Hi Scott,
The version at Netútgáfan [ www.snerpa.is/ net/forn/ hervar.htm ] is the
one that scholars call R. It comes from the early 15th century vellum
Gl.kgl.sml. 2845, 4to, in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. At least
according to what I've read, it's the version thought to be closest to
the original in most ways because of its simpler and more traditional
style, even though the H version is recorded earlier, in Hauksbók
(early 14th century).
> Wisðit (can't recall the
appropriate spelling)
Wídsíð, Wídsíþ, or modernised "Widsith". Old English 'wíd' "wide",
síþ "journey; experience", cf. ON sinni, n. "journey, fellowship", ON
sinna "to travel".
Is it okay if I wade in with some comments on your translation?
> Þessi konungr hafði eignast sverð þat af dvergum,
> This king had owned a sword of the dwarves
hafði eignazk (eignast) "had acquired/obtained [from dwarves]".
('eiga' on its own does mean "have, own", but the middle voice ending
give it a sense of taking possession of.)
Have you read this particular version of the saga in ON? This was the first time that I really pursued an ON text of this length, and I found that I had some inaccurate expectations. To some extent, of course, this is a result of the author not always using perfect grammar. Some of the inconsistency between the precise linguistic construction in the language lessons and the text thjat I observed appear
to be the function of fairly prevalent conventions. For instance, singular present third person form of vera, er, is frequently employed at the beginning of sentences in disagreement with the tense and number of the rest of the sentence, so that directly translated would appear "the berserkers is went onto the shore". After a while, I started reading it as a convention that is understood as "it is the case that" and therefore insensitive to the tense and number of the rest of the sentence, as in "it is the case that the berserkers went onto the shore". I have seen this in other texts.
The use of relfexive/middle voice forms of verbs in this text really did not correspond very strongly to their usage described in the language tutorials they had become familiar to me in. I don't know if this is unique to the text or a commonality. It was often used in a manner that showed essentially no distinction from an active form of a verb.
sverð þat...er
Tyrfingr hét "that sword...which was called Tyrfingr",
"the sword called Tyrfingr"
> er Tyrfingr hét ok allra var bitrast,
> that was called Tyrfing and was of all swords the most biting
i.e. "the sharpest"
> ok hvert sinn, er því var brugðit, þá lýsti af svá sem af sólargeisla.
> and on occasion in which it was drawn, then it shone such as the
sun's rays.
hvert sinn "every time/occasion"
sólargeisla. Dative singular of 'sólargeisli' "sunbeam". The plural
is 'sólargeislum' .
I really love this passage, and spent a fair amount of time on it. Its structure makes it very difficult to translate; I considered "then light shone from it such as from a ray of sun", "then it shone with such light as from a ray of sun" even though light isn't mentioned. "then shone from such as from a sunbeam" seems like the perfectly literal translation.
því var brugðit. Not a correction; I just thought I'd
point out the
interesting (and from an English point of view bizarre) grammar.
Verbs which, in the active, take a dative or a genitive direct object,
have their subject in these cases when they're made passive, thus
'því' "it" = the sword. Only accusative direct objects become
nominative subjects in the passive.
This is generally the case with all translation, but there is always some degree of a subjective element in terms of to what extent text should be rendered literally and to what extent it should be construed as a composition that sounds natural in the language in which it is being translated. I find myself constantly stating things in terms that are far from directly equivalent to the text. I have seen versions of the Eddic poems that I thought deviated to far too great an extent from anything like a direct equivalent.
Llama Nom