northern epic prose
I'm reading Sigrid Undset's sprawling novel Kristin Lavransdatter. Tales of the North always draw me in, especially if they're long. I recently remarked to a friend about the book, "Ya gotta love a story that has a major character named Ragnfrid." A beautiful woman, at that.
What's weird about it is the translation. It was originally in Norse, translated into English only a few years after it was written in the 1920s. So theoretically it should be a crisp modern translation. Instead, the translators have put the story into what sounds like it should be archaic English but isn't. It's an "archaic" English that never existed.
I've noticed as I progress, though, that, because of that archaism that doesn't connect historically to English literature, mixed with the effect of using old English words that we've lost but are still in our consciousness (beck, sward, wadmal), if I squint my mind a little I can imagine that I'm reading Norse. Maybe that's what the translators were after.
Whether it lays what these men were about, methought it sweet to again sit myself as it were in the lap of one so goodly in story-craft.
What's weird about it is the translation. It was originally in Norse, translated into English only a few years after it was written in the 1920s. So theoretically it should be a crisp modern translation. Instead, the translators have put the story into what sounds like it should be archaic English but isn't. It's an "archaic" English that never existed.
I've noticed as I progress, though, that, because of that archaism that doesn't connect historically to English literature, mixed with the effect of using old English words that we've lost but are still in our consciousness (beck, sward, wadmal), if I squint my mind a little I can imagine that I'm reading Norse. Maybe that's what the translators were after.
Whether it lays what these men were about, methought it sweet to again sit myself as it were in the lap of one so goodly in story-craft.
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