I have assembled a few words requiring either explanation or at least further elucidation:
knarr (p. 6);
narwhal (p. 7);
hersir (p. 8);
garth (p. 9);
wattle (p. 9);
night-gangers (?) (p. 9);
thralls (p. 9);
fjord (p. 9);
jarl (p. 10);
leman (p. 10);
strand-hewing (?) (p. 10);
halidom (p. 11);
crofters (p. 11);
skalds (p. 12).
That brings us to the end of Chapter II of XIX in Book One of Six.
10 comments:
You may've been able to get it from context, but a "strand-hewing" or *strandhögg* was a Viking raid ashore. "Strand" is still used for seashore, and "hewing" of course meant cutting anything the Vikings needed cut -- meat, timber, the throats of local dignitaries, etc.
David,
I did not get it from context. Thanks.
Paul.
Paul:
I used Google to search for "night-gangers," and found a reference in "The Atlantic Medical Weekly" dated February 16, 1895, concerning how in the time of King Alfred medical practice included charms and salves to protect against elves and night-gangers. The latter appear to have been some sort of ghost, but able to exert physical pressure, since the "Medical Weekly" states that they were "believed to inflict upon their victims bodily injury even to the extent of crushing every bone of their bodies, driving them mad, etc."
The "ganger" part of the term derives from an Old Norse word for "go" or "walk," so "night-walker" would be an appropriate full translation -- and I don't understand why "night" WAS translated all the way while "ganger" wasn't.
One famous Viking was nicknamed "the Ganger" because he was so large that he couldn't ride the small horses owned by Vikings of the time, and thus had to walk.
David,
Thank you. I knew in general but not in specifics what a night ganger was but was not able to find it by googling. In IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS?, PA quotes Simon Templar: "We must gang warily..." When I was growing up in the Northwest of England, "gangin' yam" meant "going home."
Paul.
Paul:
Heh heh heh. It's not at all surprising, for anyone who's read "A Sun Invisible," that he'd quote the Saint. I still remember vividly how I snickered when David Falkayn used the alias "Sebastian Tombs"....
Hi, David!
When I was a boy I was a big mystery fan, reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, GK Chesterton, Margery Allingham, Rex Stout, John Dickson Carl, Robert van Gulik. And it puzzles me how I somehow missed "The Saint" books. If I had then known that Poul Anderson was a fan of those books that might gotten me to look up those books.
Sean
Sean:
Well, for some reason I never read any Allingham or Stout, and very little Christie and van Gulik. On the other hand, I discovered Father Brown when I was thirteen or fourteen, and though I'd read a few Holmes stories even earlier, it was at about that same time that I systematically read ALL of Doyle's Holmes work as well as all the Father Brown stories. I began reading Carr sometime around then, too ... but I didn't get into the Saint stories until age sixteen or seventeen. (That was roughly the time that I started reading Anderson, too, but there was no connection.)
Hi, David!
I still have Robert van Gulik's books, because I was and am fascinated by the mysteries set in early T'ang Dynasty China, and how criminal cases were judged by the quite different laws of Imperial China. And I've kept Carr's books as well because of how learned, literate, and FUNNY they could be. And ditto for Doyle and Chesterton's mysteries.
And, of course Poul Anderson tried his hand at writing mysteries as well. Such as his three Trygve Yamamura novels and various short stories, some of them SF as well.
But Charteris' "The Saint" books remains, alas, the big gap in my reading of classical mysteries.
Sean
Sean:
Strictly speaking, the "Saint" stories often WEREN'T classical mysteries. Instead, Simon Templar would find out something wicked was going on, the nature of it would be obvious to him even before the reader saw any of this, and instead of doing detective work, he'd impose justice as he saw it. After all, one of his nicknames WAS "The Robin Hood of Modern Crime."
Although I agree with you about the strengths of Carr's writing, I've long had a problem with the fact that some of the crimes depended on ridiculously precise timing and position. I'm thinking right now of the story in which the murder required sliding a weight down a slanting wire to slam into the victim's head at the moment he walked under the wire. If he'd paused OR picked up his pace after the weight was set in motion, or if something had given the wire and weight greater or lesser friction than the murderer had planned on, it might've been a clean miss. "Hey, could you go back and then come walking this way again?"
Kaor, DAVID!
Noted, what you said about Leslie Charteris' books, which I still hope to look up sometime.
Yes, I see your point about the Carr story you discussed being perhaps too clever to be quite convincing. I was reminded of the "Ellery Queen" mystery in which one of the murder victims died because the criminal counted on his habit of taking an afternoon siesta at PRECISELY the same time every day.
Ad astra! Sean
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