I started laughing at his funny pronunciation of Icelandic in the beginning. The came the explanation along with a (just about) perfect Icelandic pronunciation... Damn, I just got schooled in my own language by a foreigner.
Dr. Crawford, as a blacksmith I always read the story of Erik Bloodaxe's gift very differently. Skallagrim (a blacksmith himself) was suspicious of the quality of the axe. Axes of the time would have the body forged of iron which is soft, cannot be hardened and does not retain an edge - BUT welded to the edge was a steel bit which would hold an edge and cut very well. I have photographs of a early 10th century Petersen Type M Viking axe which has had the edge micro-bead blasted and polished to reveal the weld where the steel bit was attached to the wrought iron body. If you wanted to give someone a weapon that might fail, one way to do so would be to harden the edge and then not temper it to reduce stress and tension in the steel.This could be done to an axe (sword, spear, seax also)very easily and it would not be visible to the gift recipient. This would result in a steel edge that was very, very hard - but extremely brittle. How brittle? I dropped a chisel I forged and hardened but had not yet tempered from about three feet over a concrete surface and the chisel tip shattered into three pieces. Look at how Skallagrim treats the axe - he uses it in a way that if the axe has been tempered properly he might get a slight chip in the blade, or bend the edge slightly, but certainly it should not break. But not only did it break the steel edge, but the blade shattered. The axe was a trap. If Skallagrim or anyone he passed the axe to had carried it into battle it would likely have shattered on a shield boss, a helmet or against a weapon used defensively - leaving one of Erik's foes unarmed in the middle of a fight. Skallagrim, as a blacksmith, knew this was a possibility and tested for it.
@@heidrekkingofthereidgoths1048 I certainly might be. This idea is funny because when I present it to academics specializing in literature, it gets dismissed out of hand. When I present it to archeologists, they get really thoughtful and ask questions. But when I discuss it with blacksmiths (ones who do it for a living, not a hobbyist like me) they are intrigued. But, yeah, this could be completely off base. But fun to think about.
I consider Egill's Saga a very good source when it comes to learning about the internal political and religious disputes in Scandinavia, especially in Norway, which led people to flee and settle in Iceland. But Egil's Saga, to those who are interesting in Rune Magic, this is one of the most important sources. We have many accounts of famous magicians, but Egill is by far one of the most famous Runic Magician and follower of the god Óðinn. I hope I'm not giving spoilers. Notice that I'm refering to him as "Magician" because historically speaking the Icelandic sources refer to people who practice Magic as Magicians and not Sorcerers; not someone who can pull a bunny out of an hat.
The term for the bunny pulling is conjuring, from the verb to conjure, the practitioner is a conjuror. The modern meaning is more of an illusionist although the older use of the word would bring to mind a more magical or spiritual feeling probably using rituals and chanting.
@@jenniferperrier7563 Not quite. Galdr was part of Seiđr but in Iceland during the 12th and 13th centuries onward Galdr became a seperate activity from Seiđr, and so Galdr was practiced more than Seiđr. Seiđr in Iceland became something for a small percentage of the population. Men in Iceland practiced Galdr and not Seiđr. The very few who practiced Seiđr in Iceland were executed durting the 16th century with the reformation age - Men burned at the stake and women drowned. Seiđr isn't part of Iceland's History because the Old customs were brought to Iceland by Norwegian nobility and during the 10th and 11th century no one from Norwegian nobility practiced Seiđr due to the stigma created around it, especially due to Christianity.
@@ArithHärger My only concern is that it is your hat and no one else's that you are taking things from. My Portuguese is not strong enough to argue with the PSP that you are innocent.
Very cool video on one of my favourite sagas. My cost host Egil Thorsson is going to attempt to tell this saga chapter by chapter, but that's quite a task to learn and tell. Thanks for the great content and inspiring a small channels like us.
Good stuff, you are appreciated. Also, im about halfway through your translation of the Poetic Eddas, and i appreciate all the work you put into that as well.
18:18 It's not out of the realm of possibility. I was once enjoying an afternoon at the tivoli in Copenhagen and bumped into the Queen. Maybe these kind of odd things just seem to happen to us Icelanders for some reason.
No that is because the Danish Queen, just like her oldest son and her father, is very "folkelig" - sort of like a woman of the people without being of the people.
