COC Götterdämmerung

[enevarim]

Baugeið Óðinn
hygg ek at unnit hafi
hvat skal hans tryggðum trúa?
Suttung svikinn
hann lét sumbli frá
ok grœtta Gunnlöðu

Othinn, I think, has sworn
an oath on the sacred ring --
who shall trust in his troth?
he had Suttungr cheated
of his mead,
and made Gunnloth grieve.

- Hávamál, v. 110

Comments

[luckweaver]

Have you read the Hávamál/Poetic Edda in it's entirety?

[enevarim]

Not only read it but: http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Hav

(Yes, the URL is from the stone age, but I built that site back in... golly. 2002 or so? So “stone age” in internet years it pretty much is.)

[luckweaver]

Ooh, spectacular! *bookmarks* I'm a hard polytheist, I have a really good translation by... Oxford, I think?

[enevarim]

If you’ve got Ursula Dronke’s translation (hardcover, orange dustjacket, Oxford University Press, “The Poetic Edda: Volume III, Mythological Poems II”), then I absolutely defer to that, but it came out in 2011 so it wasn’t around when this went up, much less when I did the original translation a few years before that. (She died in 2012, I’d been out of touch with academe so I only discovered that last year. It was a blow. She was wonderfully brilliant.)

[luckweaver]

I believe that's the one I have, yes, although the footnotes in your one are also brilliant :)

Do you mind my asking what it is you do for a living/for life? I realise I don't know much about you, but if you're able to translate this kind of thing then I think I'm in awe.

[enevarim]

It has been, alas, a long time since I’ve translated that kind of thing. Once you’ve done the doctorate in Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic studies and the post-doctoral research associateship, you’re faced with either living hand-to-mouth for years applying for any post that comes up, or choosing to do something with a steadier and more predictable income stream. Not to sound too much like Robert Frost, I chose the latter, and now I write / architect / lead teams in writing computer code. I would be happy to move the balance to something more cultural - the renewed blogging is a toe in the water to that end - but I haven’t figured out how yet. :)

[enevarim]

But enough of my problems, how did you come by Ursula Dronke’s translation? I was studying Old Norse at university back in the day, so it was an occupational hazard. She gave a visiting lecture once, and I spoke with her afterwards. It was... quite amazing. So when the volumes were coming out, it was a no-brainer. But outside of that context, how did they come to prominence?