Icelandic Translation

The lone Icelandic translation of Beowulf was done by Halldóra B. Björnsson (1907–68), a poet, novelist, activist, and telephone operator who was one of the founders of the “Icelandic Women’s Culture and Peace Association” (Menningar- og friðarsamtaka íslenskra kvenna) and served on the board of the “Writers’ Association of Iceland” (Rithöfundafélags Íslands). Her first book, Ljóð (Poems), was published in 1949. She published her novel Eitt er það land (There is a Land), focused on her rural childhood, in 1955, Trumban og lútan (The Drum and the Lute), a collection of Greenlandic and African poems in translation, in 1959, and completed a draft of her greatest work, her translation of Beowulf, in 1968 just before she died.1 Anon., “Halldóra B. Björnsson.” A collection of essays and two other volumes of poetry were published posthumously, as was her translation of Beowulf.2 Knútsson, “Intimacy,” p. 189. Björnsson knew medieval Icelandic literature well and even wrote some medieval Icelandic ríma (ballad) poems, a tradition that extends into the modern period.3 Ibid., p. 189. Her translation of Beowulf benefited from that knowledge and experience, as it did from the closeness of modern Icelandic and OE, a closeness that we first witnessed in the early Middle Ages, as seen in the Introduction to this book. OE and ON seem to have been mutually intelligible. Björnsson puts the connection to good use. She used Klaeber as her source text, and did not consult any other translations to do her work. “Her translation gives the Icelandic reader a clear sense of the tone of the original, its intonation and range of meaning; it is as if the long-lost sound of the harp is reborn in her performance.”4 “Þýðing hennar gefur íslenskum lesanda glögga mynd af máli frumtextans, hljómfalli þess og merkingasviði, það er eins og löngu hljónaður hörpusláttur kvikni aftur á ölbekkjum í meðförum hennar.” Björnsson, Bjólfskviða, “Formáli,” p. 7. She left three copies of her work, each mostly complete but with different changes and notes by Björnsson herself but also by others, Stefán Einarsson among them.5 Ibid., p. 8. Pétur Knútsson Ridgewell collated and edited the three versions and published the translation with his foreword as Bjólfskivða (The Lay of Bjólfur) in 1983.

My English translation of Björnsson´s Icelandic reads:

The last half-line in source and target languages are clearly related: þæt / það / that / wæs / var / was / god / goður / good / cyning / konungur / king. The rest of the OE passage’s relationship to the Icelandic is more vexed and requires more effort on the part of the reader to work out. But it can be done. One half-line, however, seems largely unrelated to its Icelandic version: ellen fremedon (performed acts of courage) is rendered örlög drýgðu (performed their fate). Pétur Knútsson (not the editor of the poem) points out, however, that Björnsson’s phrase occurs in Völundarkviða, stanza 3, line 10, and the same formula occurs in Judgment Day 1, line 29: orleg dreogan (accomplish deeds of war). That formula in turn shows up as ellen dreogan (accomplish deeds of valor) in Riddle 58, line 1, ellen dugan (achieve deeds of valor) in Andreas, line 460, and Genesis, line 1288, and finally as ellen fremman (execute deeds of valor) in Beowulf, line 3.7 Knútsson, “Intimacy,” p. 194. Such connections between OE and modern Icelandic appear frequently in Björnsson’s translation. It therefore “not only insists on the inexorable presence of the original text, but also opens up a complex intertextual environment with threads of connection in both the Old English and Old Icelandic corpora … it is as if her text moves freely through the established landscapes of Old English poetic formulae without her knowledge.”8 Ibid., p. 193.