#it's such a distinctive way of wielding words and often really striking and memorable. and also frequently really funny | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vaguely-concerned · 14 days ago

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man I love looking up people from old norse sagas on wikipedia. there are always such gems to be found either in their names or in the descriptions. you'll just look up Torv-Einar Ragnvaldsson and find the sentence 'han var enøyd og stygg å se til, men han var mer skarpsynt enn andre folk' ('he was one-eyed and ugly to behold, but he was more sharp-sighted than other people'). like what a way to sum up a whole dude

#the language of the sagas often gets sort of preserved in modern norwegian scholarship on the period in a delightful way #it's such a distinctive way of wielding words and often really striking and memorable. and also frequently really funny #in a way not dissimilar to action film one-liners or the absurdism of deliberate understatement #it's hard to capture in the english translation; it's something about the rhythm of the language and word choices that is so satisfying #torv-einar seems like a fascinating dude honestly. first real scandinavian jarl of orkney. basically told by his dad #that as far as he was concerned him leaving the country was a matter of the sooner the better b/c he'd never amount to anything #(because his mother's side of the family had always been thralls. like oKAY there ragnvald mørejarl who the fuck had kids with her then)#was the guy to get revenge for their dad anyway when delicate blood feud politics had seen him burned to death in his own hall.#kind of vagueposted about his brother turning a blind eye to the fathermurder thing (b/c harald hårfagre smoothed his feathers #with titles and land afterwards) by writing a poem and now his brother is known as tore teiande (silent tore) to posterity #I'm not sure he seemed like a happy person but frankly these guys don't seem to have ever expected to be haha #the norse worldview seems to be such an anxious and fatalistic one in a very interesting way #shit it's på norsk

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