Translating Early Medieval Poetry

by Tom Birkett

  Non-Eddic Influences

  It is not simply poetry from the Poetic Edda that is used in Vikings.28 In the fourth episode of season one, Ragnar and his followers successful y raid a Northumbrian

  vil age but as they attempt to return to their ship, their path is blocked by a party

  of King Aelle’s men. A battle ensues on the beach off which the vikings’ boat is

  anchored. The vikings form a shield-wall and, as the battle progresses, Rollo cal s

  out a battle chant (13:30–13:46):

  Up onto the overturned keel,

  Clamber, with a heart of steel.

  Cold is the ocean’s spray,

  when your death is on its way.

  27 Ibid., p. 17.

  28 Nor is it only Old Norse Poetry that is drawn upon. In episode ten of the third season, King Ecbert quotes from the opening stanza of the first of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. See T. S.

  Eliot, Four Quartets (London, 2001), p. 3.

  210

  Gareth Lloyd Evans

  With maidens you have had your way.

  Each must die some day!

  The verse is adapted from a skaldic stanza attributed to the thirteenth-century

  Icelander Þórir jǫkull in Íslendinga saga. The saga suggests that he spoke the verse prior to his execution. In Old Norse, the verse runs as follows:

  Upp skaltu á kjǫl klífa,

  kǫld er sævar drífa;

  kostaðu hug þinn herða,

  hér skaltu lífit verða.

  Skafl beygjattu skalli

  þótt skúr á þik falli.

  Ást hafðir þú meyja;

  eitt sinn skal hverr deyja.

  Or, in English, it could be rendered thus:

  You must climb up on to the keel,

  cold is the sea-spray’s feel;

  let not your courage bend:

  here your life must end.

  Old man, keep your upper lip firm

  though your head be bowed by the storm.

  You have had girls’ love in the past;

  death comes to all at last.29

  The stanza has clearly been selected for transformation into a battle cry for its suggestion that one’s death should be faced with courage, and for its heroic acceptance of

  the possibility of impending doom. Although abbreviating the stanza slightly – and

  removing a jarring reference to a skalli (bald man) that does not work well in the new context into which it is placed – the rendering into English in Vikings is largely faithful. And, crucial y, it retains the end rhyme of what is a relatively rare example of a runhent (‘end-rhymed’) verse, which is another feature of the stanza that makes it particularly suitable for transformation into a battle chant.30 What might also

  be noted by an attentive viewer is that this poem when used as a battle cry – even

  accepting the omission of skalli – still does not necessarily seem to work perfectly in context, at least not literal y: there is no keel on which Rollo’s audience might climb, nor does the sea’s spray fall onto them (despite the battle taking place on the shore).

  But this is also the case in the poem’s context within Íslendinga saga. Þórir jǫkull, as he speaks this verse, is certainly not shipwrecked: he is said to have been decapi-tated outside a church. We must instead understand the motif of shipwreck in this

  poem – in both its medieval and televisual contexts – as working metaphorical y to

  convey seemingly universal feelings toward impending death. That the details do

  29 Text and translation from Anthony Faulkes, What Was Viking Poetry For?

  (Birmingham, 1993), p. 3.

  30 For a discussion of runhent, see Kari Ellen Gade, The Structure of Old Norse Dróttkvætt Poetry (London, 1995), pp. 10–11.

  Vikings and Old Norse Poetry

  211

  not align perfectly with the situation – and indeed that there is a mismatch in date

  between the medieval poem and the early Viking Age – is of little consequence, and

  is instead testament to the adaptability of the verse and the seeming universality of

  the emotions upon which it depends.31 As with the sensitive translations of eddic

  poems into new contexts discussed above, this skaldic verse has also been treated

  with great care and sensitivity: the televisual context into which the verse has been

  placed is mindful of, and reflects, the verse’s original context.

  Not all Old Norse verses used in Vikings seem to have a great deal of either

  thematic or narrative significance, however. In the seventh episode of the third

  season, while most of the inhabitants of Kattegat are involved in the siege on

  Paris, Aslaug remains at home. Here, we see her speak a chant in Old Norse as she

  bathes a garment in what appears to be blood. The words she speaks are as follows

  (16:48–17:14):

  Þér annk serk enn síða

  ok saumaðan hvergi

  við heilan hug ofnu

  ór hársíma gránu.

  Mun eigi ben blœða,

  né bíta þik eggjar

  í heilagri hjúpu;

  var hón goðum signuð.32

  In English, this verse could be rendered thus:

  I give you a shirt

  with seams nowhere,

  woven with a hale heart

  from grey strands.

  Wounds will not bleed,

  nor edges bite you

  in this holy garment;

  it has been blessed by the gods.

  Where the verse is found, in Ragnars saga loðbrókar, it is spoken by Áslaug to her husband Ragnarr before he travels to England with the intention of raiding there.

