There are several words for Death, Elizabeth,
Bani - this seems to bear a relationship with the O/E word - bane, I believe it has been used as recently as in Mallory - he met his bane.
Dauði with a further entry of Dauða-dagr (death day), Death blow is translated as banahogg.
Another for death is Fjorlag which is usually spelt in books as an o with a little tail, on Norse course our machines seem not to have the facility for putting little tails on o's so we most likely use Fjørlag.
What I feel you may have in mind could be classed as a Kenning, a bardic or poetical term , I will see what I can find for you
Patricia
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 8:38 AM
Subject: [norse_course] help with translation?

Hello everyone,

I'm a beginning student of Old Norse. I'm wondering if there's a Norse word that
has roughly the same semantic domain as English "end", in the sense of "death".
That is, an indirect word for "death" that might also be used for other kinds
of finishing/completion/stopping, eg., the "end" of a story.

Does the ON word for "end" have the same connotations as the English one? If
not, can anyone tell me which ON word might be the closest translation of
English "end", (as in, "so he met his end"?)

Thanks! :)

-elizabeth


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Elizabeth Shipley
Linguistics, UCSB