--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "William Reaves" <wreaves@...> wrote:

>

> Of course most scholars don't recognize (or oppose) this. Some, like

Larrington, seem to see Borr's sons as separate from Odin, Vili and
Ve. It seems rather obvious that Snorri saw them as one and the same
without directly saying so. He probably got the names Vili and Ve from
Lokasenna 26, where Loki accuses Frigg of sleeping with Ve and Vili,
the brothers of Vidrir. Vidrir is another name for Odin, thus adding
to the alteration of names. Snorri knew both poems, as he quotes from
both of them in his Edda.


It's possible that Snorri encountered contradictory traditions. He
may have tried to reconcile these, or he may have presented them as he
found them. His interpretations may not always have been the same as
the poet's.

> The key points of Voluspa 18 are the gifts of the gods to man.

You'll notice that many translations give slight variants. As you can
see from the comments below, many of the words do not have exact
definitions. They were likely chosen for this reason, the poet
intending to leave impressions rather than impart exact meaning.
That's the beauty of good poetry, many meanings flow from well-chosen
words.


Other, more prosaic, factors to bear in mind are: that the use of a
word in one language doesn't always match up perfectly with any single
word in another language (hence no exact [English] definition), and
that the lines are obscure nowadays and so will tend to inspire
different interpretations.

> .The common meaning of the word litur is something presenting itself

to the eye without being actually tangible to the hands.


Old Norse 'litr' (Modern Icelandic 'litur') can usually be translated
"colour".

Tönn hans var blá at lit "His teeth were blue in colour".

á regnboga eru þrír litir "there are 3 colours in the rainbow"

Skeggið var þykkt og skammt og með sama lit "The beard was thick and
short and had the same colour".

uxa þann er brandkrossóttur var að lit "the ox which was brindled
brown (in colour) with a white cross on its forehead".

Also "dye", "colour of the sky at dawn or dusk" and more generally
"appearance" (=yfirlit). Cf. 'litarháttr' "complexion",
'lit(anar)gras' "herb for dying", 'litaskipti', 'litbrigði' "change of
colour", 'lita' "to dye", 'litklæði' "coloured/dyed clothes",
'litlauss' "colourless", 'litföróttr' "dappled", 'litka' "to colour,
stain", 'litr', adj. "coloured".

Some interesting examples here [
http://www.kindir.dk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=28490&sid=c0619d9b28f2e658c8f1b87987312049
], in particular:

fjándr segja, at þat er ekki annat en litr ok læti þeirra (when the
angels speak well of man), kveðast fullkomit þenna mann eiga (Heilag.
I, 68126). "...but that's just their [outer] appearance..."?

> The Gothic form of the word is wlits, which Ulfilas uses in

translating the Greek prosopon - look, appearance, expression.

Gothic 'wlits' translates each of the following Greek words:

PROSWPON "face"
OYIS "appearance"
MORFH "form"

The latter meanings seem appropriate to the example of Sigurðr taking
on Gunnarr's appearance. Compare also the Old English cognate 'wlite'
"appearance, form; beauty, splendour, brightness; legal value, wergild".

> A sudden blushing, a sudden paleness, are among the results thereof

and can give rise to the question, Hefir þú lit brugðið? - Have you
changed your litur? (Fornaldarsaga., I. 426). To translate this with,
"Have you changed color?" is absurd. The questioner sees the change of
color, and does not need to ask the other one, who cannot see it.


While a yes/no question is usually indicated by putting the finite
verb at the beginning of the sentence, not every sentence with a
finite verbs at the beginning is a question. It's quite normal to
place the verb at the beginning for stylistic reasons. It's not
absurd, syntactically or semantically, to translate this as a simple
statement: "you've changed your colour" (i.e. in this example, grown
pale through loss of blood), particularly as this information is
actually supplied for the benefit of people listening to the poem,
rather than the unfortunate Hjálmarr! The meaning is confirmed by
other examples of the expression 'bregða lit'. It would be absurd in
the context to translate it "you've changed your form" or "everything
that presents itself to my eyes about you has changed although the
tangible parts of you have remained the same."

LN