Sæll Thomas!
 
Sorry it´s taken me so long to get back to you about the word "hinn" - I've had a particularly crazy week!
 
Well, here goes - to the extent of my limited understanding!  Hinn is a demonstrative pronoun, usually translated as "that" or "the other" in English.  It declines in a very similar way to the suffixed definite article -inn (and may, in fact, be in some way related).
 
To complicate matters, ON also has a free-standing definite article (h)inn.  I think I'm right in saying you always need an adjective qualifying the noun in order to use "(h)inn" as a definite article.  For example,
hinn blindi maðr  -  the blind man
but
maðurinn er blindr  -  the man is blind
You often get this form of the definite article with names, such as Auðr in djúpauðga, Óláfr inn helgi.
 
But this free-standing definite article is not to be confused with the demonstrative pronoun "hinn".  I guess it's just unfortunate for English speakers that the meaning of "hinn" is expressed with a definite article + demonstrative pronoun.  My guess is that your suggestion of translating "the other" with "inn aðri" may be too literal.
 
I hope I've got this right and am not leading you up the garden path!  I'm sure someone will be kind enough to chip in if I am!
 
Bye for now,
Sarah.
----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Lindblom
To: group norse course
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 6:33 PM
Subject: [norse_course] commenting the commented BoðwarR

Thanks for your comments Sarah.

 

I will now go on to the next chapter but after that i´m going on vacation so nothing will  be translated by me for some time.

 If I wanted to say"and fate will decide what happens to the livestock" in Swedish I would probably say something like "och ödet bestämmer vad som skall hända med boskapen”=”and fate decides what will happen to the livestock” in Swedish this sounds like taken from the Bible or something  normally I would say  ”det må nu bli som det blir med boskapen.” which is very hard to translate into English but I think It would roughly mean “whatever may happen with the livestock” ( =I don´t care what happens with it).

I don´t think we have any good expression meaning exactly the same as in Old Norse.

About the rest of the comments I must say that I made a stupid mistake when I thought that rúm means room (or Swedish: rum) without checking it up.

 And I must also confess that I don´t understand the meaning of the word “Hinn” if it means “the other” would it mean the same as ”inn aðri” or something like that?

 

Greeeeeeetings

thomas

 

 

Sarah Bowen <bowensli@...> wrote:

Hi Thomas!

 

You're too hard on yourself!  You got most of it just fine, some bits were tricky so I'll go over those...

 

Böðvarr gengr nú til þess rúms...  "rúm" means seat or place on the bench

 

en ekki vill hann þat skipa sem hinn hafði áðr ... "hinn" here means 'the other' (man) so basically B doesn't want to take the seat that the guy he killed had, presumably because it's not near enough to the high-seat for his liking.

 

Heldr þótti mönnum ódælt við Böðvar ... literally, 'rather it seemed to the men overbearing with B' but Gordon glosses this as a phrase meaning 'to think a person difficult to deal with', which I suppose is not too much of a leap from the literal translation.  I always find phrases difficult because they just don't translate literally.

 

ok er þeim hinn mesti íhugi at honum ... literally, 'and is to them the greatest resentment towards him', so maybe they felt...

 

Böðvarr spyrr Hött hverju þetta sætti ... perhaps if you want to get all the detail in, you could add 'why this was so'

 

ógurligt... maybe 'terrible' or 'terrifying' would be better in the context.

 

I think I would just leave out 'if the king's men try to catch it' as it doesn't seem to be in the original.  But the rest of the meaning is just fine here.

 

fé... perhaps 'property' would be better here.

 

ok banna ek öllum mínum mönnum at ganga í nokkurn háska við dýrit... literally 'and forbid I all my men to go into any danger with the animal'

 

en fé ferr eptir því sem auðnar... ahh! another lovely idiomatic use of language here!  Well, Gordon glosses this as 'as fate decides' so this gives us a literal translation of 'but livestock go after that fate decides'.  And in real English we would say something like ' 'and fate will decide what happens to the livestockor 'the outcome for the livestock'.  How would you say that in Swedish?

 

Hope this is useful!

Bye for now,

Sarah.

Gå före i kön och få din sajt värderad på nolltid med Yahoo! Express

A Norse funny farm, overrun by smart people.

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

To escape from this funny farm try rattling off an e-mail to:

norse_course-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.