# Icelandic: annotated Tintin



## xrisr

Hæ hæ
I taking my first shaky steps beyond "Colloquial Icelandic".  To get some more exposure to Icelandic, I have been annotating the Tintin book "Svaðilför í Surtsey" (i.e. L’Île Noire, or The Black Island).  I have listed and translated ~750 tricky words and phrases, but a dozen or so are still a mystery to me.  They are generally attested in Ritmálssafn, Íslenskt textasafn, and Tímarit.is, but don't appear in dictionaries, so I can't figure out translations.  Some words or phrases may be too colloquial for dictionaries.  Can anyone help? 

Some of my problem cases are:
Page 24 'krúnk': "Og ég er alveg krúnk."  It may mean 'penniless'.
Page 34 "Hvert í sjóðandi!"  This is said by Snowy when he feels a drop from a leaking whisky barrel.  'Boiling'??
Page 38 'ver': "Veggur!  Þar fór ver."  Said just before a plane crash.
Page 39 'fatabúr':  "Far til fatabúrs og leys allar þarfir."  Said when offering a change of clothing.  'Clothes pantry'??
Page 39 'heimtir': "Úr háska heimtir."  This is heimt/a (-i, -i, -t), and is not in my dictionaries, unlike heimt/a (-a, -aði, -að) = 'demand'.
Page 42 "Gvuð sé þér næstur ... það var á góunni."  Some sort of colloqialism, perhaps?  An expression of disbelief?

Those are half of the words and phrases that I am still puzzling over.  That is enough for now...

Thanks in advance.
Chris


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## Segorian

xrisr said:


> 'krúnk': "Og ég er alveg krúnk." It may mean 'penniless'.


That is correct. _Að vera (alveg) krunk_ is a relatively rare colloquialism for ‘having no money’. Note that according to the usual spelling rules, the word should be written _krunk_.



xrisr said:


> "Hvert í sjóðandi!"


Short for _Hvert í sjóðandi helvíti_. Omitting the word for ‘hell’ creates a euphemism.



xrisr said:


> 'ver': "Veggur! Þar fór ver."


One of a group of fixed expressions containing the word _verr _(adverb, used as the comparative form of _illa_), meaning ‘worse’. Another example is _Því er verr og miður_ (‘unfortunately‘). _Ver_ is a non-standard spelling, influenced by pronunciation. 



xrisr said:


> 'fatabúr': "Far til fatabúrs og leys allar þarfir." Said when offering a change of clothing. 'Clothes pantry'??


Yes. ‘Wardrobe’; a room where clothes are kept. The word is rare nowadays. The sentence as a whole appears to deliberately imitate the style of the old Icelandic sagas.



xrisr said:


> 'heimtir': "Úr háska heimtir." This is heimt/a (-i, -i, -t), and is not in my dictionaries, unlike heimt/a (-a, -aði, -að) = 'demand'.


This _heimta_ means ‘to fetch, get back, recover’. The people in question were ‘rescued from danger’ or something like that.



xrisr said:


> "Gvuð sé þér næstur ... það var á góunni."


A facetious transformation of the common (in older texts) expression _Guð sé oss næstur_, ‘God be with us’. _Gvuð_ is another example of a pronunciation spelling, clearly used here for comedic purposes. _Á góunni_ means ‘In Góa’, that is in the month of the old Icelandic calendar called _góa_ (in earlier times _gói_); in this case, the intended meaning is perhaps a loose ‘some time ago/much earlier this year’.


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## xrisr

Thank you for clearing up those odd words and expressions.  Indeed, several were spoken by crusty old Scots, so those archaisms were deliberate.  It was interesting to learn about 'Góa' and the old Icelandic calendar; and about 'leap weeks'!

Here is the second (and final) set:
Page 40 'marháttaður': "þétt þoka lá yfir Bretlandseyjum og olli marháttuðum slysum."  Maybe 'various'?
Page 40 'rastir': "Leiðin til Kiltoch er um 15 rastir."  Tintin later describes this distance as 15 kilometres. From 'röst'?
Page 42 'spaugelsi': "Ó, það er ægilegt spaugelsisskrímsl."  I get 'awful monster', but not 'spaugelsi'.
Page 50 'réttu megin við': "bófar verða siðaðir ef þeir standa réttu megin við hlaðna byssa."  A cocky statement by Tintin.
Page 50 "fjárans ekkisen klaufaskapur"  Said by someone berating himself.  The word 'ekkisen' is especially odd, to me.
Page 50 "nú er Tinni harður í horn að taka."  This is Snowy's commentary when Tintin uses the butt of a pistol to knock out some villains.
Page 55 'glussast': "nú glussast hann til jarðar."  Said in the context of a plane that is about to land.

