THE JOTUNFJELD
Showing various Routes to it.
E. Weller Lith.
Transcriber’s Notes
Some names are written differently in the List of Illustrations than elsewhere in the text.
Phonetic spellings:
“Pandecāges” with macron on second
a:
the vowel is broad, as in “father”.
“căno” with breve over a:
the speaker pronounced the word as “can” + “oh” (that is, neither the
Norwegian nor the correct English pronunciation).
“Gammle Norgé” ... “Queen
Victooria”
both represent Norwegian pronunciation: final e is not silent,
and o is pronounced like “continental” u.
Norwegian:
Written Norwegian has three extra vowels: æ, ø, å. At the time Three in Norway was published, the language generally used Danish spelling. Many words written with æ would now use simple e, and the letter å (pronounced like “continental” o) was written aa.
The letter ø is equivalent to ö (“o umlaut”); the correct letterform may have been unavailable to the printer.
The spelling “Ragnild” (expected form “Ragnhild”) is used consistently. The forms “Bred Sjö” : “Bredsjö”, “skin tukt” : “skintukt” (see Berries), and Jotun Fjeld : Jotunfjeld each occur.
Double vowels representing a single long sound are rare except in a few names; the macron on the first “u” in “Tronhūus” is redundant.
The inconsistent capitalization of “Ryper” : “ryper” is unchanged. The plural form “ryper” is used throughout for both singular and plural.
Consistent o/ö (ø) errors:
Öla (the name) for Ola
brod, fladbrod for brød, fladbrød
Formö, kröne, mölte bær, spör, Strömkarl for Formo, krone, moltebær, spor, Stromkarl
Other uses of ö (ø) are correct: öl, öre, hö, sjö and any place names.
Words:
Skoggaggany ... is merely the Norwegian for a scaup duck
one Norwegian translation says, in paraphrase, “we called it Skoggaggany because we thought it sounded so Norwegian”. If the word is real, it should end in -and, “duck”.
‘Ingen dyr, ingen fresk spör, ingen gammle spör,’ as the Norsk jäger would remark
The spelling with ä for æ is anomalous. Modern Norwegian would have “jeger”, though “jæger” is correct for the time. The spelling “spör” is here an error for “spor” (tracks).
Other corrected forms are shown with popups in the body text.
Berries (pgs. 178-179)
Most of the berries of the country are now just at their best, and Memurudalen is a grand valley for all of them, except of course the strawberry and raspberry, which will not grow at this altitude. But we have ‘klarkling’ (the English crowberry) in great abundance; blau bær (wimberry), the finest and best ever seen, in quantities; also ‘skin tukt,’ another blue berry rather larger than a wimberry, and with a thicker skin and wonderful bloom on it; this we think does not grow in England. Then less numerous are a berry something between a raspberry and a red currant, but of better flavour than either of them; and the great and glorious ‘mölte bær’ (cloudberry); to say nothing of ‘heste bær,’ and ‘tutti bær,’ and several others of unknown names. The last one grows in England, but we have forgotten its name; they make jelly from it here, and prize it highly for its acid taste.
blau bær
blåbær (etymologically “blueberry”, but not the same as the
American blueberry)
skin tukt
probably blokkebær, also called skinntryte
heste bær
possibly heggebær
“we have forgotten its name”
English “lingonberry”, from its Swedish name lingon
Footnotes to Song (pgs. 196-97)
4) ‘Brod,’ bread. The word does not rhyme to god, being pronounced something like Broat, but it looks as if it rhymed.
The Norwegian word is “brød”. Here the writers almost seem to be talking about the German equivalent “Brot”.
8) ‘Stor,’ big, pronounced Stora before a consonant.
The writers have misunderstood a rule. The word does vary between “stor” and “store”, but the difference is grammatical, not phonetic.