Talk:Snorri Sturluson

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Contents 1 Naming 2 Tone 3 the Alþingi 4 Disliked by Odinists? 5 Request for agreement on Sturluson 6 King's chamberlain?

[edit] Naming

I would like to see this mans name correctly spelled. After all, "Eddan" has had quite an influence on modern writing and saga. Therefore I would like to see this mans name changed to Snorre Stularson. Snorri Sturluson is, as far as I am concerned, an english enterpretation of the original icelandic name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Olofgren (talk • contribs)

Also, Iceland ought to be correctly spelled Island, but your move to Snorre would be easier to pull off than that. If your wish isn't just "when will winter end?" peevishness - that is you're pretty sure about it - then move the article. Please create a redirect, because there are a great many links to Snorri. He's quite famous. I advise holding off until Spring. Metarhyme 10:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

"Snorri Sturluson" is the normalized Old Norse and normalized Modern Icelandic spelling and not an Anglicization. Haukur 10:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• In that case it is not a simple uncontested move. For an article name change which isn't accepted by all, the procedure is to format your Olofgren-proposed move as specified at Wikipedia:Requested moves placing it in the top date section there. Then, again per Wikipedia:Requested moves, place a move template on the top of this Talk page. Also create a Discussion section here. I advise against this. Metarhyme 01:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• Google certainly should not be the final word in these matters, but, "Snorre Stularson" gets one hit whereas "Snorri Sturluson" gets "about 250,000", including ones in English and Icelandic. This Olafgren needs to show a lot more to get this even considered [pov]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carptrash (talk • contribs)

He'd need to reappear and campaign. If Iceland really wanted Snorre, then...? Metarhyme 03:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................. then there would be no stopping the Icelanders. Carptrash 15:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

All swedish school children are told that his name was Snorre Sturlason, which in it self is quite funny when you're a kid since "Snorre" is swedish slang for the male reproductive organ (atleast where I'm from). And a search for "Snorre Sturlason" renders about 48.000 hits on Google. I don't know where "Stularson" comes from and the single hit in Google tells me it's probably just a typo. Also, the swedish Wikipedia calls him "Snorre Sturlasson".

• This is English Wikipedia. It should either follow English convention (Snorri Sturluson) or Icelandic convention (Snorri Sturluson). Snorri was not Swedish, nor did he really have much to do with Sweden. I can see MAYBE Norwegians having some claim to him, but not as strong as the Icelanders. "Snorre" is just fine for Swedish wiki, but "Snorri" is universally accepted in Iceland and almost all of the English-speaking world. Jawbone 14:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tone

It might be an idea for someone with considerable Snorri knowledge to have a gaze through the fact and narrative of the article. It seems that the tone fluctuates and contains potentially unhelpful phraseology: "and the war was on" and "saga-type actions" which are overly familiar. Zach Beauvais 19:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] the Alþingi

Would it be inaccurate to trans-alphabetize Alþingi "All-thingy"? Assuming that there is no one in the world who can read written English who is actually clueless concerning the þ thorn glyph - well, this is a mistaken assumption. Sadly, all the world isn't fluent in Icelandic just yet, even if Island pwns alles. Metarhyme 23:15, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Iceland's embassy in the U.S. uses Althingi on its English-language FAQ, and use without an article ("Althingi is a legislative body...") as one would do with "Congress" or "Parliament." The U.S. State Department's background notes on Iceland also uses Althingi, as does the National Geographic Society, though the CIA World Factbook uses Althing. Seems to me the Icelanders writing in English ought to know. — OtherDave 20:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

In fact, writing in a language not your own can be extremely tricky, especially about something you know well in your native tongue. The English word is Althing, almost always. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)\

The "Icelanders writing in English" was slightly tongue in cheek, though I feel confident that those writing text for the Icelandic embassy have strong English skills. It does appear that the U.S. State Department and the National Geographic Society, neither burdened with Icelandic as a native tongue, disagree with the "almost always" contention. — OtherDave 23:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

BAD GRAMMAR: If you are going to contribute to an encyclopedia, know basic grammar.

