I was reading Karlamagnús saga and I find its mediaeval
depiction of muslims rather amusing. Here is an example;
part of a conversation between the muslim king Aguland
and the Christian emperor Charlemagne, followed by my
translation of the same.
Agulandus segir þá: "Mjök er þat óverðugt,
at vár lönd liggi undir valdi yðvarra þjóða,
því at vér höfum miklu mætari lög en þér. Vér
dýrkum hinn máttuga Maúmet, guðs sendiboða,
ok hans boðorð höldum vér, ok þar með höfum
vér almáttig guð, þau er oss sýna með boði
Maúmets óorðna hluti. Þau dýrkum vér og tignum,
ok af þeim höfum vér líf ok ríki, ok ef þú
sér þau, mundi þér mikit um finnask."
Karlamagnús svarar þá: "Sennilega villisk
þú, Agulande, í þessari þinni trú, því at
vér höldum guðs boðorð, en þér haldið lygilegan
átrúnað. Vér trúm á einn guð, föður, son ok
heilagan anda, en þér trúið á djöful þann,
er byggir í skurðgoðum yðrum. ... "
Aguland then says: "That is very much
unworthy that our lands should lie under
the power of your nations, for we have
much worthier laws than you. We worship
the mighty Mohammed, God's messenger, and
his commandments we keep, and thereto we
have almighty gods, those that show us
things that are to happen. We worship them
and honor them, and from them we have life
and power, and if you see them you will
think much of them."
Charlemagne then replies: "Truly you
are in error, Aguland, in this faith
of yours, for we hold God's commandments,
but you have a false belief. We have faith
in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
but you have faith in the devil that lives
in your idols. ... "
An interesting grammatical point is that the
saga consistantly uses latin declensions for
names with latin endings. Thus the name of
Aguland appears as:
The nominative and vocative occur in the extract above.
Since there isn't an exact match between the Icelandic
and latin case systems it is sometimes difficult to determine
which case should be used. For example the author uses
the latin name of Spain, declined thus:
nominative Hispania
accusative Hispaniam
dative Hispaniae
ablative Hispania
genitive Hispaniae
But what happens when someone goes "to Spain"?
The Icelandic preposition 'til' governs genitive
but the appropriate latin preposition 'ad' takes
the accusative. Apparantly the latter was more important
for the author, the form that occurs is "til Hispaniam".