Thank you your work is very appreciated and above par.You have done so much more for old norse history then you know so i just wanted to say thank you for all your work.
Fun fact: A popular beer brand in Iceland is called Egil's Gold. ("Finding Egil's gold" is a thing in Iceland ... and why this is so will get revealed later on in the Saga.) On an unrelated note: Dr. Crawford, are you familiar with the movie Hrafninn Flygur? It would be interesting to hear someone who knows this stuff talk about how this totally awesome "revenge flick" relates to the Sagas.
Interesting, I'm currently doing five sagas at Uni and of the three you mention, we're only studying Egil. The others are the Vinland Sagas, Gisli Sursson's Saga, and The Saga of the People of Eyri
I love posting the staves from Egil's Saga on the page that I run. I'm getting to the point where I have to re-post the postings that I already made. This is definitely a favorite saga of mine and my followers.
Hi, love your take on Egils Saga and your translations, one thing I want to add about Egils first poem, Yngvar, the one Egill made his first poem to, is his grandfather on his mother side not just some neighbour. "Það vor fór Yngvar til Borgar, og var það að erindum, að hann bauð Skalla-Grími til boðs út þangað til sín og nefndi til þeirrar ferðar Beru, dóttur sína, og Þórólf son hennar, og þá menn aðra er þau Skalla-Grímur vildu, að færi" (chapter 31, page 105, in : , Óskar Halldórsson, 1975, reprinted 2018, Bókautgáfan Sæmundur, Reykjavík)
Reminds me of the Rick James Saga where every disastrous tale ends with the words ''cocaine is a hell of a drug...'' Viking home-brew must have been a hell of a drug too :)
Thank you for listening to my comment Jackson Crawford and making the intro snappier, I think it is an improvement and only needs fine tuning with timings. On your previous video "Audiobooks: Behind the Scenes" it was really good because there was nothing before the intro. Here after the intro it feels too quick. Possibly because there needs to be a little rest after the music, allowing it to fade out before starting to speak. It could also be that each clip is for too short time for my adult brain to fully comprehend. I didn't manage to read "Jackson crawfonrd's Old Norce Channel" as it was too quick for me.
Wait. This guy was busting rhymes when he was only three? Feels oddly familiar, though... Oh, right. Davy Crockett. Apparently, that guy was killing bears when he was only three. So, is there some sort of traditional significance to associating three year olds with these clearly aggrandizing exaggerations? That might be worth a thesis.
You have obviously never met a three-year-old before. If you ever see one, RUN. Lest they start writing insulting poems and try to hack your head with axes. Three years olds are utter psychopaths.
Whenever I hear wolves in someone's ancestry I immediately make the link to Oðinn. In fact, if you take Erik the Reds ancestry and line it up with the gods, and take Bur/Buri to be one and the same then a kenning for them or him is 'wolf'. Bur and Buri are Odins father and grandfather. Eriks ancestry: There was a man named Thorvald, the son of Asvald, the son of Ulf, the son of Yxna-Thoris. Thorvald is Thor-ruler aka thunder ruler aka Thor. Ásvald is god-ruler aka Odinn. Then we come to Ulfr, which reveals to us Odinn is born of a wolf, and that Bur/Buri are said wolves. And Yxna means Oxen which is Auðumbla. So in fact you could suppose the Æsir are all wolves and their conflict with wolves at Ragnarok perhaps points at infighting. Which I suppose is quite common in the sagas and also in literature about early Germanic kings like the Franks. Definitely Gregory of Tours writings reminded me of the end times.
Wow I'm late, but basically through linguistic analysis of the original texts I assume in combination with grammer and spelling differences scholars can use modern icelandic to kind of back step to the original sound, like reading a dead language by walking it through a modern similar language first such as using Italian to understand Latin or German to understand old high German. Obviously I'm not a scholar of these things and don't know any of this I'm just taking a guess in hopes to help with your question using my own understanding, don't take my word as law though and fact check.
If anything of this is correct and according to my family tree I am related to Egill, I have not inherited many of his attributes, not good with an axe or much of an poet
Funny, I read your parody version of the poem "My mother told me" in the Saga of the People of Tatooine Dale before I knew anything about the original!
