----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 4:47
PM
Subject: [norse_course] Re: engu játum
vér öðru en þessu er vér höfum áðr ætlat
--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com,
"Patricia"
<originalpatricia@......>
wrote:
> Sael, llama_nom
> obviously I'm
not so well advanced in my studies, of this
fascinating subject, I
missed this, but thankfully you have pointed
it out, and I guess that it
is perhaps the humour of the writer,
making us to smile, the sagas were
after all in many cases meant to
be stories for entertainment, like the
poems and the singing
> Patricia -
>
thank you
Sæl Patricia,
I've got plenty of advancing still
to do myself! Maybe I'm up to
the
Luke-Skywalker-in-Empire-Strikes-Back stage in my Jedi training
of
Norse? I'll think I'm doing alright, then along comes another
Darth Vader of grammatical nastiness...
Anyway, I just noticed
that kings like plural pronouns because there
are a lot of kings in the
sagas. Something else weird: I don't know
if this is a general
rule, but in Helga þáttr Þórissonar, a demonic
messenger even uses a
plural noun when addressing King Óláfr
Tryggvason, _vinir_ literally
"friends", instead of "friend"! (In
their translation Pálsson
& Edwards just say "friend".)
Yes, I think you're right about the
entertainment. Even when they
have a serious subject or a
religious message to get across, there's
often funny stuff along the way
to get our attention, like Loki
turning into a fly to steal Freyja's
necklace. I regularly find
myself with a smirk on my face when
reading Old Norse. It's a very
dry and deadpan humour
mostly. Sometimes there are unintended
laughs due to the different
culture, and the fact that we know more
about some scientific things
(There's a good bit at the end of
Yngvars saga where the author says
that he's rejected certain
annecdotes as unreliable, such as floating
for a month down an
underground river--which strikes us as odd given
that much of the
story he's just told is taken up with giants,
cyclopses, dragons, a
mountain of gold, etc.) But more often than
not I think the saga
writers slyly pretend to be more naive than they
really are, which
makes it even funnier because then the humour seems to
spill out
accidentally. It's all part of their technique of
keeping their own
personality in the background and pretending that the
story is
telling itself.
Some of the nicest stories I think are
the ones where the humour and
sadness collide, and you end up in a
Strange Saga Mood. Very often
the same theme could go either way:
there's lots of stories about
someone being stubborn, just like Auðun,
or ridiculously confinent
in themselves, and sometimes the outcome is
gently amusing, and
sometimes it's the biggest tragedies of them all
(Njáls saga has
examples of both).
Llama
Nom
>
> ----- Original
Message -----
> From: llama_nom
> To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 8:33
PM
> Subject: [norse_course] engu játum vér
öðru en þessu er vér
höfum áðr ætlat
>
>
>
>
> Hello all,
>
> I wonder if anyone can tell me why Auðun
"goes plural" here?
In Old
> Norse,
as in English, I think it's normal for a king to talk
of
> himself as "we", and Auðun very wisely
addresses Harald with
> respectful 2nd person
plural pronouns (yðru, þér), but is it
unusual
> for someone non-royal to call themselves
"we" in front of a
king?
>
> I was
just wondering if this was intended to add to the humour
of an
> already quite fun scene, that poor little
Auðun very
respectfully
> and innocently
talks back to the king, as if his own decisions
carry
> as much weight as whatever the great Harald
might decide--and
the
> fact that the
king good humouredly ignores the affront, or is
rather
> amused by it himself.
>
> Llama Nom
>
>
>
>
>
> A Norse funny farm,
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