"comprised of"

"of" never follows "comprised". Say "comprising ......" or "composed of". Basic stuff.

While making a big deal about grammatical minutia [and not signing it] in an article likely written by someone for whom English is a second or third or fourth language is bad manners. Also pretty basic stuff. So, which is worse? Carptrash 00:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Changed to "consists of" as active voice; but if someone feels like making it "comprise", as our anon should have done, so what? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

"Basic stuff," perhaps, but as Merriam-Webster notes, "comprise" in the sense of compose or constitute has been in use since the late 18th century, even in the apparently shocking "is comprised of" construction. — OtherDave 02:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disliked by Odinists?

Some odinists feel that he misintperits the Gods through a Chirstain perspective as show here [1] Surley this deserves a mention in the article at least?--RainyDayCrow 03:28, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for agreement on Sturluson

Well, I KNOW how insistent Scandinavians can be about getting these matters what they consider right! First of all let me say that I am a native English speaker and have a pretty good idea (though not perfect) about what is "right" in English, although some of my speech mannerisms are not the same as our British cousins'.

Now, Middle English is partly characterized by its variant spellings, which tended to stabilize in modern English. If you don't mind the spelling, you can read just about any middle English and even Old English. This tendency did not entirely go away in modern English! Despite all the handbooks of all the great universities you are still going to find variants in the dictionary and no one seems to be able to halt this process.

In contrast possibly to Swedish or Danish or Norwegian (I don't know those languages) when it comes to the Anglicization of Scandinavian names there is just plain no "right" way to do it! So you are going to find several variants of Snorri's name in English, and they are all "right", and if you are going to argue and confront about what it "should" be we are going to be here on this discussion page on a more or less permanent basis.

I am against using a Scandinavian standard. Which one are we supposed to use? It doesn't matter at all to native English speakers what the English-speaking Swedes might do in transliterating these names. We speak English, not standard Swedish-translation lingo (or whatever). For myself I learned Sturlson in school but I have no problem at all with Sturluson, Sturlarson, Sturlason or whatever. This is a foreign word to us; we don't recognize it. There are no sturls here manufacturing sturls the way smiths worked iron.(more later)Dave 11:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Later. So, what I propose is this. Sturluson has the advantage of first of all being compatible with Sturlungar on which there already is an article and second it seems to be the target of most of the searches. We want the public to find what they search for. Now, I know other people do it other ways. I have here before me a copy of Heimskringla in English and the author's name (in English) is Snorre Sturlason. So what? What I want to do is, first of all revert to Sturluson as a standard. Then I want to put in sufficient redirects to cover the other possibilities. And finally, just so no one will get confused or think that their nationality is being slighted, I want to research and put in a footnote on the different spellings of the name. For that I am just going to look it up in every encyclopedia and dictionary I have at hand and also incorporate some of the material in this discussion page.

Naturally Snorre is an emotional topic. Sagas are not the most objective writing in the world. But, there are a lot of emotional topics on Wikipedia. If you could manage to choke down your outrage and nationalism so we can turn this into a star article I would appreciate that. Everyone comes from somewhere and is loyal to something but we are trying to rise above that for encyclopedic purposes. Thank you. I'm going to start on that note.Dave 16:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] King's chamberlain?

What is meant by Snorri becoming the "king's chamberlain"? There was, of course, no such title in Norway, what is the Norwegian title that is translated as chamberlain in this article? I am very unsure if it's an appropriate translation.--Barend (talk) 17:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I can only guess that it's supposed to be a translation of drottsete as the other hird offices fits even less. Fornadan (t) 00:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I looked it up myself - and it is skutilsvein. That is the title which later in the 13th century was converted to riddar, which translates easily to knight. I'd say the translation chamberlain is not just inappropriate, it's plain wrong. And speculating that It is unclear that he understood the significance of these honors seems very unlikely - Snorri was certaily no fool.--Barend (talk) 14:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)