I would like to have the full intro back. :( Egill seems to be a psychopath. :D I don't want to be unthankful, I do really love your videos. But I politely beg you to make a detailed video about the mediopassive voice in Old Norse sometime in the future. I hope, you haven't overlooked that topic. I just cannot understand the idea of the mediopassive voice, no matter how much I read about it. I don't know what's the difference to a normal passive voice, I don't understand the etymology of the mediopassive suffixes and I don't know what it is good for. For conlanging purposes I need to understand the historical development of the mediopassive voice too (etymology of the suffix, how it came to such a grammatical feature).
@@hbriem That could be. It's in the alliterative context of "standa" in the same line and "stýra" in the line after. Steering the ship would place him at the stern. So it could be as you say "stand at the bow, steer the precious ship" with the image of him performing different tasks of sailing. Or it could he's just saying "I'm on a boat" two times in a row (so an example of poetic parallelism, also sometimes called pleonasm) and "standa upp í stafni" was an easy was to say that while conforming to the poetic form. One interesting point in your favor though is the word 'skip' also would alliterate and maybe could have been used here. (Ertu Íslendingur? Þú veist örugglega betur en ég... getur maður sagt 'standa í skipi' eða hljómar það óeðlilegt?) -- Edited to fix grammar
@@christopherrowley7506 Ég er Íslendingur já. This poem, unlike others of the period, is basically in modern Icelandic vernacular. We would still say "standa frammi í stafni". My old Ice Lit teacher thought that was actually strong evidence that the poem might be by a precocious boy who knew or cared little about the details of ship-steering.
The Mammen Axe could not chop the head of an ox; a true Daneaxe can- as shown with a horse in the Bayeux Tapestry. Do not be so hard on yourself; you are a handsome man, an intelligent man, and you also seem like a very nice guy. You are not Egil/Skallagrim/Kveldulf.
When it says that he's 3 years old, is that a phrase that's more like an adjectives explaining that he's been telling stories for three years of his life or is that to say that he was a little baby kid 3 years old from the womb able to tell stories? I'm assuming what is being said is that he's saying that he has been a Storyteller for 3 years, not that he is 3 years old. Is that correct or is he the most gifted three-year-old kid in the world? LOL
I started laughing at his funny pronunciation of Icelandic in the beginning. The came the explanation along with a (just about) perfect Icelandic pronunciation... Damn, I just got schooled in my own language by a foreigner.
It's ok. It feels weird at first, but eventually one gets used to it. ~An American English speaker 🙂
Dr. Crawford, as a blacksmith I always read the story of Erik Bloodaxe's gift very differently. Skallagrim (a blacksmith himself) was suspicious of the quality of the axe. Axes of the time would have the body forged of iron which is soft, cannot be hardened and does not retain an edge - BUT welded to the edge was a steel bit which would hold an edge and cut very well. I have photographs of a early 10th century Petersen Type M Viking axe which has had the edge micro-bead blasted and polished to reveal the weld where the steel bit was attached to the wrought iron body.
If you wanted to give someone a weapon that might fail, one way to do so would be to harden the edge and then not temper it to reduce stress and tension in the steel.This could be done to an axe (sword, spear, seax also)very easily and it would not be visible to the gift recipient. This would result in a steel edge that was very, very hard - but extremely brittle. How brittle? I dropped a chisel I forged and hardened but had not yet tempered from about three feet over a concrete surface and the chisel tip shattered into three pieces.
Look at how Skallagrim treats the axe - he uses it in a way that if the axe has been tempered properly he might get a slight chip in the blade, or bend the edge slightly, but certainly it should not break. But not only did it break the steel edge, but the blade shattered.
The axe was a trap. If Skallagrim or anyone he passed the axe to had carried it into battle it would likely have shattered on a shield boss, a helmet or against a weapon used defensively - leaving one of Erik's foes unarmed in the middle of a fight. Skallagrim, as a blacksmith, knew this was a possibility and tested for it.
Man, thank you for sharing this
This
That is very interesting and a really cool thought on this subject. Thank you.
I don't think an axe with silver inlay was meant to be used as a weapon in battle, as Dr. Crawford implied. Maybe you're reading too much into this.
@@heidrekkingofthereidgoths1048 I certainly might be. This idea is funny because when I present it to academics specializing in literature, it gets dismissed out of hand. When I present it to archeologists, they get really thoughtful and ask questions. But when I discuss it with blacksmiths (ones who do it for a living, not a hobbyist like me) they are intrigued. But, yeah, this could be completely off base. But fun to think about.
