His Son, Who Was Called Lear. . .Was Not Called a Wise Man

Dust cloud and 23:00 sun in Reykjavik

It's delightful how often the most classic of stories are the easiest to summarize.

Page 50 out of 121 of Breta sögur, plus about six pages I jumped ahead to translate for Bahb´s thesis, concerning Merlin and his revealing of two dragons beneath the foundations of the fortress king Vortigern was attempting to build. We managed to discover that the dragons, in the Norse translation, were made to breathe poison, rather than fire, and fly, rather than just sort of move about in an indeterminate manner; mighty scholarship! Meanwhile, the translator seems very fond of King Lear, or at least fond of pitying him, as he abbreviates his story very little, and adds some extra dialogue. Little details make all the work worth the effort, or at least entertaining: the completely failure to grasp British geography, but the addition of extra Norwegian geographical details, the addition of little Norse turns of phrase, like ' bearing the helm of terror' for conquering or ruling over, the addition of kings having to discuss things with their þingmen, and the author having to explain that, among the British of those days, it was normal for the eldest to always inherit (silly barbarians). And I have no doubt that the King of Iceland who appears during Arthur´s days in Geoffrey´s Historia will nicely disappear, or Haukr will have some time explaining him to an Icelandic audience.

The thesis itself grows no closer to solidity, but our last little seminar on French sociology with Kevin Wanner is completed, so now there is naught left to distract me, but the vicissitudes of life. Getting increasingly lonely hereabouts; not that I was socializing a whole lot beforehand, but many of the folk are gone, or leaving soon. Thankfully James and Magda will be back soon (and Paul already is), but there will be repercussions. The Ölsmiðjan Session might not last for much longer. The Nerd Monastery is soon to dissolve, when Bahb goes back home to Kentucky to mourn Dixieland summers.

 

Just a summer of translation and thesis-composition, and then there is a good possibility of spending the autumn in transcription (and maybe even learning a little modern Icelandic, like the rest of those fools who think there´s some good reason to actually learn to speak a language), should my luck hold out. Need to sign up for the GRE soon; the price of a good American PhD is having to deal with the mind-fuck of conceptualizing and then participating in a standardized test for graduate school.

 

Met Matthew Driscoll today, the head of the Danish half of the Arni Magnusson Institute; years ago, I don´t think I ever could have imagined I´d find a rant about a rather kooky transcriber of manuscripts in mid 19th century Iceland so entertaining, but there you go. It was awesome. He also shared the insight that the people who sign up in droves every summer to study manuscripts in Copenhagen are a rather strange bunch of folk, wink wink sigh; I think there might have been an implied stab at American nerds, there (and Germans).

 

If anyone still reads this, I apologize for not updating very often. It has grown nearly impossible to decide what, if anything, is worth writing up here; hopefully I haven´t been too far off the mark.