I Write about Reindeer, and Gaze at Northern Skies

[starfishstar]

Those of you who also follow rt_morelove might now understand why I've spent most of my spare time lately googling information about reindeer and random locations in Norway – because I'm writing an adaptation of The Snow Queen!

Yes, after giving over 2 or 3 months of my life to stage managing a play version of The Snow Queen, I'm now also writing a version of it... I actually think I'd enjoy someday writing an entirely "original" adaptation (for example like Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs) – it's such an endlessly fun story to play with; it's usually kept as a children's story more or less in line with the original, but I think it would be interesting to give it adult characters, and maybe two female protagonists instead of a girl and a boy – f/f romance maybe? Anyway, who knows, someday I may also write a full-length original novel version, but first, right now, I needed something to write for rt_morelove and stumbled on this idea of doing a Snow Queen fusion (Harry Potter characters and universe + Snow Queen plot) and it's SUPER FUN to write. Whee!

So, yeah, I spend lots of my time lately looking at pictures like this:


(Photo from Wikipedia.)

That's the town of Honningsvåg, very near to the very, very northern tip of Norway. I was gazing soulfully at this picture at work the other day, and showed it to my colleague when he happened to pass by my desk, and thus learned an interesting difference between the two of us: When I look at this picture, I think, WANT, whereas his response was, "If that's the sky that's coming at me, I think I'll run the other way."

Anyway: looking at pictures of far northern landscapes = always the best, writing a fusion of Harry Potter and The Snow Queen = SO FUN, and best of all having this project (and a deadline attached to it) has kicked me back into writing regularly for the first time in ages. As a direct result of all this writing-ness, today, too, I finally got unstuck on another fic that's been sitting here for ages: It's going to be four chapters total, and I've been stalled on the very last (but crucial) bit of Chapter 3 for months. Tonight, just now, I figured out and wrote that last bit, and finished the chapter. Wheeeeee!

I didn't do NaNoWriMo in November, partly because I didn't have time and partly because the friends here in town who'd wanted to do it together ended up not doing it. Then I didn't do NaNoWriMo in January for the same reasons (still didn't really have enough time, and the group of friends who'd said they didn't have time in November but would totally do it in January...didn't end up doing it in January). But partway through this Snow Queen/Snow Wolf writing process, during a week when I was pushing myself to write at least 1000 words each day to keep up toward the rt_morelove deadline, I decided to aim for a "mini" NaNo this month, see if I can get my writing by the end of January to average out, at the very minimum, to 500 words/day. Doing well so far! (Average of over 600 words/day, and that's only because I didn't really start writing in earnest until partway through the month.)

Writing mojo reclaimed, or at least once again visible to the naked eye, after a long disappearing act.

Comments

[nerakrose]

i also look at that photo and think WANT. :D also, honningsvåg! what an adorable name ♥ i may need to steal it. i've a number of towns that still need names... (i'm currently undecided on whether i want one of the capital cities to be ikornnes or vatnsenden. i love them both. norwegians are geniuses at placenames.)

[starfishstar]

I really can't tell you how glad it makes me that you also understand the pull of landscapes like that!

Speaking of names in this part of the world... There's also a lighthouse on the northern coast of Nordkapp called Helnes fyr... please tell me "Helnes" really does mean what it looks like, "hell peninsula"?? (Even if you tell me it doesn't mean that, I'm probably going to want to keep imagining that it does...)

Btw, when my colleague came by as I was looking at these pictures, I went on a long tangent to him about how the word "hell" actually comes from Finnish. ;-)

And I'm going to put in a vote for Squirrel Peninsula. Aw! (I really kind of love Icelandic place names...they're so, so, so unbelievably literal-minded, but there's something quite appealing about it – and very helpful to language learners! Until I took a language class, most of the vocabulary I knew consisted of geographical features, gleaned from names of places I traveled, because pretty much every place name is literally a description of that place.)