A cowboy helping me through my Icelandic course. I love it, thank you.
Egill: skald, runemaster, warrior, party animal. My favorite saga!
And killer and spontaneous poet between 3 y.o. and old age.
Don't forget general menace to society
I consider Egill's Saga a very good source when it comes to learning about the internal political and religious disputes in Scandinavia, especially in Norway, which led people to flee and settle in Iceland. But Egil's Saga, to those who are interesting in Rune Magic, this is one of the most important sources. We have many accounts of famous magicians, but Egill is by far one of the most famous Runic Magician and follower of the god Óðinn. I hope I'm not giving spoilers. Notice that I'm refering to him as "Magician" because historically speaking the Icelandic sources refer to people who practice Magic as Magicians and not Sorcerers; not someone who can pull a bunny out of an hat.
The term for the bunny pulling is conjuring, from the verb to conjure, the practitioner is a conjuror. The modern meaning is more of an illusionist although the older use of the word would bring to mind a more magical or spiritual feeling probably using rituals and chanting.
Seiđr
@@jenniferperrier7563 Not quite. Galdr was part of Seiđr but in Iceland during the 12th and 13th centuries onward Galdr became a seperate activity from Seiđr, and so Galdr was practiced more than Seiđr. Seiđr in Iceland became something for a small percentage of the population. Men in Iceland practiced Galdr and not Seiđr. The very few who practiced Seiđr in Iceland were executed durting the 16th century with the reformation age - Men burned at the stake and women drowned. Seiđr isn't part of Iceland's History because the Old customs were brought to Iceland by Norwegian nobility and during the 10th and 11th century no one from Norwegian nobility practiced Seiđr due to the stigma created around it, especially due to Christianity.
@@colinp2238 I can pull all sorts of things from an hat, provided that those things are already there before my magic tricks :p
@@ArithHärger My only concern is that it is your hat and no one else's that you are taking things from. My Portuguese is not strong enough to argue with the PSP that you are innocent.
You sell yourself short with respect to your brother-both of you are delightful and handsome!
I do school visits for primary school children studying Vikings in the UK. I base the day loosely around Egil's Saga. It's a fantastic narrative.
"Perhaps another point of resemblance to my family."
I'm DEAD! :D :D :D
boy is that ever a beautiful setting! lovely mountains for telling old tales
This was the first saga I ever read and it got me hooked.
Þetta er mjög flott! Ég hef samt svo erfitt að hlusta á þetta í gamalli íslensku :D
Couldn't help but laugh when you essentially called yourself a mean introvert.
Again lovely coverage of these sagas, highly appreciated!
Very cool video on one of my favourite sagas. My cost host Egil Thorsson is going to attempt to tell this saga chapter by chapter, but that's quite a task to learn and tell. Thanks for the great content and inspiring a small channels like us.
Good stuff, you are appreciated. Also, im about halfway through your translation of the Poetic Eddas, and i appreciate all the work you put into that as well.
18:18 It's not out of the realm of possibility. I was once enjoying an afternoon at the tivoli in Copenhagen and bumped into the Queen. Maybe these kind of odd things just seem to happen to us Icelanders for some reason.
No that is because the Danish Queen, just like her oldest son and her father, is very "folkelig" - sort of like a woman of the people without being of the people.
Thank you! Have a great day. Hugs & sunshine 🌞 N
Thank you!
Egil's Saga is my absolute favourite!
Drengr is very similar to the modern danish "drenge" which means "boys". Which would fit into the context of the rest of the translation.
11:30 - so that's the line! Check out "Danheim - Skylda" (ignore the pronunciation), you would like that! :)
Thanks very much, dr. Crawford, for this!
"No... you're too much trouble when you're sober." @ 5:50 he was only 3. OMG ROF LMAO
Thank you your work is very appreciated and above par.You have done so much more for old norse history then you know so i just wanted to say thank you for all your work.
We should all read and study Egil’s saga, it is beautiful and fascinating (as well as The Iliad and The Odyssey).
