SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Book Reviews 99
Dr Gjerlew's English style includes a few Scandinavianisms but
none are likely to mislead. Shere Thursday (pp. 72, 73) for
Maundy Thursday, however, is now obsolete.
J. E. CROSS
EIRIK THE RED AND OTHER ICELANDIC SAGAS. By GWYN JONES.
London: Oxford University Press, I961. xvi + 3I8 pp.
Translation is ideally a process of assimilation into our
literature, a making English of what had been quite foreign. The
translator's responsibility is, of course, correspondingly high.
The publication of these sagas in the World's Classics series is an
unspoken recognition that assimilation has taken place.
Professor Gwyn Jones's. book is excellent in many ways for
bringing English readers to the literature of Iceland. To this
end he has omitted some stumbling-blocks, such as the genealogies,
and has provided an enthusiastic and illuminating introduction.
His selection could hardly be bettered, the sagas and pcettir being
varied and good entertainment. He seems consciously to have
avoided the traditions of translating from Icelandic: generally
speaking, the archaisms of the Dasent-Morris school are as absent
as the comparative vulgarities of more modern translations. His
aim seems to have been to produce a translation into good English,
shunning both extremes.
There is, however, a good deal of residual quaintness still
present. In a way this is useful, for every reader will be aware
that the sagas are often quaint. It might even be said tha.t this
is one of the properties that attract readers to such literature.
Thus it is clever to retain passages like-" . these arrow-maids
of mine will ha.ve stung some of your comrades with a sleepthorn
ere I sink on the grass" (p. 36). But since such language
occurs only now and then, it makes for a certain unevenness in
style, especially when it is contrasted with phrases such as ­
"humming and hahing", "sent him packing", "to lick into shape".
Some of the archaisms - as the one quoted above - are in the
nice tradition: it is difficult to see the value of such words as
"riever", "moil", "franklin" and "housecarl", Some expressions
are simply pompous - "she proposed to succour him" Worthy
of comment is the peculiar sentence on p. I46 - "He was a bad
Christian, but he had an extensive knowledge of the wastelands"
- brought about by a fusion of two sentences in the original.
Even Icelanders were not always as strange as all that.
The difficulty of nomenclature in translating is one that must