Thanks again


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## Segorian

xrisr said:


> 'marháttaður': "þétt þoka lá yfir Bretlandseyjum og olli marháttuðum slysum." Maybe 'various'?


Yes, although there is a ‘g’ missing: _mar*g*háttuðum_.



xrisr said:


> 'rastir': "Leiðin til Kiltoch er um 15 rastir." Tintin later describes this distance as 15 kilometres. From 'röst'?


Yes. _Rastir_ is the plural of _röst_, a unit of distance equivalent to as little as 5 and as much as 12 kilometers, depending on who you ask. Originally, it appears, the distance a person could be expected to walk without _resting_. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was an attempt to reintroduce the old words _stika_ and _röst_ in the new meanings of ‘meter’ and ‘kilometer’.



xrisr said:


> 'spaugelsi': "Ó, það er ægilegt spaugelsisskrímsl." I get 'awful monster', but not 'spaugelsi'.


A jocular loan from the Danish _spøgelse_, ‘ghost’.



xrisr said:


> 'réttu megin við': "bófar verða siðaðir ef þeir standa réttu megin við hlaðna byssa." A cocky statement by Tintin.


‘On the right side of’. Compare _þeim megin_ = ‘on that side’; _vinstra megin_ = ‘on the left side’, etc. _Megin_ presumably derived from _veg(u)r_.
In this case, ‘at the right end of’, since we’re talking about a gun. _Hlaðna byss*u*_, by the way.



xrisr said:


> "fjárans ekkisen klaufaskapur" Said by someone berating himself. The word 'ekkisen' is especially odd, to me.


Sometimes_ ekkisens_. A mild expletive used primarily between the late 19th century and the middle of the 20th. Probably a corruption of a Danish curse word. The title of Mark Twain’s “The Awful German Language” was translated a number of decades ago under the Icelandic title “Bölvuð ekkisen þýskan”.



xrisr said:


> "nú er Tinni harður í horn að taka." This is Snowy's commentary when Tintin uses the butt of a pistol to knock out some villains.


_Vera harður í horn að taka_ means to be a formidable opponent. ‘Hard to take by the horns’, if we want to be literal.



xrisr said:


> 'glussast': "nú glussast hann til jarðar."


I hadn’t heard this before. _Glussi_ was originally a name for alcohol smoothened through the addition of glycerine. Later the word was applied to various similarly viscous liquids, more specifically hydraulic fluids. I imagine that the verb _glussast_ is used here to suggest that the plane is not landing in a straight line but rather in the manner of liquid being thrown about.


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## xrisr

Thanks again.  My laborious annotations are now more-or-less complete.  Now for the fun part, reading!


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## Wilma_Sweden

xrisr said:


> Thanks again.  My laborious annotations are now more-or-less complete.  Now for the fun part, reading!


What a beautiful glossary! This makes we want to attempt reading it in Icelandic (if I can find it in my local library...). I'll borrow the Swedish version at the same time, in case I give up...


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## xrisr

Thanks to Segorian I have a update for BlackIsland.pdf.  About 30 entries are corrected or improved.  Happy reading.


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## xrisr

Hi,
I have yet another question related to _Svaðilför í Surtsey_.  This time it is to do with grammar rather than vocabulary.

On page 21 we see someone say, "Ekki er ein bára stök.  Ég hef farið lyklavillt."  From the context I know that this means, "It’s just one thing after another.  I have the wrong key."

The first sentence is clearly a fixed expression, and makes sense.  However the second sentence seems to contain two supines -- _farið_ (from _fara_, to go, begin, etc) and _villt _(from _villa_, to mislead) -- which is too much for me to digest.  And compounding the latter with _lykla_ is also hard to understand.  I feel that the passive voice is involved, but I can't reconcile it with (what little) I know about the passive.

While we are at it, the blurb on the back says, "Dularfullir menn reyna hvað eftir annað að koma Tinna fyrir kattarnef."  I take this to mean something like, "Mysterious men are trying time and time again to bump off Tintin."  Is that right?

Chris


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## Segorian

xrisr said:


> From the context I know that this means, "It’s just one thing after another.


