Talk:Njáls saga

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Note on the following text:

"The protagonist's name, in Icelandic spelling, is Njáll. The book should therefore be called "Njáll's Saga" in English. In practice the protagonist is commonly referred to as "Njal" in English, and the book "Njal's Saga". This probably arises from a misunderstanding of the correct Icelandic Njáls Saga (no apostrophe), since the genitive (possessive) form of Njáll in Icelandic is Njáls (no apostrophe). It seems that by back-formation from the genitive, Njáll has been anglicized to Njal (no accent). The difference is significant, since in Icelandic a double-L is pronounced quite differently from a single-L.

Some English translations also anglicize other personal names, for example removing the masculine nominative ending -ur from those names that have it. But it is not otherwise common for English speakers to treat Icelandic names in this way.

The name is Gaelic in origin, coming from "Niall", which is often anglicised as "Neil".

??? *NOBODY* needs to know any of this. What people need to know, MUCH more importantly, is how to pronounce it. Why don't educated people GET that? It's very puzzling. You could teach people something ten times as important and useful by completely eliminating the above and telling them how to pronounce "Burnt Njal."



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If this were Old Icelandic, wouldn't it be one word? Let us use some English name, as policy supports. I don't think we need to have another no consensus on WP:RM; but if we have to...Septentrionalis 18:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] 1000 AD?

Why do we keep seeing 999 AD listed as Iceland's conversion to Christianity instead of 1000 AD? Have I been wrong all these years? And my copy of Njal's Saga, which lists 1000?

Some kind of calendar weirdness? Please advise, someone.

dino 20:48, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I always thought so too - and that's what I put - but "Iceland Saga", by Magnus Magnusson, says, "scholars like Olafia Einarsdottir have proved conclusively that tradition has always misconstrued the chronological context provided by Ari the Learned..., and that the actual date was 999". Horis 09:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Ari might have used a calender which started the new year early in September. This would of course cause a lot of chronological problems. Fornadan (t) 15:24, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Names

This page is in english and I see very little reason to have the names written with characters that does not exist in english. Does articles about Chinese charaters and sories also h ave the names in Chinese characters? I thought not... It is unreadable like this and make no more sense than writing @$££€ was the married ti @££€£@ and got a son $£€$£{@.

[edit] Translation?

Could people add a section about the saga's translation into English? It seems to be important within the context of late Romanticism. Pittsburgh Poet (talk) 02:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Yet another note on "Njal" vs. "Njáll"

I've restrained myself from starting an editing war by revising the original text to say the opposite!

Original sentence: "Some English translations also anglicize other personal names, for example removing the masculine nominative ending -ur from those names that have it."

This conflates modern Icelandic with Old Norse. In fact, the nominative forms in -ur are distinctively modern, while Old Norse simply has -r. This isn't very important, but it makes it harder to see how relevant his examples ought to be.

Original sentence: "But it is not otherwise common for English speakers to treat Icelandic names in this way."

What does "otherwise" mean? The jump from English speakers wrestling with contemporary Icelandic names (but not translating from Icelandic) to translators working from archaic Icelandic texts is simply too big. In any case, translation from Old Norse is the issue. Why IS Olaf acceptable for Ólafur (ON Óláfr), but not Njal for Njáll?

The English forms are not merely Icelandic (or Old Norse) forms subject to random loss of nominative terminations. Late 19th-century translators into English (e.g., Sir George W. Dasent, William Morris) systematically gave proper nouns in stem form, not nominative form. The limitations of English spelling introduce a few other changes, such as ignoring length markers on vowels. Vowels of different lengths are "quite different" too, just as L is "quite different" from LL. Another change is the use of d for ð, though modern writers seem more willing to use dh. This is how we have all become used to forms like Odin, Thor, and Olaf. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arnold the Frog (talk • contribs) 23:21, 30 January 2008 (UTC)