This Week's Requests (for 11/13) (Patreon)

This batch of requests was a lot easier on my time and wrists than the last one, happy to say. And now I'm coming up on an intense week. Not only are there a lot of decisions to make at job #1, but my Grandma's funeral is Saturday (nearly a month after she died, but that's thanks to bitter family infighting) and I'm the officiant. Then, all the copies of The Wanderer's Hávamál are bound as of today, and will almost certainly be shipping by the current official release date (Wednesday, November 20th). And of course, Frozen 2 is coming Friday, November 22nd.

Only one more video has been posted since my last update on here, covering Hávamál stanzas 104-120. For as much work goes into those videos, I still think they're criminally underwatched.

Below are this week's requests, as delivered to Stella at admin@jacksonwcrawford.com by Tuesday of this week at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Mountain Time or earlier. As of November 26, 2019 at 9:00 a.m. US Mountain time, we will discontinue taking translation requests.

By the way, I do intend to keep up a weekly update after the end of translation requests, and I'm hoping to include some deeper dives about the meaning of words in them, a little like I sometimes do in response to the translation requests (and more detailed than you usually get it in the "word of the day" lens, when I'm near enough internet at the end of a day to post one of those).

Thank you all for your support this week, and for now, 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 (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 tend to 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.

—>Jenn Bailey requests "comfort", "joy", "security/safety"(like the feeling of), "love", "beloved" (or term of endearment between man and woman), "husband," "wife" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

ᛒᛅᛁᚾᛅᛒᚢᛏ
beinabót
comfort
—Hard to find an exact parallel, but this is probably close.

ᚴᛚᛅᚦᛁ
gleði
joy

ᛚᛁᛘᛅᚴᚱᛁᚦ
limagrið
security/safety
—Literally “peace for one’s limbs(!)”

ᚬᛋᛏ
ást
love

ᚬᛋᛏ
ást
beloved (as in term of endearment)
—Since “love” is itself the term of endearment I’m most familiar with in Old Norse and Icelandic, I’d just go with that. Of course “love” can be a term of endearment in English too.

ᛅᛁᚴᛁᚾᛘᛅᚦᛦ
eiginmaðr
husband

—Literally “(one’s) own man,” since mostly the word for husband is just “man” (maðr).

ᛅᛁᚴᛁᚾᚴᚢᚾᛅ
eiginkona
wife
—Literally “(one’s) own woman,” since mostly the word for wife is just “woman” (kona).

—> Ember Cooke requests "Well of Tears" (done similarly to Mímisbrunnr) in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

ᛏᛅᚱᛅᛒᚱᚢᚾᛦ
tárabrunnr
well of tears

—> Lars Sparby requests "elsk din skjebne" in Old Norse and Younger Futhark (Norwegian, from "Amor Fati" by André Bjerke)

ᚢᚾ ᚢᛦᛚᛅᚴᚢᛘ ᚦᛁᚾᚢᛘ
Unn ørlǫgum þínum.
Elsk din skjebne.

—> Clayton Schock requests "It’s best not to know your fate beforehand; you’ll live happier if you don’t." in Old Norse and Younger Futhark (the latter half of Hávamál 56 — if there is a difference between the "you" referring to a male or a female.)

Here is the last half of stanza Hávamál 56 as it appears in The Wanderer’s Hávamál:

Ørlǫg sín
viti engi maðr fyrir;
þeim er sorgalausastr sefi.

As I explain at length in the introduction to that book, Old Norse usually has advice given in the third person, whereas English usually puts it in the second person. Because of that, I often translate in the second person what’s literally in the third person in the original. In this case, the most literal possible translation I can give you of the original is this: 

Let no person know (viti engi maðr) his/her fate (sín ørlǫg) beforehand (fyrir); in that one (þeim) is (er) the least sorrowful (sorgalausastr) mind (sefi).

If you want it to apply to either a man or a woman, I’d leave it as is, since maðr is grammatically masculine but functionally neutral. If you want it to specifically be for a woman, you could try just changing maðr to kona. Some meter purists might argue against it, but you could use a monosyllabic word for woman and turn the whole second line into viti ekki man fyrir to avoid that problem (the Old Norse word man, ironically, means “girl”).

The runes for the original wording are here https://youtu.be/mzSimbUpyDA and the runes for the changed words would be:

ᚴᚢᚾᛅ
kona
woman

ᚢᛁᛏᛁ ᛁᚴᛁ ᛘᛅᚾ ᚠᚢᚱᛁᛦ
viti ekki man fyrir
Let no girl/woman know beforehand

—> Richard requests "Raven(Hrafn), "Hugin's Nest", "Staff", "Dragon/Dreki", "It is the mind itself that leads the mind astray." in Old Norse and Younger Futhark

ᚼᚱᛅᚠᚾ
hrafn
raven

ᛚᛅᚢᛒᛦ ᚼᚢᚴᛁᚾᛋ
laupr Hugins
Huginn’s nest
—Old Norse (and Modern Icelandic) might be the only languages in the world with a single word for “raven’s nest” (as opposed to any other bird’s nest), laupr.

ᛋᛏᛅᚠᛦ
stafr
staff

ᚢᚱᛘᛦ
ormr
dragon
—Dreki is a pretty late word.

ᚦᛅᛏᛋ ᚼᚢᚴᛦ ᛋᛁᛅᛚᚠᛦ ᛋᛅ ᛁᛋ ᚢᛁᛚᛁᛦ ᚼᚢᚴ
Þat’s hugr sjálfr sá es villir hug.
It is the mind itself that leads the mind astray.