Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1965, Side 56

54 HALLDÓR HALLDÓRSSON
Þegar liðnir voru tveir dagarnir, var hjartað komið neðar-
lega í skóaranum.59
The same applies to the Jutlandish phrase œ hját soð nœjdiid i
ham, which literally means ‘the heart sat low in him’, i.e., ‘he was
dispirited’.00
c) Turning to group 3 of this category, i.e., phrases meaning ori-
ginally that the heart rises in the body, I have not found any phrase
of this type in Icelandic.01 In Danish we find the phrase skyde
hjertet op (i livet) ‘pluck up courage, take heart’.02 Swedish also
has a typical phrase of this kind: ha hjártat i halsgropen with the
variants rned lijártat i halsgropen and hjártat sitter i halsgropen,
which have the same meaning as the English have one’s heart in
one’s mouth.
3rd category
To this category belong, as already mentioned, phrases with the
proper meaning ‘the heart stops heating’.
In Stjórn we three times find the expression hjarta e-s stallrar in
the meaning ‘somebody loses heart’. Stjórn is a thirteenth- or four-
teenth-century West-Scandinavian Bible translation. All the manu-
scripts are considered to be Icelandic. The instances of the expres-
sion are the following:
50 /slenzkar þjóðsögur og -sagnir. Safnað liefir og skráð Sigfús Sigfússon.
XIII (Reykjavík 1957), 108.
00 II. F. Feilberg, Bidrag til en Ordbog over jyske Almuesmðl (Kftbenhavn
1886—1914), under hjœrte.
01 The same metaphor is found in the following sentence: “Hjarlað gekk upp
í háls og ofan í læri á víxl á barúninum” (Benedikt Cröndal, Ritsajn II
(Reykjavík 1951), 205). But this cannot he considered common usage. The
same applies to “Hann her ei hjartað í munninum” (19th century; Sajn af ís-
lenzkum orðskviðum, 130), which seems to be a rendering of the English phrase
to have one’s heart in one’s mouth.
02 ODS, under hjerle.