Hej Keth,

>If an adage conforming to William's suggestion goes somewhat like this: "

There is no correct Edda translation outside Iceland "

This adage does not conform to what I was suggesting at all. Allow me to
clarify. My suggestion was that certain scholars have built theories on
passages that upon inspection are found to be mistranslations. In the case
of Hymirskvida 19, it has become fashionable of late to call Thor a "God of
Ships" based upon the mistranslation of that verse, where Hymir is called
"the owner of ships". A check of Icelandic scholarship showed that they
took the phrase as referring to Hymir, not to Thor. In other words, the
Icelandic and the English scholarship was 180 degrees apart on the
interpretation of this verse. Upon investigation, it became apparent that
all of the published English translations of this poem for 200 years got it
wrong, giving English language scholars free reign to build theories on it.


That is not the same as saying there is no "correct" translation of the
Edda outside of Iceland. Eysteinn subsequently showed that no two English
translations of Hymirskvida 34 were alike, and that all missed the intent
in Icelandic which was that when Thor lifted the cauldron, his feet sunk
through the floor. It's unfortunate, but the English translations of the
Elder Edda are full of these types of mistranslations. Thus my suggestion
that before one accepts a theory based on a single passage, he or she
checks the translation carefully before accepting the validity of the
theory. It's a simple warning, against those who would say that if 6
translations agree on something they must therefore be correct, not
realizing that scholarship often simply repeats mistakes of the past
without ever checking the validity of the translation.

Wassail, William


"The art of poetry is implication"
Cecil Wood, Germanic Review v. 33, no. 4, Dec. 1958.