Fun fact: A popular beer brand in Iceland is called Egil's Gold. ("Finding Egil's gold" is a thing in Iceland ... and why this is so will get revealed later on in the Saga.) On an unrelated note: Dr. Crawford, are you familiar with the movie Hrafninn Flygur? It would be interesting to hear someone who knows this stuff talk about how this totally awesome "revenge flick" relates to the Sagas.
Hrafninn Flygur is more or less just a spaghetti western, just dressed up in Viking attire.
Which would be right up the doctor's alley I presume
5:00 brother burn!
My favorite saga.
The axe immediately came to mind actually.
Ha. The preview captions think you're a mold nurse specialist.
Is it true that Egill's grandfather was (or was at least thought to be) a werewolf??
yes he was thought to be a shapeshifter and take the form of a wolf at night
Interesting, I'm currently doing five sagas at Uni and of the three you mention, we're only studying Egil. The others are the Vinland Sagas, Gisli Sursson's Saga, and The Saga of the People of Eyri
Thank you
Please publish your translation of Egills Saga. Would really like to read it.
Google for "Egil's Saga" and "sagadb"
I love posting the staves from Egil's Saga on the page that I run. I'm getting to the point where I have to re-post the postings that I already made. This is definitely a favorite saga of mine and my followers.
Hi, love your take on Egils Saga and your translations, one thing I want to add about Egils first poem, Yngvar, the one Egill made his first poem to, is his grandfather on his mother side not just some neighbour.
"Það vor fór Yngvar til Borgar, og var það að erindum, að hann bauð Skalla-Grími til boðs út þangað til sín og nefndi til þeirrar ferðar Beru, dóttur sína, og Þórólf son hennar, og þá menn aðra er þau Skalla-Grímur vildu, að færi" (chapter 31, page 105, in : , Óskar Halldórsson, 1975, reprinted 2018, Bókautgáfan Sæmundur, Reykjavík)
and Egill is 12 when Grímur kills Brák, his nanny, so he should be about 13 when he goes with Þrórólfur (chapter 40, page 129, same version as above)
Are you in Laramie, Wyoming?
5:03 relatable. just like me fr fr.
I am a little confused by the timeline here. It seems that Thorolfr is already engaged to Asgerdr not long after she is born.
Reminds me of the Rick James Saga where every disastrous tale ends with the words ''cocaine is a hell of a drug...'' Viking home-brew must have been a hell of a drug too :)
Damn, you rock a good beard dude!
Thank you for listening to my comment Jackson Crawford and making the intro snappier, I think it is an improvement and only needs fine tuning with timings.
On your previous video "Audiobooks: Behind the Scenes" it was really good because there was nothing before the intro. Here after the intro it feels too quick. Possibly because there needs to be a little rest after the music, allowing it to fade out before starting to speak. It could also be that each clip is for too short time for my adult brain to fully comprehend. I didn't manage to read "Jackson crawfonrd's Old Norce Channel" as it was too quick for me.
What a beautiful place. What place is that?
Why are you not doing this till where did you go
Wait. This guy was busting rhymes when he was only three? Feels oddly familiar, though... Oh, right. Davy Crockett. Apparently, that guy was killing bears when he was only three. So, is there some sort of traditional significance to associating three year olds with these clearly aggrandizing exaggerations? That might be worth a thesis.
You have obviously never met a three-year-old before. If you ever see one, RUN. Lest they start writing insulting poems and try to hack your head with axes. Three years olds are utter psychopaths.
Whenever I hear wolves in someone's ancestry I immediately make the link to Oðinn.
In fact, if you take Erik the Reds ancestry and line it up with the gods, and take Bur/Buri to be one and the same then a kenning for them or him is 'wolf'. Bur and Buri are Odins father and grandfather.
Eriks ancestry: There was a man named Thorvald, the son of Asvald, the son of Ulf, the son of Yxna-Thoris.
Thorvald is Thor-ruler aka thunder ruler aka Thor. Ásvald is god-ruler aka Odinn. Then we come to Ulfr, which reveals to us Odinn is born of a wolf, and that Bur/Buri are said wolves. And Yxna means Oxen which is Auðumbla.
So in fact you could suppose the Æsir are all wolves and their conflict with wolves at Ragnarok perhaps points at infighting. Which I suppose is quite common in the sagas and also in literature about early Germanic kings like the Franks. Definitely Gregory of Tours writings reminded me of the end times.
I have always preferred the darker, wry humor of the bad brothers. I wonder what that says about me.
