Roughly 3 days’ work, but I have finished my translation job and sent it winging off to Norway. I have the satisfaction of a job well done, plus the pleasure of a rare November day with sunshine and temperatures near 70. I did a couple hours of my work out on the porch, enjoying the remission.

For reasons I won’t bore you with, I happened to listen to an old musical cassette from long, long ago (still listenable). It was an album of a Norwegian folk group called Vandrerne (the Wanderers). They did a mixture of Norwegian folk songs, original music, retro popular songs, and Celtic folk. The number embedded below, “Den Fineste Jinta” (The Finest Girl), is an adaptation of a well-known Irish song, “Black Velvet Band.” It roughly follows the plot of the Irish song — the young man meets a bewitching young girl who wears her hair “tied up in a black velvet band.” She entices him into a scheme to steal jewelry. He is arrested and ends up being transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Norwegian criminals didn’t generally get transported, so this guy’s fate is different. But I don’t understand the dialect well enough to tell you what it is.