{"id":19593,"date":"2024-05-09T20:12:23","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T00:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19593"},"modified":"2024-05-09T20:12:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T00:12:23","slug":"njals-saga-on-the-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19593","title":{"rendered":"Njal&#8217;s saga, on the ground"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Saga Stories #4: Nj\u00e1ls Saga\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/74JhshYgP2A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Another post<\/strong> in between reviews. I searched for \u201cIcelandic Sagas\u201d on YouTube and came up with this video by Dr. Matthew Roby of the University of Iceland. <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18160\">I\u2019ve posted one of his other videos, about Egil\u2019s Saga, here before<\/a>. What I like about these videos is that he describes the action on the actual historical sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This one is about <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Njals-Saga-ebook\/dp\/B08329F5G8\/ref=sr_1_6?crid=6DIB4KEXITO4&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.nh6PQU5ACdtq8vt9Fppof1a-Yn7ls8s1DPLksJBNTIE5bGqiJ9BK11zkWXtCr3TBwWwspJPxF7aThK4ZdY_AXV7UT-6DlOEf28UfHdQD97tDOE5wix16aPNKHltWSwWecHG4A8rArVfwOGG4CUAFGM9nnw1YiDRAA9TcjaFd6uW_Yrh1qwzgr3LFDjwq2al7xgd2kOPjVrhsYuPgxjbAM8aQVX0o4mzi1IoGVCIqbRU.mPOPN-cyxCKG8BDJ1wpvi4XowsZ2e2QCcqi18N0OqgI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=njal%27s+saga&amp;qid=1715299597&amp;sprefix=njal%27s+saga%2Caps%2C797&amp;sr=8-6&amp;tag=brandbooks-20\">Njal\u2019s Saga,<\/a><\/em> which may be the greatest of the genre. It certainly deserves the attention it\u2019s gotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m bemused by the Icelandic pronunciations. I was never aware before that Icelandic words ending in \u201cL\u201d get a \u201cK\u201d sound added. That\u2019s just the sort of thing you\u2019d expect from the Icelanders, who do their best \u2013 it seems to me \u2013 to make their language as unlearnable as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This situation creates a problem for people like me, who produce what is (laughingly, in my case) known as \u201cpopular\u201d literature. I\u2019ve maintained the custom of including a character list in my Erling novels. In that list, I include my suggested pronunciations. These pronunciations, you may have noted, bear no resemblance to how Dr. Roby pronounces them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s essentially an insoluble problem from my point of view. If I went to the trouble of learning how to pronounce Old Norse as Dr. Roby does (something I\u2019m not inclined to do in my limited time), I\u2019d be offering pronunciations that a) nobody would bother with, b) listeners would not understand, and c) are not even precisely what the Vikings used, as scholars admit the language has changed somewhat in the last thousand years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I give my suggested pronunciations, based (more or less) on contemporary Norwegian speech. This is mostly the way English-speaking scholars pronounce them in lectures, and they\u2019re more or less comprehensible to other English speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a makeshift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So much of fiction is a makeshift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So much of life is a makeshift too, if it comes to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another post in between reviews. I searched for \u201cIcelandic Sagas\u201d on YouTube and came up with this video by Dr. Matthew Roby of the University of Iceland. I\u2019ve posted one of his other videos, about Egil\u2019s Saga, here before. What I like about these videos is that he describes the action on the actual historical &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19593\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Njal&#8217;s saga, on the ground<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[4690,1268,2026],"class_list":["post-19593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","tag-dr-matthew-roby","tag-icelandic-sagas","tag-njals-saga"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19594,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19593\/revisions\/19594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}