Tag Archives: Old Norse

The Shadow Nose

Posted on October 22, 2023 by JE

I’m reading Ǫrvar Odds saga at odd moments when I should be working, lately. I was looking up útnes which C&V (un)helpfully gloss as “an outer ness”. The AHD more helpfully told me that a ness is a cape or … Continue reading →

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Fellowship of the Thing

Posted on May 20, 2023 by JE

Apologies for my relative silence on social media. I’m engaged on a lunatic plan to write a pair of novels over the summer, and I’ve made some significant progress. This evening I got north of 20,000 words on one (a … Continue reading →

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WTF?

Posted on May 6, 2023 by JE

I’m looking around online for editions of the Hrafnistumannasǫgur—which is a perfectly normal thing to do on Friday night; I don’t care what the kids down at the sock hop say—and I found a pretty decent edition for the third … Continue reading →

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Early Bloomer

Posted on April 30, 2023 by JE

One of the weirder characters in the saga I’m reading is a guy named Vagn Ákason, a sort of medieval Neoptolemus. He killed 3 men by the time he was 9. When he was 12, he commanded two pirate ships … Continue reading →

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Gormless Gomes on the Ground

Posted on April 14, 2023 by JE

This afternoon I was reading up on Danish King Gorm (a.k.a Gorm the Old, a.k.a. Gorm the Lazy, a.k.a. my new role model), and idly wondered if it was the same root as the gorm in English gormless “clueless”. It … Continue reading →

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The Hood, the Bad, and the Bitey

Posted on April 8, 2023 by JE

I was looking up something else in Cleasby & Vigfusson’s Old Norse dictionary when my eye fell on gríma, meaning “a kind of hood or cowl”; by extension “the night”. A lot of badasses, starting with Óðin, are called Grímr … Continue reading →

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Fífling Around

Posted on March 26, 2023 by JE

I fell into the dictionary again today and learned that Old Norse fífl (“fool”) also meant “monster” (cf Old English fifal “monster”), hence the fíflmegir (“monster men”) who rowed the hellship from Muspellheim that Loki steered on the way to Ragnarǫk. I wondered if the … Continue reading →

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Words on the Wing

Posted on March 25, 2023 by JE

I was reading the Eddas today, which is what Tolkien would probably be doing on Re(re)ading Tolkien Day, and I was struck by a pair of birdy lines: Ǫrn mun hlakka,  slítr nái niðfǫlr. —Vǫluspá (quoted in Snorri, Gylfaginning 50) … Continue reading →

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The Weird of the Worm

Posted on March 19, 2023 by JE

Reading Snorri’s account of Ragnarǫkr this noon over blunch, and I was struck by this poetic phrase in Snorri’s prose: Þórr berr banaorð af Miðgarðsormi “Thor bears the baneword from Midgard’s Serpent”. Old Norse orð is cognate with English word, … Continue reading →

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Swords in the Mistletoe

Posted on March 7, 2023 by JE

I was reading Snorri’s Edda today, trying to sort out the story-differences between Snorri’s version and the poems in the Elder Edda. For instance, the famous story where Thor goes fishing and catches Jormungandir, Midgard’s Serpent, plays out differently in … Continue reading →

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