# Swedish: urnariggad



## eeladvised

Hello all,

What does the word _urnariggad_ mean in the following passage?  I couldn't find anything like it in any dictionary.

Sedan däckades skutan med skinn, spändt som en trumma; en mast, som kunde tagas af, hade sin plats i klykor i fören och båten blef *urnariggad*.  (Sven Hedin, _Asien: tusen mil på okända vägar_ (Stockholm, 1903), vol. 1, p. 475)​
I checked a few translations but they are incomplete or inconsistent.  The English translation says that the boat was "rigged with a fore and aft sail"; the German, by contrast, says that it "trug ein einziges Segel" (carried a single sail); the French says simply that it was "gréée" (rigged).


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## MattiasNYC

rigga | SAOB | svenska.se 

urna | svenska.se 

Those are the two parts of the word that I perceive. I have no idea how that would apply to the sentence however.


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## MattiasNYC

I should add that it seems to me to be separate from the parts regarding the sail(s) and mast. Either it's a term for the process that was described earlier in the sentence or it's an additional step in the process.


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## eeladvised

I agree that it's three separate steps, and I don't think that the first part has anything to do with sails - the boat in question was a tiny canoe-like thing and the skins covered the hull of the boat:

Then we covered her with skins stretched as taut as a drum. A mast, which could be put up and taken down at pleasure, was fixed in crutches in the fore part of the boat, and she was rigged with a fore and aft sail.  (_Central Asia and Tibet_ (London, 1903), vol. 1, p. 413.)​
I got as far as "urna" and "rigga" as well, but how could urns have anything to do with rigging?

Could it be a misprint for "utriggad"?


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## MattiasNYC

I didn't realize it was a boat without sail, but it doesn't really matter as far as the question goes I suppose.

"Utriggad" seems like it fits fine and I could see how a misprint could have happened perhaps, or a misreading at some point.


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## winenous

I've been googling...

In English dinghies can be "lug rigged", which is a type of "fore-and-aft" rigging. And there is a suggestion that the word "lug" is thought to be used because it is the slang English word for "ear". The dictionary entry above for "urna" refers to amphorae, and the word "amphora" is specifically a vessel with handles that look a bit like ears.

Too far-fetched perhaps? But it is consistent with the English translation given by the OP.

Edit: I must admit, the more I think about it, the more far-fetched it seems


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## eeladvised

I think it's intriguing, but I can't find any examples of anyone else using that word, and I think it's unlikely that Hedin would have coined it just like that and expected people to know what he had in mind...  At least I now know that a "fore and aft sail" doesn't mean that there were two sails, a fore one and an aft one, so in that sense the translations in the English and German editions aren't inconsistent with each other.


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## Abbe

What epoc is he writing about? Could it be about the Vikings?


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## eeladvised

No, it's about his expedition to Central Asia around 1900.


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## Abbe

I see.  I was thinking it might be a funeral boat prepared to be burnt.


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## AutumnOwl

Where in Asia is Sven Hedin when he's describing this boat? It could make it easier to understand what the word means/describes, if we knew how the boat looks.


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## eeladvised

He is on the bank of the Tarim river in East Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang Province, China).  On one map he gives the coordinates as 40°52'2'' N, 86°50'45'' E.  But he doesn't seem to have used this canoe for anything more than a short test voyage on the Tarim: Central Asia and Tibet.  Towards the holy city of Lassa : Hedin, Sven Anders, 1865-1952 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
None of the illustrations in the book seem to be showing this particular canoe, unless I overlooked something.


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## Abbe

Do you have a digital version of the Swedish text? I found one on archive.org but the relevant chapter is missing


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## eeladvised

Yes, it's messed up, it has pages from volume 2 instead... both volumes are on hathitrust, but the scan of vol. 1 is the same as on archive.org and has the same problem. I uploaded the missing pages here now: imgur gallery


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## Abbe

Which page is it?


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## eeladvised

475, as stated in my original post in this thread.


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## Abbe

I suggest you ask here

Maringuiden

Or on another Swedish sailing forum. Please do tell if you receive an answer


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## eeladvised

Thanks for the suggestion!  I asked in that forum, and it turns out that it's probably a misprint of "unariggad".  The SAOB doesn't have a separate entry for it, but in the entry for kattrigg it indicates "unarigg" as a synonym.  Both terms actually come from English, "cat-rigged" and "una-rigged"; it means there's one mast and one sail (which is of the fore-and-aft type).

Turns out there's an interesting story behind the name: link.


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## Abbe

I'm glad that you found an answer!


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