Thora: Thanks for the offer, but don't trouble yourself because the
Ormurin Langi lyrics have been posted on the internet. I've also posted
it on my own site next to my attempted translation.

LM(lavrans): I'm going to give a long answer to your question.
I don't think an English translation of the entire Ormurin langi ballad
has been published in print.
The authority on which ballads has been translated is the book by
Syndergaard, Larry E., _English Translations of the Scandinavian
Medieval Ballads_. The book lists the following partial translations
but I think these sources are pretty hard to come by:

* "Ormen Långe" (From Swedish tr. of Norwegian tr.,10 st. of 84)
Valborg Kastman; Greta Köhler _Swedish song games; a collection of
games and songs for school, home, and playground use_ pp. 86-88.
* "Viking Ship" (From Swedish tr. of Norwegian tr.,7 st. of 84)
Van Cleve, Cecilia _Folk Dances for Young People_
* "Great Serpent" (36 st. of 85)
John F. West in "Ballad-Dancing in the Faroe Islands", _Co-Scan
Newsletter_, Issue 1 (Winter 1983/4): pp19-21.

I did discover a thread in a Polish forum, where Tyr's short version, a
Norwegian translation, and an attempted English translation were
posted. I can't really give a direct link since this thread was already
offline when I found it, but try a Google search using
keyword "Trygvassonie", then click on the "cached" file to retrieve a
copy.

I've also made my own attempt at translating Tyr's short version
using Young & Clewer's Faroese-English dictionary. The url is at:
http://home.ix.netcom.com/~kyamazak/myth/faroese/ormurin_langi-fe.htm

It probably still contains errors but I haven't got around to go over
it or solicit help from a native speaker. I made corrections to the
line:

>Tambar eitur mín menski bogi,

to read:

>Tambar [*"Stretcher"] hight the manly bow of mine,

Here, Einar is saying that the name of his bow is Tambar. (Tyr's page
on their Ormurin langi video also mentions "The wild readhead is Einar
Tambarskelvir with his bow Tambar" etc. --
http://www.tyr.net/videool.asp?Cmd=9&ID=43)

It is confusing because _eitur_ sounds like the word for "poison" and
the translator on the aforementioned Polish posting got confused on
this as well, but in fact _eitur_ is 3d sing. fro _eita_ "to be called,
to be named" equivalent to Icelandic _heita_. (I made the same error
before when _eitur_ was juxtaposed with Fraenur [= Fafnir the dragon]
in the Regin Smiður ballad).

On a sidenote, if anyone is interested in Japanese _manga_ (the printed
book form of anime cartoons), I've written up a short note on a comic
book artist named Ryo Azumi who specializes in Norse material.
She's even written a whole series with Olaf Tryggvasson as the chief
character. If you follow the links I refer to at the end of my Ormurin
langi page, you'll can connect to the page where you can read several
chapters online for free, and I've supplied an English translation for
the dialogues with the author's consent..

As for all trying to get a translation of all 85 strophes of the
Ormurin langi, I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to taking a crack
at translating it on my own; it's probably best if you can try to con
some Faroese person to do the translation, for example, by posting a
request in the feedback forum at the tjatsi.fo stamp site that carried
the Faroese text.