----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 8:11
PM
Subject: [norse_course] Bodvar Bjarki
lines 8-20
Sæl Daniel, Jed, Laurel, Simon, Thomas and anyone
else who wants to join in!
Simon asked for some background information on
the tale, so here's some info taken from the introduction to Byock's
translation...
It is one of the major Scandinavian legendary
tales and belongs to the mythic-heroic sagas known as fornaldar sagas.
These tell of events which are supposed to have occurred long before the
settlement of Iceland.
Hrolf's saga was written in the 14th century and
is similar to the English poem Beowulf. Both draw on a common tradition
of storytelling, recounting events that are supposed to taken place in the 5th
or 6th century in Denmark. Both Beowulf and Hrolf's saga provides
information about a powerful champion (Beowulf and Bodvar) whose bearlike
character may reflect the distant memory of early cultic
practices.
If you want to know how Bodvar came to be known
as Bjarki, you'll have to read the first 23 chapters of the
saga!!!
Anyway, here are lines 8-20 from Gordon's reader
in the attachment.
Have fun!
Sarah.
Sarah
Could I be designated as one of the group who
will submit translations which are 'looser' without becoming completely
detached from the literal. So in this context I would translate 'thangat' as
'over to it' as we know that 'thangat' is where the pile of bones
is.
Here goes;
Bothvar went over to it and asked who was inside
the pile of bones. Then - and somewhat timidly - he got his answer. 'I am
Hott, good sir,' 'Why are you here', said Bothvar, 'and what are you
doing?' 'I am making myself a shelter, good sir'. Bothvar said, 'You're in a
sorry state with your shelter!' Bothvar grabbed him and yanked him up
out of the bone-heap. Hott yelled out ' Now you want to kill me! I make
this thing so that I have it well-prepared beforehand and
now you have broken my shelter apart and I had it built
so high around me that it protected me well
against all your smacks so that not a wallop has got to me for a long
time, but it still wasn't as well set up as I thought it it should have
been.'
A
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