So you are the evil sibling? 5:10
Yeah I am pmsl at that bit, thought he was going to say "between Baldr and Hodr" then he slips that one in 😂
Someone please tell me Dr. Crawford is single or my heart will turn into ragnarok.
How do you know what Egill Skallagrímsson sounded like in old norse.
Wow I'm late, but basically through linguistic analysis of the original texts I assume in combination with grammer and spelling differences scholars can use modern icelandic to kind of back step to the original sound, like reading a dead language by walking it through a modern similar language first such as using Italian to understand Latin or German to understand old high German. Obviously I'm not a scholar of these things and don't know any of this I'm just taking a guess in hopes to help with your question using my own understanding, don't take my word as law though and fact check.
If anything of this is correct and according to my family tree I am related to Egill, I have not inherited many of his attributes, not good with an axe or much of an poet
Funny, I read your parody version of the poem "My mother told me" in the Saga of the People of Tatooine Dale before I knew anything about the original!
I heard about this in college.
I would like to have the full intro back. :(
Egill seems to be a psychopath. :D
I don't want to be unthankful, I do really love your videos. But I politely beg you to make a detailed video about the mediopassive voice in Old Norse sometime in the future. I hope, you haven't overlooked that topic. I just cannot understand the idea of the mediopassive voice, no matter how much I read about it. I don't know what's the difference to a normal passive voice, I don't understand the etymology of the mediopassive suffixes and I don't know what it is good for. For conlanging purposes I need to understand the historical development of the mediopassive voice too (etymology of the suffix, how it came to such a grammatical feature).
Interesting. Thanks for showing me that point of view!
"Stafn" does not mean "ship". It means the "front end of a ship" or "bow".
synecdoche is a very common element of norse poetry. it's considered a type of 'heiti'
@@christopherrowley7506 Sure but in this case he's obviously saying "standing in the bow". Like Leo in Titanic ;)
@@hbriem That could be. It's in the alliterative context of "standa" in the same line and "stýra" in the line after. Steering the ship would place him at the stern. So it could be as you say "stand at the bow, steer the precious ship" with the image of him performing different tasks of sailing. Or it could he's just saying "I'm on a boat" two times in a row (so an example of poetic parallelism, also sometimes called pleonasm) and "standa upp í stafni" was an easy was to say that while conforming to the poetic form. One interesting point in your favor though is the word 'skip' also would alliterate and maybe could have been used here. (Ertu Íslendingur? Þú veist örugglega betur en ég... getur maður sagt 'standa í skipi' eða hljómar það óeðlilegt?) -- Edited to fix grammar
@@christopherrowley7506 Ég er Íslendingur já. This poem, unlike others of the period, is basically in modern Icelandic vernacular. We would still say "standa frammi í stafni". My old Ice Lit teacher thought that was actually strong evidence that the poem might be by a precocious boy who knew or cared little about the details of ship-steering.
@@hbriem hmmm that's an interesting insight. that could be too
Wait! You’re the “mean and ugly” one? Wow, your brother must make Baldur look like Hannibal Lecter!
Egill is not the type of person you would want at your shindig and I'm hoping that the word has the same meaning in America as it does in Britain.
@Sir Percival the Gallant It's usually a boisterous type of party but if you're coming don't bring your axe!
We call them shindigs, too. (Originally from Kansas.)
Im impressed by your knowledge of norse history! Youre pretty good at pronouncing scandi also, but not perfect ;)
The time now in KL is 11:55am
9994220290413
Egill Lives!
Should let that beard grow :)
Try having Egil's blood in your veins. I need to fight my temper at times.
The Mammen Axe could not chop the head of an ox; a true Daneaxe can- as shown with a horse in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Do not be so hard on yourself; you are a handsome man, an intelligent man, and you also seem like a very nice guy. You are not Egil/Skallagrim/Kveldulf.
I find it funny how you sort of identify with little Egill. 🤭
BR porra
When it says that he's 3 years old, is that a phrase that's more like an adjectives explaining that he's been telling stories for three years of his life or is that to say that he was a little baby kid 3 years old from the womb able to tell stories? I'm assuming what is being said is that he's saying that he has been a Storyteller for 3 years, not that he is 3 years old. Is that correct or is he the most gifted three-year-old kid in the world? LOL