SC - Fw: [TY] Skal!

[Gerekr at aol.com]

On 7/21/99 3:17 PM sca-cooks at Ansteorra.ORG wrote:

>From:  nannar at isholf.is (Nanna_R^gnvaldardUttir)
>Gerekr wrote:
>
...
>>>This misconception can be traced to a mistranslation by one Magnus
>Olafsson of Krakumal
>>>"drinking from skulls".   Apparently the actual phrase refers to drinking
>>from bowls, skal.
>
>I'm not sure about that because the actual lines in Kr.kum.l do not mention
>the word sk.l, or (h^fu )skel, or anything like it. They go like this:
>
>"Drekkum bjUr at brag i
>Ur bj gvi um hausa;"
>
>I donYent have an English translation but my translation of these lines would
>be something like: "Let us now drink beer from skulls." The difficult word
>here is "bj gvi ir". It means literally "bent pieces of wood" or maybe
>rather "barrel staves" (is that the correct English term? canYent remember so
>will use it anyway). "Hausa" means "heads" and "bj gvi ir hausa" (or "staves
>of heads") sounds just right as a kenning (metaphor) for skull (well, it
>sounds right in Icelandic, anyway).
>
>Having said that, I donYent think the Vikings actually used to drink from
>their enemies skulls. And the term "sk.l" almost certainly originates from
>"sk.l", which means bowl.
>
>Nanna

Sorry so long to reply

Unfortunately somewhere between your computer and my computer most of the 
Icelandic parts got seriously scrambled. :-)  I'm sure the phrase is 
"bjorgvi(eth)r hausa".  I've never actually read Krakumal, I've never 
even been able to find a source for it.  However I'm told that it's 
actually out of period for Viking Age, being post-1150.  However this 
business about mistranslation I've seen at least six places, the most 
recently not a week before I wrote the previous response, and of course 
now can't find any of them.  The assumption that he mistranslated the 
term "skal=skull" may have been my misinterpretation of someone elses 
ambiguous language.  "bjorgvi(eth)r hausa" seems like a clear kenning for 
bowl (literally "bent-wood/molded-wood skull").  No decent kenning would 
actually include the word for which it is a kenning _in_ the phrase, and 
the most usual translation of hausa (in ON, I don't know what it means in 
modern Icelandic) is "skull", secondarily animal head.  Does modern 
Icelandic use a diferent word for skull?  The ON word for human head is 
hofu(eth).

Gerek
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================