I am new to this list myself, and to the study of Old Norse, however, I do
believe that the discussion and corrections brought forward by Eysteinn were
of a linguistic nature and completely relevant for discussion on this board.


I for one, welcomed the comments by Esysteinn, and look forward to gaining
understanding and knowledge of Old Norse from posts of that nature in the
future (Though I did think the critique was harsh in a couple of places).

It also seems to me though that the moderator was addressing the post to the
list by Frank Verhoft who seemed to, at least by my reading of his post, to
wish to address the theological ideas of the book more than the language
aspects.

Just my 2 cents. Hoping to learn more, because right now, I am clearly out
of my league.

Rick

OlafVikingr <http://www.geocities.com/olafvikingr/index.html?985191410306>



-----Original Message-----
From: Eysteinn Bjornsson [mailto:eysteinn@...]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 8:45 AM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [norse_course] Re: Germanic Religious Terms

--- In norse_course@..., Arlie Stephens <arlie@...> wrote:

> The rest of the participants in this discussion should,
> I hope, already be aware of the focus of this list.
>
> Does this book, or the theories expounded in it, have anything
> to do with the study of the Old Norse language?
>
> If not, please take this discussion to a more appropriate
> mailing list.

To the esteemed moderator, and the list:

I am not aware of having discussed the above-mentioned
book, and in fact I had never heard of it until a few days
ago. In fact I haven't discussed *anything* - I simply
responded to a post on the list, because obviously
it contained many errors, which were completely linguistic
and lexicographical in nature. I did this because I am fully
aware that this is a language list, and that there are many
beginners present, who are easily confused by erroneous statements
of the kind found in the post I responded to. It was not my
intention to irritate the moderator. My comments were purely
linguistic, and intended as a warning to beginners against the
dangerous (but far too common) practice of over-interpreting
words in Old Norse poetic texts. These over-interpretations
were posted by Mr Hatton as derived from Green's book, and I
simply took his word for it. Personally I couldn't care less
whose over-interpretations they are. They are simply wrong,
and I pointed this out on the list, so that members might beware.

The moderator is obviously not very happy about this, and
has politely asked me to take my comments and my opinions
to another list. Since I am loath to sow any bad seeds in
the fertile academic soil of this educational newsgroup, I
will of course obey the moderator, who has actually objected
to my presence here before, after which objection I left it.

I think I should, however, point out to the moderator, that
I am on this list, because Haukur, the owner, subscribed me
here himself (after I had left it), and that this is the only
reason I am here in the first place. Haukur is in possession
of both my user name and my password, and can subscribe and
unsubscribe me any time he wishes. I will therefore leave it
to his discretion to decide whether he feels my comments
are improper and unwanted here. If he does, he can unsubscribe
me as easily as he subscribed me in the first place. But of
course I will obey the moderator, and keep my mouth shut in
the future, unless directly addressed, like a good dog. No
"barking in front of the Gnipa-cavern" from me. Mum's the
word, and the moderator's words are my command.

Below, I have reposted my comments on Mr Hatton's post, so
that anyone can decide for themselves if my comments were
irrelevant on a list dedicated to the teaching, learning and
understanding of the Old Norse/Old Icelandic language. I have
added comments [in square brackets] in order to clarify my
original comments to those who may not have read Mr Hatton's
original.

...........................................................

From: "Eysteinn Bjornsson" <eysteinn@...>
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2001 8:27 pm
Subject: Re: Germanic Religious Terms

Just a few observations that popped up as I read through
your page:

"God of Men" does not equal "God of Masculinity".
That is an unwarranted over-interpretaion.

[This refers to the name VERATÝR "God of Men" - I had
pointed out that the word VERR was related to the Latin
"vir", and therefore the English "virile", and Mr
Hatton chose to interpret this wrongly. In fact, the
name VERATÝR holds no implications of masculinity or
virility. It simply means "God of Men", i.e. god of
humans.]

The plural of Áss is Æsir (AEsir).

[Purely linguistic.]

