On my blog I have been experimenting with writing skaldic poetry in Old Norse, English, and Norwegian for a while. Recently I tried writing skaldic poems in Norn and this is what I came up with:
Knag hever gert mjer krågan, kornsens stole mjer skorner - eg skyggde ‘na i skugga, skal eg sveltingen melta? In min eru u menen, mageren, sin ek giv ragon - u an domen eg døme, dømer mog: ikke gløme.
(English: “The crow has caused me trouble, it’s stolen little bits of grain from me. I startled it in its hiding place – shall I kill the starving thing? But mine also are the pains, the discomfort, which I give to the unfortunate; and that judgment with which I judge, will judge me: let me not forget.”)
Eg vuna at di folk vinlig vara tage wå dat: drage rebet kring hwåls mitt u renge - rånga ska eg ner eg hånge! For frinjdar, eg vet at fjanjdi fonana nu for mog monar: in kome di vit hannj kramar kirkfolket trångt vat illjvirknon!
(English: “I hope you friendly folks take heed: draw the rope tight around my neck and give it a good tug, I’m going to scream when I hang! For friends, I know that the devil fans the fires for me right now: but when you come, keep in mind that he packs the churchfolk pretty close to the sinners!”)
Any comments or criticisms are welcome. As you can see, I depart from the orthography used on the Nynorn site in a few ways:
1. I reject the use of the letter ð in writing Norn. Instead of the Faroese-looking kallaði/kallaðu, I would rather write the past tense of ōn-verbs (like kalla) as just e.g. kalla (identical with the infinitive) for both singular and plural like in Nynorsk, since I suspect this was the ending in Norn also (compare stanza 34 of The Ballad of Hildina). This also means that an extra syllable doesn't get written where there probably wasn't one (a big concern if writing syllable-counting poetry). This ending for the past tense of these verbs has been explicitly rejected by the Nynorn Project on the grounds of its resemblance to the present plural, but it’s really not that confusing in context (also this class of verbs works this way in at least the Hallingdal dialect of Norwegian; e.g. e kalla “I call,” me kalla “we call,” but also e kalla “I called,” me kalla “we called”). Similarly I reject the silent -ð in past participles of strong verbs and write stole ”stolen” (like in Nynorsk) instead of stolið. I’ve also just written the unstressed front vowel as e rather than vacillate between i and e.
2. I do write the silent letter "-t" in the neuter singular definite article ("kirkfolket," for instance) mostly just for the sake of consistency with Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.
_________________ I teach Old Norse, Norwegian, and classes about medieval Scandinavia at a university in California. I blog about Old Norse and other related subjects at http://tattuinardoelasaga.wordpress.com/
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