SC - Fw: [TY] Skal!

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Gerekr wrote:

>To quote from the Norse FAQ I'm assembling:
>
>>Drinking from the skulls of one's enemies
>>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 Krákumál do not mention
the word skál, or (höfuð)skel, or anything like it. They go like this:

"Drekkum bjór at bragði
ór bjúgviðum hausa;"

I don´t 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 "bjúgviðir". It means literally "bent pieces of wood" or maybe
rather "barrel staves" (is that the correct English term? can´t remember so
will use it anyway). "Hausa" means "heads" and "bjúgviðir 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 don´t think the Vikings actually used to drink from
their enemies skulls. And the term "skál" almost certainly originates from
"skál", which means bowl.

Nanna


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