Yes. _Ekki er ein bára stök_ is, as you remark, a fixed expression. It exists in several versions, of which _sjaldan er ein báran stök_ is the most common one.



xrisr said:


> the second sentence seems to contain two supines -- _farið_ (from _fara_, to go, begin, etc) and _villt _(from _villa_, to mislead) -- which is too much for me to digest. And compounding the latter with _lykla_ is also hard to understand. I feel that the passive voice is involved, but I can't reconcile it with (what little) I know about the passive.


This is simply another fixed expression. The original one is _fara villt_, which in Old Icelandic had the meaning ‘to become lost’ and was therefore synonymous with _fara _(or _verða_)_ villur vega_. So one could say of a group of men that they had _farið villt_ or that they had _farið villir vega_.

A later meaning of _fara villt_ was ‘to make a mistake’ or ‘to be wrong about (something’), and this was eventually extended to such expressions as _fara mannavillt_ (‘to mistake one person for another’); _fara húsavillt_ (‘to accidentally go to the wrong house’); _fara línuvillt_ (‘to read (or quote) the wrong line’); and indeed _fara lyklavillt_ (‘to use (or grab) the wrong key’).



xrisr said:


> the blurb on the back says, "Dularfullir menn reyna hvað eftir annað að koma Tinna fyrir kattarnef." I take this to mean something like, "Mysterious men are trying time and time again to bump off Tintin." Is that right?


That is correct. _Að koma e-m fyrir kattarnef_ is yet another fixed expression and has the meaning you guessed. Its origin is disputed, but at least two places in Iceland are called _Kattarnef _(one of which is often identified with the _Katanes_ mentioned in Landnáma). Both are cliffs (I seem to remember Tintin being forced to jump off one of those in the book…).


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## xrisr

Thank you.  I wrestled long and hard with _Ég hef farið lyklavillt_, but now it is quite clear.  Indeed, _fara <e-ð>vilt_ is a very elegant and handy construction.
As for _kattarnef_, linking it to the placename _Katanes_ makes sense.  But you will appreciate how such words bamboozle foreigners who just see 'nose of a cat'!


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## Segorian

xrisr said:


> But you will appreciate how such words bamboozle foreigners who just see 'nose of a cat'!


Yes. Actually, though, not many Icelanders give a second thought to the underlying meaning of everyday expressions like this.


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## Segorian

xrisr said:


> I wrestled long and hard with _Ég hef farið lyklavillt_


It occurred to me that one of the things that make this unnecessarily difficult is that none of the words _mannavillt_, _lyklavillt_, etc. seem to have found their way into dictionaries, probably because they are not seen to fit into any of the usual lexical categories. In an expression such as _fara villt_, the word _villt_ can be analysed as a specialised use of the neuter of the adjective _villtur_. In contrast, _mannavillt_, _lyklavillt_, etc., cannot be treated in the same manner, because the adjectives _*mannavilltur_, _*húsavilltur_, _*línuvilltur_ and _*lyklavilltur_ do not exist. Troubled by this, lexicologists simply omit all of the words in _-villt_. (The level of confusion can be illustrated by the fact that the Ritmálssafn lists _manna*villt*_ as an adverb, _húsa*villtur*_ as an adjective, and _línu*villtur*_ again as an adverb.)

Older texts contain expressions such as _fara daga villt_ (‘to become confused as to the day’). Today, this always becomes _dagavillt_ (because so perceived and pronounced). Finally, unlike the words already mentioned, the adjective _áttavilltur_ (‘having no direction’, literally or figuratively) is normally used as such, although the expression _fara áttavillt_ is also occasionally seen.


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## xrisr

Another small question related to Svaðilför í Surtsey.  

Tintin is standing with his hands tied beside by an open fire, and says,

Skyldi ég? ... logandi *brenni*.  Náði einum.  Þrýsti honum á snærið.  [Ellipsis is in original text.]
Could I?  ... a burning ember(?).  Got one.  I am pressing it onto the cord.​
From the context it looks like 'brenni' is a noun, and might mean either 'ember' or 'firewood'.  BÍN lists a noun 'brenni', but it shows it to be _neuter_, which is at odds with subsequent sentences.

It is not in my Is-En dictionary.  There are plenty of examples of 'brenni' in Ritmálssafn and timarit.is, but as usual I can't infer the meaning from those fragments.  Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.


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## Segorian

_Brenni_ is firewood, and is definitely neuter. However, it is also uncountable, so _logandi brenni_ refers to the entire amount of wood burning and not to individual pieces thereof. Presumably, the shift to the masculine indicates that the translator is thinking about a piece of wood, the most common term for which is _viðarbútur_. Therefore: _Náði einum [bút]..._ etc.


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