Heil Berglaug.

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Berglaug Ásmundardóttir
<berglauga@...> wrote:

> it wouldn't. the vocabulary of the modern day bible is strewn with

words borrowed from other languages, some of those had already been
adopted in old icelandic times, but maybe not old norse times,
depending on when you start differentiating between old norse, norse
and old icelandic. so, how would one deal with those. the syntax is
different.

Yes, there are many loanwords, loanphrases and loanconcepts in the
Icelandic Bible ('ríkisútgáfan'-1989, my Bible ;), as in all Bibles.
You are no doubt right about this. After all, the Bible is a foreign
book, or rather group of books, written by, about or connected to
the Jewish people in some way. Nothing Scandinavian is mentioned ;)

"and it's not always systematically different, you'd need a very
good 'feeling' for old norse to translate the word order and the
expressions correctly.

Very true. And what kind of feeling would Old Norse speakers have
had for Biblical expressions, not to mention us? Probably not much.

"and what about loanwords that existed in old norse but do not any
more? what do you do about those? use them, disregard them?

I suppose we would have to use them, as they were definitely a part
of the real vocaculary through which Christianity was understood. No
one was making up nýyrði systematically in those days ;) Translating
it into pure Old Norse (i.e. no loanwords) would be anachronistic in
the extreme, creating a very false impression of how people actually
thought, I think. Just try to imagine a 12th or 13th century bishop
practising modern málhreinsun, a humourous thought...'Nei, nei, hann
fór til kaupangrs, ekki kaupernam...kaupangrs skalt þú ríta...ok svá
með Steini, ekki Pétri...'

"try to make your text as purely 'norse' as possible? but then
you're not truly using the language as it existed back then.

Exactly ;) Purely norse would be very anachronistic for the Bible,
even if it was normal to use purely norse vocabulary, or nearly so,
in other matters, such as work, buisiness, law, poetry, etc. Truely
speaking, only the pre-christian society would have something close
to a purely norse vocabulary, where no Biblical influence could be
found. This is not difficult to imagine. For instance, thousands of
examples could be given of fixed expressions, wordings, phrases and
the like, in addition to vocabulary, where the Modern Icelandic is
actually based on the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Latin - not just in
the bible, but in other literature and in daily speech. Let us then
create a parallel situation, where folk 800 years in the future try
to make a Biblical translation in 20th century Icelandic without a
surviving Bible: 'Should we make up words for everything? I have a
copy of morgunblaðið from 1978, where Steinn Jónsson says to never
use any foreign words. Should we follow his advice? What about the
honourific pronouns? Would they have used them? I am sure that they
would produce a different text than my 1989 Biblía ;)

"and what spelling would you use? no norseman would ever have
used 'samræmd stafsetning forn', what all the books use now. and you
can't very well use their own spelling, because there is no such
thing?

Right ;) Every munk, clergyman and cleric spelled like he wanted to.
Later, generations of copiers copied and recopied old texts spelling
like they wanted to, whiling speaking a younger tongue. The list of
problems just goes on and on. Ironically, we can actually spell the
language better than they could at any stage. We also understand it
far better, even though we cannot speak it exactly as a native did.
We have the málvísindi, they spoke the tongue. We know where it came
from and how it evolved, they did not. We are certainly able to say
that there was no Bible in Old norse ;)

"so what? and the word forms, while often predictable, are not set
in stone. there are ways of saying things in old norse which you'd
never think of, from having learned it through books and a whole
differnt linguistic background.

Yes.

> ok, think of it like this. do you think a translation i did, an

icelander, of a norwegian book, into english, would be a good
translation? i know english quite well for a foreigner, and
norwegian too. but you wouldn't choose me to translate between the
two, because it would turn out all funky. why? because i may know
both languages, but i view them through the medium of icelandic. the
word order in my head is icelandic, so is my way of thinking. there
are subtle differences of perception and expression between all
languages, no matter how related they are.

Not to mention cultural differences. Translating ancient the ancient
Hebrew tongue and culture into any modern IE tongue makes trying to
translate Norwegian into English seem like talking to your neihbour.

"and yet, i have access to piles of spoken english and norwegian,
and have travelled to where they're spoken, and that's something
you'll never have with old norse.

Nor ancient Hebrew. If researchers spent even 1/100,000 of the time
they spend researching ancient Israel on the archeaology and history
of Scandinavia, we would have a far better understanding than we do.

> and besides, the bible is a bloody big book!

Þykk, stór, erfið, misgömul, umdeild, og fullkomlega útlensk ;)

> so, yes, i suppose you could translate the bible from icelandic

into old norse, but only if you accept the fact that it will not be
accurate, it will never be the old norse the norsemen would have
written or used, so, whatever is the use in deliberately making a
book that is a lie? why would you want to do that, and what possible
use could it have?

This gets to the heart of the matter. There would be no use for an
Old Norse Bible, then or now. It would be culturally inappropriate.
They might not want to admit it, but I bet the church would agree ;)

Kveðja,
Konráð.

> berglaug
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: James R. Johnson
> To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2004 4:40 AM
> Subject: RE: [norse_course] Re: Old Norse Bible
>
>
> I'm simply saying that taking a modern Icelandic Bible and

changing it to Old Norse should be relatively easy (or easier than
Modern English to Old English), since the language hasn't changed
that much in the 800 years since it was spoken, whereas English
speakers couldn't understand the English of 800 years ago.

>
> James
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------

> From: xigung [mailto:xigung@...]
> Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 3:45 PM
> To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [norse_course] Re: Old Norse Bible
>
>
> --- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "James R. Johnson"
> <modean52@...> wrote:
> > Can't we take the modern Icelandic version, change the -ur

endings

> to -r,
> > and nearly have it be ON? Work backwards from what we have?
> >
> > James
> >
> Hi James,
>
> How about changing "you" to "thou"/"thee"
> and you'd have Shakespearian English? Try it
> with your last 10 emails, and see if you think
> it sounds like Shakespeare!
>
> Xigung
>
>
>
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> A Norse funny farm, overrun by smart people.
>
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>
> To escape from this funny farm try rattling off an e-mail to:
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>
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