, he, monster winter old man, comes back in 5 months, hence forth.)

I would probably do this as follows:

Í síðasta sinn (“one last time;” it’s more natural to put “last” on the frequency of occurrence than on the action in Old Norse)

spyrnir hestrinn fótum í eistu (the most natural way to say this in Old Norse, literally, “the stallion kicks with his feet into the [body part]”)

ok svá varar hann Minnesota at hann, Fimbulvetrarkarl, kemr aptr at fimm mánuðum liðnum. 

(The last part is literally, “And so he warns Minnesota that he, old man of the Fimbulvetr, comes back at the end of five months.” Remember that there is no Old Norse equivalent to the use of English present participles in “-ing”—like “warning” here—so anything like that has to be rephrased).

—> Lars Sparby requests "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration." in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

Something about this famous line seems poetic, so I’ll use fairly poetic language and write it in lines.

ᛁᚴ  ᛋᚴᛅᛚᛅ  ᚢᛏᛅᛋᚴ
Ek skal-a óttask.
I must not fear.

(Here I’m using the poetic negative suffix -a. Note that “skal” is related to English “shall” but usually close to English “must” in use.)

ᚢᛏᛁ  ᛁᛋ  ᚼᚢᚴᛅᛦᛒᛅᚾᛁ
Ótti es hugarbani.
Fear is mind’s-killer.

ᚢᛏᛁ  ᛁᛋ  ᛋᛅ  ᛚᛁᛏᛚᛁ  ᛒᛅᚾᛁ
Ótti es sá litli bani . . .
Fear is the little killer . . .

ᛁᛋ  ᚢᛁᚱᚦᛦ  ᛘᛅᚾᛁ  ᛅᛏ  ᛅᛚᛏᚱᛚᛅᚴᛁ
es verðr manni at aldrlagi.
which leads “one” to [his] annihilation [“laying-down of time”]

(This is the slightly hard part. No Old Norse word quite means “obliteration, annihilation” in the sense of the destruction of everything, so here I’ve used manni (the dative of maðr, “person/man”), which Old Norse uses like English uses “one,” to indicate that it can bring destruction to anyone.)