Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Page 248

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Marianne Kalinke
villde af latha sina villv” (II, 290:22-23). This kind of thoughtless transferral
of Low German expressions into Icelandic occasionally generates mistrans-
lations. For example, in the legend of Heinrich and Kunegunde the idiomatic
expression “gy hebben mynen willen” (lix,c) - which means so much as “I
am favorably disposed to you” - was transferred word for word into
Icelandic - ”af mier hafit þier ydvarn vilia” (I, 55:6-7) - thereby assuming a
different meaning, however, from that intended in the source. Not all
transfers of words from one language into another are as transparent; most
become evident only upon comparison of the two texts, for example, a
mistranslation in the legend of St. Rochus, which can only be recognized as
such if the Low German text is at hand. In the Passionael we read that the
saint “hadde ok medelidinghe mit den armen elenden seken minschen”
(Cxlix,a). A similar sentence presumably was the basis of the Icelandic
“hann bar og mikit mothlæthe j sinv hiartta vegna fathakra manna og
vthlendra” (II, 152:14). On the surface there is nothing wrong with the
Icelandic; it makes sense. The problem is that in Middle Low German the
word elend means ‘miserable’, ‘unhappy’, or ‘foreign’, when it stands alone,
but in the idiomatic expression elende seken, it refers to lepers. Rochus is
therefore not helping poor foreigners but rather poor lepers.16
The preceding shows the indebtedness of Reykjahólabók to its Low
German source(s). A discussion of Low German loans in the Icelandic
legendary can be somewhat misleading, however, since the evidence put
forth is ipso facto selective. A comparative reading of Reykjahólabók and the
Passionael shows a wide variation in the indebtedness of the former to the
latter not only in regard to language but also content, ranging from
agreement in nearly every word for the space of several lines to several pages
of Icelandic text that has no counterpart in the Passionael. This very
fluctuation - together with the express assumption that the Passionael was
the source of Reykjahólabók - led to Widding’s and Bekker-Nielsen’s
classification.
Throughout Reykjahólabók there is evidence of Low German derivation
even when there is no corresponding matter in the Passionael. What may be
considered interference from a foreign source is evident, for example, in
expressions of time. In the legend of St. Christopher we read that something
occurred “sem klvckan mvndi vera aa millvm .x. xi.” That the translator was
aware of the foreign provenance of the expression is attested by the
following supplementary information - ”en þat er aa vora thavlv nærre
hadeige” (I, 282:23-24). Similar evidence of an awareness of the cultural
dissimilarity in reckoning time occurs twice in the legend of St. George;
16 According to Karl Schiller and August Líibben, Mittelniederdeutsches Wörterbuch
(1875; rpt. Vaduz: Sándig, 1986), “unter ellende seken [werden] gewöhnlich die
miselseken (die Aussátzigen) verstanden... entweder weil sie abgesondert von den
ubrigen Kranken gehalten werden, oder weil ihr Ubel stinkend ist.”