Good evening all
Will you pardon me if I don't submit my translation
this time? I've done it in pen and ink (biro, really) but I find it's a long
mechanical process putting it on computer at a time when I'm in the process of
translating Egil's Saga - I've got half of it
done and it's very exciting.
However, bleary-eyed as I am from just finishing
Chapter 54, It's very refreshing to read other people's Hrafnkels and
their observations on the blue/back dress code. The first reference I came
across to blue being black was second hand. It's mentioned as a foot note
in 'the Long Ships', a novel by Frans G.Bengtsson, translated from the Swedish
by Michael Meyer in 1955, I think. Here it is mentioned that negroes were
referred to by the vikings as 'blue men'.
From my own observations, I've noticed that the
colour of persons with the very blackest of skins and the
hair of some white people which is of the deepest black colour, can
in some circumstances, by a trick of light, appear blue. Whether
this applies to clothes or not, I don't know. Is there anyone in the field of
optics who could shed some light on this?
In the Iliad and other works in AncientGreek, the
word 'glaukos' can be construed as 'grey' or 'blue', so the matter of colour
confusion isn.t restricted to the northern world
Cheers
Jed