[nerakrose]

:D definitely do. i did grow up in that kind of landscape, after all. :) it's very home-y for me.

oh! i don't know for sure, but that's what my money'd be on. i can't really think of what else it'd be, unless it's hel as in whole, or maybe it's a variation/evolution of hella which is a kind of plateau/something very flat, at any rate.

yes, educate the masses about strange language exchanges :D

right??? SQUIRREL PENINSULA. how could i not? tbh the best way of finding placenames is to just zoom in on remote areas and look for local placenames. chances that anyone would know it's a real place are slim, and gems turn up that way! i also always write down interesting names i see on street signs. down where my mum lives (lolland-falster) there's all sorts of odd little placenames. Uglemose! owl swamp! isn't that just the BEST? i get the impression that for the nordic countries (finland too) literal descriptions are standard for placenames. even the really weird 'makes no sense' placenames are that too, only the language/the placename has evolved over time to make them look weird. Horsens in denmark for example, is just? really weird? it doesn't look danish at all. but then i spoke to one of the place name researchers at uni, and she said "ah no, see, that's actually a conservative name that's barely changed - and yes, it comes from horse. the english didn't change that word much." so horsens was originally (as much as we know) horsanæs - horse pensinsula, horsa being a sort of plural genitive of hors. (in modern danish horse is hest.). here's some of the spelling forms from oldest to newest: hors (1146), horsahnet (1150, arabic map), horsenes (1157), horsnæs (1231), hrossanes (flateyjarbók, 14th century), horsenize (1340), horsenes & horsness in the same (german) text (1439), horszens (1525) and then in 1664 the modern form, horsens, shows up.

[starfishstar]

I love that you look at that landscape and see home. :-) For me it's definitely more "didn't find it until I was an adult, but feel very at home there" - though I did grow up with a lot of dramatic, stark northern Atlantic coasts from the North American side of things, which have some of the same feel!

Thank you, then I will continue to believe in Hell Peninsula Lighthouse. Excellent. (It's probably just "flat peninsula," but...)

So interesting about the Danish place name that doesn't sound Danish - but is actually an older form. Funny that English would have the more conservative form of the word, especially since I usually think of Icelandic as preserving older word forms. (I was looking up a lot of Old Norse names for the story I'm writing, and Old Norse...pretty much just looks like Icelandic, with slight spelling differences!)

I also love how a lot of places in the north of Scotland (especially Shetland and Orkney) retain Scandinavian elements in their names, because of the long Norwegian presence there. "Vik" becomes "Wick" etc. I could pore over that stuff endlessly. :-)

[nerakrose]

i've never been to america, but i've a friend in newfoundland who posts amazing photos on facebook every now and then. they actually have ice floating into their bay like 8-10 months out of the year! amazing.

hors* does exist in icelandic - as hross. :D it's pretty conservative. (it's very common in both english and icelandic that some words have letters/sounds trading places. e.g. what vs hvað, where the latter is the more conservative form.) that word doesn't exist in danish anymore that i know of, the modern hest (icelandic hestur) has a different root. still an old word, but for some reason the other word fell out of use in danish while this one persisted, and icelandic kept both words.

there is really a great number of norse placenames in the uk! some dialects even preserve some norse vocab that isn't used in the standard language. i'd love to visit shetland and the orkneys one day - i've only ever sailed past on the norrøna :(

[starfishstar]

I do want to get to Newfoundland someday! It does seem like North America's answer to Scandinavia, both geographically and in some ways culturally.

Oh, that's interesting; you know what, German retained that word too: as "Ross," an older/poetic word for horse. (In addition to the everyday word "Pferd.")

I was so disappointed that by the (one) time I took the Norröna ferry (and I know I can never do it again because I was soooo seasick the whole time), they'd already discontinued the Shetland stopover. How amazing if I could have stopped in the Shetlands! I did get to do the 2 1/2 day stopover in the Faroes, though. That was marvelous.

[nerakrose]

pretty much! i wouldn't be surprised if many newfies had scandinavian ancestry either, haha. :)

ohh! i didn't know that, thanks :D

yeah, they'd discontinued it the last time i was on it (2012) which was sad :( i'd have loved to get to stop there even if for just a few hours. did get 6 hours in tórshavn instead, though. (yes to the seasickness, omg. i've been on it three times (two round trips and one single trip) and i've been SO sick all times.)

[indybaggins.livejournal.com]

Wow at that picture, it's making me shiver just looking at it! I'm with your colleague on that one *big eyes*

An f/f romance would be marvellous! There aren't enough out there.