  The verse accompanies a gift of a shirt which prevents the wearer from being injured

  by weapons.33 Here, in Vikings, however, although we may assume that Aslaug is enchanting the garment as she bathes it in blood, we do not see her presenting it as

  a gift to any other character. Nor is this scene recalled later in the series, or at least not in those episodes that have been released thus far. To the viewer – who likely

  does not understand Old Norse – the verse serves to create a sense of otherness

  (which, of course, is crucial to the production of historical drama). However, in

  31 Faulkes, What Was Viking Poetry For? , pp. 6–9.

  32 ‘ Ragnars saga loðbrókar’, in Vǫlsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loðbrókar, ed. Magnus Olsen (Copenhagen, 1906–8), pp. 111–222, at p. 212.

  33 Ibid., p. 156.

  212

  Gareth Lloyd Evans

  spite of the absence of a literal translation, we may go so far as to say that the context of the recitation of this verse – in which Aslaug bathes a garment – itself functions

  as a vague translation of the content of the poem, which refers to an enchanted

  shirt. The audience is able to infer a relation between the verse spoken softly by

  Aslaug and her treatment of the garment, and to draw the conclusion that Aslaug

  is partaking in some form of magical ritual. The televisual medium, then, does not

  need to simply rely on linguistic translation, but is also able to convey information

  and detail through other means and other forms of translation.

  Conclusions

  In Vikings, Michael Hirst draws on a range of Old Norse poems. Some are given in Old Norse with no translation provided for the viewer, some are given in English

  translation, and some are simply referenced al usively. In almost all cases, however

  – whether or not audiences are likely to understand the literal meaning of verses

  spoken or to be aware of the references made – great care has clearly been taken to

  ensure that the verses are deployed with artistic sensitivity. The poems are drawn on

  in a number of ways: to struct
ure character interactions, to provide mythological

  detail, to give a particular view of viking society, to forge intertextual meaning, and to produce a sense of inexorable fate. But in addition to these functions, all of the

  Old Norse poems used in Vikings also contribute to the sense of alterity – to the impression that the world of Vikings is fundamental y different to our own – that is essential for the efficacy of the series as a historical drama.

  What also becomes clear is that a narrow view of translation that only recognises

  the literal translation of words and phrases from source language to target language

  is too limited a conceptualisation to encompass the variety of modes of transla-

  tion in evidence in Vikings. This is not to say that literal translation is not of great importance – it is, of course, relied upon throughout the series. However, we also

  see evidence of contextual translation, in which a snippet or stanza of poetry is

  chosen for inclusion in the series not only for its localised literal meaning but also for the significance it holds within the wider context from which it was borrowed, as

  well as a form of translation that appears peculiar to televisual or cinematic media.

  In both the funerary procession for Ragnar and the scene in which Aslaug enchants

  a garment, Old Norse is performed or spoken without any literal translation being

  given. Yet the contexts in which these verses are performed enable the viewer to

  understand the significance, the valency and – to an extent – even some of the

  content of the Norse poems. This mode of translation affords the viewer untrained

  in Old Norse a new point of access into the world of Old Norse poetry: one can hear

  and see Old Norse poems being performed in the original while also, to an extent,

  understand their meaning and significance. Such a method of translation, which

  relies on the visual possibilities of this medium, pushes the translation of Old Norse poetry into new territory, while simultaneously making it accessible to a far wider

  audience than is usual y the case.

  Afterword

  Bernard O’Donoghue

  What exactly are we doing when we set out on a translation? Wel,

  it depends; the first thing to establish is for what purpose and reader-

  ship we are doing it. Since the early nineteenth century when there

  was a reinforced emphasis on the theory of translation in works such as Friedrich

  Schleiermacher’s ‘On the Different Methods of Translating’1 it has been essential

  for translators to recognise precisely what kind of version they were aiming at –

  most immediately whether the objective was correspondence to the original in a

  new language (what degree of ‘equivalence’ we are aiming at, in Lawrence Venuti’s

  terms), or to produce a new work which was prompted by the original. Not that

  such considerations were new in the nineteenth century: in the Alfredian Preface to

  the Anglo-Saxon translation of Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis the translator will proceed

  ‘ hwilum word be worde, hwilum andgit of andgiete’ (‘sometimes word for word;

  sometimes sense for sense’). And of course there are other contexts too: in her very

  enlightening essay on Borges here, M. J. Toswell refers to Umberto Eco’s summary

  idea of ‘translation as a negotiation involving original text, publisher, economic

  matters, the target text, various kinds of approaches to the translation and reader

  responses’.2

  Not all of these factors are the primary concern for the context here. In her

  essay on translations of Old English poetry into Modern English and Russian, Inna

  Matyushina reminds us of a crucial distinction: ‘Translation has traditional y been

  divided into two types: that on a spatial axis, from one language to another, and

  that on a chronological axis, within one language of different periods.’3 The chrono-

  logical axis of course is fundamental for translations of Old English to modern –

  the sole concern of four of the twelve essays here – as it is also for the two essays

  concerned with translations of early Irish texts into modern languages: Irish in the

  case of Tadhg Ó Siocháin and English by Lahney Preston Matto. A substantial part

  of what verse translators do is the recasting of earlier texts in their own language.

