William wrote :

>"God of Ships" based upon the mistranslation of that verse,

If any one has rendered it as "god" of ships, then that is incorrect,
because it says "valdr" or "valdi" which is not the same as "god".

>where Hymir is called "the owner of ships".

That is one of the theories, which I myself happen to support.
But such questions do not always have a single answer that it
is possible to prove with 100 % certainty. First you could try
to see if all Icelanders who have published on this are of a single
opinion. If it should turn out that even the Icelanders are
not of a single mind regarding this or a similar questions,
then it becomes problematic to say that the question has a single
correct answer that is traceable.

>A check of Icelandic scholarship showed that they took the phrase as
>referring to Hymir, not to Thor.

A lot of Icelanders have written about Hymiskvida.
How many did you check? I think you mentioned two : Olafur Briem and Gisli
Sigurdsson.

>In other words, the Icelandic and the English scholarship was 180 degrees
>apart on the
>interpretation of this verse.

I wonder if it is at all possible to talk about "English scholarships"
these days.
In fact, scholarship is becoming more and more international, and I believe that
scholars study publications that originate in a number of countries without
paying
much attention to what the nationality of the author is. The only thing
that counts
is the quality of the quoted arguments.

>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.

What you also have to take into account is that there is a fuzzy dividing
line between scholarly and literary work. Thus, the fact that somebody of
a given nationality has published a translation of one or more Edda poems,
does not automatically imply that the work is "scholarly". One example is
Suzanne Brøgger, who a couple of years ago published a translation of
Voluspå. But Brøgger is mainly known as an author, and most likely does
not belong to that illustrious crowd of "Old Norse scholars", who are known
from their publications in the scholarly journals. That does of course not
mean that a poet may not sometimes hit a truth. Nevertheless some
differentiation
is needed between the two when it comes to the methods used to arrive at
conclusions.

>
>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.

I looked a little more closely at this question. And it turns out
that there are two "schools" of thought regarding this passage.
When Eysteinn mentioned it, I went and did my own translation of
the passage, and I came out with the exact same interpretation as
Eysteinn. But when I looked at the many research articles that have
been published about it, I must say I became a bit amazed. It turns out
then, that the fact that two kinds of interpretations are published,
is not random, but bases itself upon two "schools" of thought regarding
how the passage is to be read. And both schools turn out to have their
arguments that point out problems with either reading.

As I see it, there are two ways to read the phrase "i gjennom" (="through"
in English and "durch" in German. In French it is "à travers"). One way
to read it, is as describing a vertical motion; the other way to read it
is as description of a horizontal motion. The problem is that we do not
have a clear picture of how such halls were constructed. What is, for example,
the exact meaning of the word "golf" (n.) in general as well as in the given
context. And is a "golf" a hard stamped earthen floor, or is it a floor
in the modern sense, i.e. covered with planks.

>It's unfortunate, but the English translations of the
>Elder Edda are full of these types of mistranslations.

The point is that "correct" is in many cases a matter of opinion.
Hence it is in many cases not legitimate to call it "mistranslation".
That is too easy. But I agree that when Larrington says that Thor
"rolled" the cauldron down through the isle of the hall, then that
certainly is "poetic licence". But what you also have to remember
is that many such translations do not pretend to be literal translations,
but rather restatements with some poetic licence.

>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.

Obviously translating all of the Elder Edda is not a small task.
But in principle each word and each suffix has to be analyzed and
seen in its correct context. Do you know of any Icelanders who have
published English translations ?

Keth





P.S. An example of a word that can have two meanings is "salr" (m.)
1. A big house with one big room, used for both cooking as well as
sleeping, a hall.
2. earth, land. Volospa 4: "salar steinar".