Tívar is used as a term for gods in various places,
e.g. Grímnismál 5, Hymiskviða 4, Haustlöng 1, 3,
Þrymskviða 14, Baldurs draumar 1, Vafþrúðnismál
38, 42, Hávamál 159.

[Purely lexicographical.]

Shy father is, a hope, simply a typo ;-)

[Admittedly a bit of comic relief...]

"Goþ" (sic) is spelled "goð" using normalized orthography.

[Orthographic comment.]

Divinity, yes, - also Deity.

[Semantic - this was about the best English term
to express the meaning of ON "goð".]

I don't think the concept "collective plural" is logical.
The term "collective" is used in ON grammar, when a singular
word is used to refer to a plurality, e.g. eik (sing) "oak",
eikr (pl) "oaks", but eiki (sing collective) "oaks".

[As purely linguistic as humanly possible, although perhaps
not for the beginner. But surely of interest to those who
have advanced slightly beyond the subject-verb-object stage?]

"Uncountable substance" is ridiculous. The word "goð" is
quite an ordinary neuter noun, which simply happens to look
the same in the plural nominative. The word declines
goð-goð-goði-goðs in the singular, goð-goð-goðum-goða
in the plural. There is nothing mysterious about it,
it does not refer to a realm, it always refers to a
"personality". The theological ideas in this paragraph
are far removed from any linguistic reality. Who is this
Green anyway? Sounds like a theosophist to me - shades
of Madame Blavatsky....

[As far as I am concerned this is pure grammar and linguistic
semantics. It is disastrous to inject such theosophical
ideas into ON religious words, and in this case it was done
by means of a terrible misinterpretation of the grammar, i.e.
the completely erroneous idea that there is a mystical
implication to be derived from the fact that a word has the
same form in the singular and the plural (as does GOÐ). Note
also that I obviously had no idea who "Green" is/was, and simply
took Mr Hatton's words to be the truth, i.e. that the ideology
was Green's - simply because it doesn't matter to me whose it
was, as long as it was wrong.]

"The collective Council of the Ásir is itself a Divine
Entity" is a nonsensical statement, at least in terms
of the Old Germanic/Norse pantheon.

[This is simply a continuation of the above-mentioned
misinterpretation, i.e. "singular as plural". See also
the comments on EIKI above. We are still completely
within the realm of grammar/linguistics, and the matter of
correct interpretation of ON words and phrases.]

Although it is an interesting intellectual exercise to
differentiate the various terms, tívar, regin, bönd, etc.
like this, it would be a dangerous mistake to imagine
that the terms were strictly differentiated. It can even
be stated with complete assurance that all these terms were
no more than vague synonyms of each other as used in Old
Icelandic poetry. In many (or most) cases the poet would
simply pick the term that suited the metrical structures
he was working with. Examples:

Bdr 1: Senn vóru æsir ('æsir' alliterates with 'allir')
allir á þingi
...
...
ok um þat réðu ('tívar' fullfils a need for a long
ríkir tívar vowel + a short vowel, and 'æsir'
has already been used ...)

Hvm 159: telja tíva fyrir (alliteration: telja-tíva)

Vþm 38: segðu þat it tíunda (alliteration: tíunda-tíva)
alls þú tíva rök

Vþm 42: segðu þat it tólfta (alliteration: tólfta-tíva)
hví þú tíva rök

Grm 4: unz um rjúfask regin (alliteration: rjúfask-regin)

Grm 5: tívar at tannfé (alliteration: tívar-tannfé)

There are dozen, if not hundreds of such examples.

[I spent considerable time locating these examples, thinking
they would be most instructional to the members who are
studying my native language in order to be able to better
understand Eddaic poetry and prose. The moderator clearly
does not belong to this group, and will have no such
"discussions" on "her" list. I can only grovel, and beg
everybody's pardon for subjecting them to this gibberish.
Does anybody know about another list where people are
interested in such material, where I won't be disturbing
the rest of the members' learned on-topic discussions about
Old Norse computer programming?]

Kveðja
Eysteinn

[Hinzta kveðja
Eysteinn]





Sumir hafa kvæði...
...aðrir spakmæli.

- Keth

Homepage: http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/

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