  1 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersezens (Berlin, 1813); trans. Susan Bernofsky, ‘On the Different Methods of Translating’, in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London, 2000), pp. 43–63.

  2 See p. 73.

  3 See p. 46.

  214

  Bernard O’Donoghue

  The eald languages in the twelve essays here are Old English, Old Norse, and

  Middle Irish. The ‘new’ languages are Modern English, Modern Irish, Spanish,

  Scots and Russian, so this is not only a matter of chronological translation. In the

  essay I have quoted from already, Matyushina concludes that ‘it is less rewarding to

  follow the principles of etymological translation than to make use of all the riches

  of a modern language’ in rendering the vocabulary of the original.4 This is already

  expressing an aesthetic preference in the debate about equivalence: a preference

  which arises too with the question of translation into prose or verse. Elizabeth

  Boyle in arguing for an extension to the operational canon of medieval Irish poetry

  beyond nature and monasticism – beyond Pangur Bán and the Belfast Blackbird

  – cites Micheál Ó Siadhail’s trenchantly expressed view of language opposition: ‘a

  scientific or systematic view of language and its grammar is often thought of by

  poets as boring, objective or without feeling. On the other hand, for linguists all this poetry stuff is emotional, subjective and lacking in rigour.’5 This is an overstatement at best, but it does establish an opposition between two kinds of target language that texts can be translated into.

  A striking thing in this book is that some of the translators who say they are

  not poets display more style in their versions than some solemnly claimed ‘transla-

  tions into verse’ elsewhere. Carolyne Larrington says her translations of the Poetic

  Edda are ‘not into poetry, but not exactly into prose either’.6 As with the appel ation of poet general y, the designation cannot be left to the claimant. For instance,

  Lahney Preston Matto’s sparkling translation of MacConglinne is a kind of cross

  between The Land of Cokaygne and ‘Goblin Market’, and it has far greater claim to the poetic than many ‘verse’ translations. The same is true of Tadhg Ó Siocháin’s

  admirable translation of his Fiannaiocht text into lucid modern Irish (this time set

  out as verse). We are reminded of Sidney’s trenchant pronouncement that ‘David’s

  Psalms are a divine poem’, though written in a kind of prose, and that verse is ‘but an ornament and no cause to Poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets

  that never versified’.7

  My experience of translating medieval texts connects with the more eminent

  practitioners here in various ways. All the translations I have done are described

  as ‘verse translations’ which begs the questions I have just raised. I have translated short pieces of Dante and Virgil, always to produce a poem that can be included

  in a collection of modern lyrics. I have translated extracts from Piers Plowman for the same purpose. But when I translated Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, responsibility for the work as a whole required a different kind of approac
h, centring on

  narrative development. Seamus Heaney does the same thing with Beowulf: his

  translation of the whole has a sustained epic power, but he translated some extracts

  as separate lyrics. For example, Electric Light in 2001, his first collection of lyrics 4 See p. 60.

  5 Micheal O’Siadhail, Say But the Word: Poetry as Vision and Voice, ed. David F. Ford and Margie M. Tolstoy (Dublin, 2015), p. 33. See p. 98.

  6 See p. 170.

  7 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry (Or The Defence of Poesy), 3rd edn, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd and R. W. Maslen (Manchester, 2002), p. 84.

  Afterword

  215

  after the Beowulf translation in 1999, includes ‘The Fragment’, a translation of part of Beowulf’s response to the accusations of Unferþ, as well as the tragedy of the

  father of the executed son (Edwin Morgan’s ‘The Auld Man’s Coronach’ in Scots,

  quoted and discussed by Hugh Magennis in this volume).8 Heaney’s version of the

  tragedy of Hrethel and of the father’s lament (sections 3 and 4 of ‘On His Work in

  the English Tongue: In Memory of Ted Hughes’)9 keep fairly close to the letter of

  the original (diverging slightly from his own version in Beowulf), in the same way that his poem ‘The Golden Bough’ in Seeing Things in 1991 diverges from the corresponding passage in his translation of the whole of Aeneid 6 in 2016.

  In a similar way, from Morgan’s whole translation of Beowulf into Modern

  English verse Magennis quotes the section corresponding to the Scots of ‘The Auld

  Man’s Coronach’. It is an interesting case of the two axes, chronological or spatial.

  Shifting the Old English into Standard Modern English verse is a classic instance of

  a diachronic or chronological translation – and a particularly graceful one. But the

  further shift into Scots, as Magennis shows, is spatial and cultural too, raising questions of audience. Magennis notes the significance of the Scots poem’s first publica-

  tion in The Glasgow Herald.

  Ó Siocháin concludes by drawing on Weaver: ‘in translating ... there are no

  perfect solutions. You simply do your best.’10 This is perhaps too defeatist a depar-

  ture from Ó Siocháin’s fierce epigraph from Schlegel: ‘Translation is a fight to the

  death in which either the translator or the translated inevitably dies.’11 Transla-