--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Haukur Þorgeirsson
<haukurth@...> wrote:

> To me this means something like "utterly wretched". I don't think it

really means "evil" as much as "incompetent" or "a human of low-
quality" in general.

> H: Hvað þýðir fyrir þér: "honum var allt illa gefið"?
> A: "Hann var engum mannkostum búinn."

Right, and that parliamentary quote was pretty explicit that it didn't
mean a malign bill, just a badly worded one. So where's all this
wickedness coming from? Could it be just that the particular examples
from sagas that we've found have all used the phrase meaning "useless"
but happen to have applied in an a context where it could also be
taken by implication to refer to, or include, moral qualities?
For 'mannkostir' two online dictionaries have:

ordabok.is--------qualities; (US: caliber) calibre; character
Icelandic Online--qualities, good points (of a person's character, etc)

> All his qualities which he himself had control over were bad.

Now to me, curiously enough, "bad qualities" (of a person) would
suggest morally bad or at least socially unpleasant or liable to cause
some harm or trouble. You can have "moral calibre", but a person
of "low calibre" might just be someone of "poor quality", not up to
doing their job.

"[good] qualities" and "good points" could include all sorts of
positive things that aren't necessarily morally good I guess. You
could be a genocidal maniac, but be nice to your pet cat. That would
be a good point. Especially for the cat. But just having a good
public speaking voice might not count, particularly if you were
putting it using it to accomplish your nefarious ends. So I suppose
the "good points" of a wicked person could include morally good things
(generous, nice to animals) or pleasantly neutral things (accomplished
watercolourist, good sense of humour), but not so much abilities that
might be good qualities in other people who don't put them to evil
uses. That's just the feeling I get about these expressions anyway.

But now (now?) it gets complicated cos we have to decide what sort of
qualities medieval people (who hadn't heard of Einstein, Benjamin
Libet, the Block Universe hypothesis, Freud, sociology, etc.) believed
a person was responsible for. A sunny disposition? Warts? Courage?
He must have some courage to be a great 'kappi'--or maybe he was an
armchair 'kappi', leading from safely behind his 'skjaldborg'?

Brainstorming synonyms, I'm tempted to rephrase in the interests of
sounding more natural. Not sure if these are quite there yet.

1) "There wasn't a good thing to be said for him, as far as those
qualities went that he himself was accountable for."

2) "As far as those qualities were concerned that he had any control
over, he was a complete washout."

3) "Those qualities that he himself was responsible for were a sorry
bunch."

4) "He hadn't so much as one redeeming feature, at least not any
[that] he himself was resonsible for."

I like 1 or 4 the best (3 sounds a bit silly as if the traits are
being personified), but 1 and 4 might still imply that these are
moraly dubious qualities. 'washout' is more "useless" and "no good".

> London is nice. Fine weather here, snowstorms back home. Want to get

together over a pint and finish Ellisifjardrápa? :)

Argh, Ellisifjardrápa! The nightmare lives! And will be revisited.
Man, what I wouldn't give for a nice snowstorm here...

Llama Nom