Thanks. I'm definitely writing in English. But the novel is an attempt to portray life in Viking Age Iceland and Norway, without falling back on the cliches we find in most novels about the time period. I've included a lot of detail about every day life and the culture, including Old Icelandic words. I've been using somewhat Americanized spellings, avoiding umlauts and accents, but using þ and ð to give the words a more authentic feel. I generally leave off the -r at the end of words, as that's difficult for us to pronounce, but I would spell 'Eirikr' as 'Eirik.' So what I'm looking for is how the names would have been "spelled" in Norwegian, at the time (realizing that they weren't often written down, or necessarily written the same way every time, when they WERE written down).



Jamie

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Tobias Ruus <tobruus@...> wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> I'm Norwegian, so I'm going to try and help you out.
> I presume that you are writing in English, but if you were writing the novel
> in modern Norwegian, the 'right' way to do the names would be to modernise
> them, so that 'Hrolf' is Rolf and 'Gylfi' is Gylve. These names are still
> used in Norway in these forms, and we almost always use them instead of the
> old versions of the names in daily use and for example in translations, and
> for modern Icelanders bearing Icelandic versions of names we find familiar.
> However, if you are writing in English, it's a matter of preference. You
> could for example use the name 'Éirikr', but to me, that doesn't seem right
> in an English context. If you want the name to fit the English language,
> 'Eric' would be the 'best' choice, like we in Norwegian would use one of the
> modern versions 'Eirik' or 'Erik'. I personally like the names of both
> persons and places to fit the language I'm reading in the best possible
> matter, so I would be careful about using 'strange' letters or letter
> combinations like 'á', 'ø' or 'hr', as most English speaking readers
> wouldn't know how to pronounce them anyway. This, of course, depends on your
> audience.
>
> Also, if you want to use Old Norwegian versions of the names, the initial
> 'H' in words like 'Hrolf' and 'hrafn', where it does not appear in the
> word's modern Norwegian counterpart, was dropped early as opposed to in Old
> Icelandic (if I remember correctly).
>
> I hope this was helpful.
>
>
> Tobias.
>
>
>
> 2011/2/18 <wyrdplace@...>
>
> >
> >
> > I have a YA novel about Vikings that I'm entering final draft stages on. A
> > reader from Norway enjoyed the novel, and offered me some very helpful
> > comments -- especially about the landscape. But one thing she pointed out
> > may be innaccurate, because she isn't really a historian: names. She
> > didn't think the names of my Norwegian characters were very Norwegian
> > sounding. For example, she thought the character I'd named "Hrolf" would be
> > named "Rolf", instead. And the name "Gylfi" just wasn't at all Norwegian.
> > (Obviously, I took the latter from the Prose Edda.) Is there a good
> > reference available (hopefully online) for Old Norwegian names, or was there
> > no distinction between names in ancient Iceland and ancient Norway, around
> > 1,000 C.E.?
> >
> >
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> >
> >
> > Jamie
> >
> >
>