Hi Xigung
Thanks for your reply. Your analysis is enlightening on a general level, but I have to say, for me, the text still does not provide sufficient evidence that it is the sheep that are being moved to the shieling or that sel here refers the pastures rather than the shed. I guess we'll just have to leave it at that.
With respect to the "ganga undan" issue from another of my messages, I suspect you are right, but I still can't help thinking that a horse being ridden could be visualised as a horse "walking out from underneath a man," just that the horse isn't totally successful because the man remains on its back!
By the way, your computer does weird things to my text. I wonder: does that happen for anyone else, either when you read their messages, or when they read mine? It seems to happen mainly when I have my keyboard set to the Icelandic keyboard.
Alysseann
-----Original Message-----
From: xigung [mailto:xigung@...]
Sent: Friday, 21 November 2003 4:18 AM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [norse_course] Re: Hrafnke/ i sel
Hi Alan,
I used several dictionaries, but basically I recognized the word.
For some people, e.g. Englishmen, the analogous concept may be
familiar from the alpine countries such as Switzerland and Austria.
In French, for example, they speak about a "chalet" -- in fact who
has not, at one time or another tasted the famous "Chalet Suisse"
cheese. The point is that, since ancient times, the farmers
discovered the economic feasibility of keeping the cattle up in
the mountains during the summer months, where good green grass grows
in plentitude all by itself. The milk then has to be transported down
to the valley, where the animals are also kept during the winter
season. But in order to reduce volume as well as weight, the milk has
to be concentrated into various dairy products such as butter and
cheese before being transported to the valley, where the main farm is.
According to Grágás ii.22 the expression is "fara til sels".
In Norway, for example, there is the famous fairy tale of the
three goats that "skulle til seters for á gjøre seg fete".
Note that the genetive is also used in Norwegian in conjunction
with "til", as it is in Icelandic.
Look here for some more dictionary entries:
http://penguin.pearson.swarthmore.edu/~scrist1/scanned_books/png/oi_cleasby=
vigfusson/b0521.png
There is of course the question whether the word refers to a hut
or to the pastures themselves. As a rule there is always a hut there.
But it may often have been rather primitive. In some cases it was but
some boulder of a certain size, under which animals and people could
seek some shelter during rain and storms.
To me it seems that the name "sel" actually refers to the whole
setting, the whole process of keeping the cattle there, with all
the activities that go on. Sel-gres = mountain-pasture-gras.
(in botany "plantago"), sel-hestr= a horse used on the sel.
sel-setr = a mountain shed.
Although you are right that "sel" in modern Norwegian refers to
the house: "II sel n1 (norr sel; smh med I *sal) seterhus med soverom,
kjøken og mjølkerom ",
I thought that the Old Norse word was more
closely approximated by the the Norwegian "sæter" concept:
"seter [sæter] -tra [-tri], -trar [-trer] (norr setr, sætr, smh med
*sitje)
1 beiteområde med hus, sel (på fjellet) der ein har buskapen om
sommaren; støl (I,1) flytte til, på setra / liggje på setra
2 seterhus (med vollen kring); setergrend .seter [sæter] -tra
[-tri], -trar [-trer] (norr setr, sætr, smh med *sitje)".
Zoëga, which must have been the dictionary that I consulted
yesterday (Icelandic) has the entries:
"sel (gen. pl. selja) n. mountain dairy, summer dairy-farm;
hafa à seli keep cattle at a mountain dairy.
selför the keeping of cattle at a sel;
sel-gresi n. narrow-ribbed plaintain.
sel-staða dairy-farming, out-farming;
sel-stúlka dairy-girl."
So, all in all, you may be right that sel may frequently have
been the name for the house. But when you say "taking the
animals to the sel", you are actually referring to the
surrounding pastures, where the animals stay during the
day as well as during the night. [I am not quite sure
what happened during the night while there were still
wolves and bears. Am also uncertain about the extent
to which one used fences. Usually brooks and mountain
ridges formed natural boundaries.]
Here:
http://penguin.pearson.swarthmore.edu/~scrist1/scanned_books/png/oi_cleasby=
vigfusson/b0184.png
for example, you will find foera mentioned twice in connection
with fé: "foera fé til skips" and "foera fé á vetr".
By inference, one may conclude that "foera fé i sel"
would mean 'to drive cattle up to the summer pastures".
--- Alan Thompson wrote:
> May I ask which dictionary you have. I use GT Zoega´s Concise
Dictionary of Old Icelandic, which cites:
>
> sel, n, shed on a mountain pasture (where the milk-cows are kept in
the summer months.
>
> It makes no reference to "Ã sel" referring to the pastures rather
than the shed.
>
> You´re right - the sentence makes no explicit mention of sheep. It
makes no explicit mention of animals at all. That´s my point. If
Einarr is bringing something, it could just as easily be his clothes
(which were mentioned in the previous sentence) but presumably nothing
else, because he only went home to get his clothes.
In the meantime I also looked at the Rafnkell saga text, and now see
that the surronding sentences mention that the animals were sheep.
(in Norway one often kept goats at the sæter)
To me the verb "foera" indicates that he brought animals with
him, since this is equivalent to driving or leading.
(German "führen")
From the quoted sentence it may be clear that Einarr went to fetch
clothes at his own home, i.e. where his own father lived at Hóli:
"Einar fer nú heim eftir klæðum sÃnum og flytur heim á Aðalból. SÃÃ=
°an
var fært à sel fram à Hrafnkelsdal, þar sem heitir á Grjótteigsseli.
After that he went to Aðalból and from there to the sel.
Especially the passive form "var foert" indicates cattle
being "led" up the valley.
An insertion of "fé" might make this more clear:
"SÃðan var [fé] fært à sel fram à Hrafnkelsdal, "
Then the sentence makes more sense to us who are less
used to sentences that lack an explicit subject.
Here, I think, the subject is understood, because
the closely associated ideas of "foera" and "sel" are
already in the sentence, to make an explicit subject
superfluous as it were.
Best
Xigung
>
> Alysseann
> My dictionary says that "àsél" refers to summer pastures.
> If that is correct, then it simply refers to grazing grounds
> at higher elevations that are used for the animals during
> the summer season. I think "foera" here simply means "to move"
> but then moving with all the animals. Where does it say sheep
> btw? The sentence itself does not mention any sheep.
> But the verb "foera" does have a connotation of "leading"
> or "driving" the animals along in a certain direction.
> You can't be absolutely sure that "fram" means to go to
> higher elevations. Especially if it is a long and flat valley,
> that would not be so significant. More important is if you
> are moving with or against the direction in which the river flows.
> Here I think it means "deeper" into the valley, but the dictionary
> says that it can mean both; but that in the West it is usually
> "into" the valley, whereas in the East it often means "out of" the
> valley. Since Iceland is in the West, I think it would mean
> "up the valley".
>
> So I'd say it means "Later they drove the animals up the Hrafnkel's
> valley to the summer pastures."
>
>
>
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