There's nothing like the feeling of finally being un-stuck on a story, congrats! :) And good luck with your mini-Nano, keep it up! <3

[starfishstar]

Ha ha, and I'm not surprised that you had the opposite response of nerak_rose above... you with your tropical countries. ;-D

I totally want to write something with f/f romance soon... I've written f/m and m/m (and of course lots of gen) so it feels only right to try my hand at f/f as well. :-) (Not to mention all the political and feminist feelings I have about the lack of representation of queer women – not just in fic, but in published works as well; even in the world of LGBT publishing, even in the world of books targeted at teens, which is overall really improving in huge amazing strides, still representation of girls ALWAYS seems to lag behind representation of boys.) One thing I did recently was include a female couple as a side pairing in an f/m story I'm writing. But I hope not to just leave it at that. :-)

[indybaggins.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes, me and the tropical climates indeed! I'll have you know I am now doing hot yoga and enjoying the heat immensely *g*

And I can only cheer you on because YES there so needs to be more representation of queer women. Go for iiiit! :)

[starfishstar]

The sad thing is that when I lived in Thailand at age 18, I could deal with the heat and humidity (I was *always* a sweaty, messy haired, absurd-looking farang, but I could live with the discomfort!) but nowadays with a host more physical problems and sensitivities (and constant headaches), I don't even know if I could. :-(

Yes queer women! Right now I am starting by subversively slipping them into an otherwise het story like it's no big thing (because it is no big thing) but I'm going to keep pushing myself to expand what I feel capable of writing about, even if it's beyond my own first-hand experience. ('Cause, c'mon, gay wizards under fairy tale curses is also beyond my first-hand experience. ;-)

[indybaggins.livejournal.com]

I think heat is a habit? I know whenever I've been in Asia for a longer period of time I start like, wearing fleece jackets at night because it's 'chilly' even though it's still tropically hot, it's just what I've gotten used to? Or it is for me, but then I spend all winter absolutely freezing even just in Belgium or the UK. I might be part reptilian *g*

I love the idea of background!lesbians in everything! But yes, having a romance like that as the focus of a story is even more rewarding. If I can ever help with anything feel free to ask (like, embarrassing lesbian sex questions - I'm your girl, I have very little shame ;D)

[starfishstar]

It's more than just building up the habit of it, unfortunately. :-( That's how I felt about it at 18, living in super-humid Thailand - it's not my preferred state to be in, but I can adjust and live with it. Nowadays, it's more a matter of being anywhere in a range from "incredibly physically uncomfortable" to "nauseous and sick." I don't like being too cold, either, but it's preferable to being sick. :-(

Ha, okay, I'll remember that! I am not by nature a writer of sex - my stories are T at most, and I think I *once* pushed myself, with a great deal of focus and effort, just barely to the border of M. But I will definitely file that away for future reference: ask Indy embarrassing lesbian sex questions! ;-)

[nundu-art.livejournal.com]

Do you remember Amamama from the Quill? She's Norwegian, and I'm sure could offer a lot of information about geography, history, and mythology in that area! She is on LJ and FB.

[starfishstar]

Hi! You know, I don't think I actually know what the Quill is...but I'm guessing a fandom space from back in the day? I found Harry Potter fandom so late that a lot of the best gathering places had pretty much closed by the time I found them. huldrejenta has been lovely about letting me send Norwegian questions her way, though. :-)

[gilpin25.livejournal.com]

LOVE the picture. Perhaps I'm the mid-point between you and your colleague, because seeing something like that makes me want to stare and dream while inside and warm! ;P

It's great to hear it's helped get you writing regularly again. I also owe the event a thank you, as it was my first effort for ages and the first for even longer that didn't feel like a real effort instead of a pleasure.

I wanted to ask about the Norwegian names, Dúfa and Dyrfinna, and whether you chose them specially? And whether you've visited the Shetland Isles?

[starfishstar]

There is great pleasure to be had in looking out at dramatic weather from the comfort of coziness indoors! :-)

Yes, I had so much fun researching names for the story!! I really did find myself googling around, trying to find out if there are any Norwegian names that mean "deer"... (Wanted to match the names to the Animagus form, of course!) What I settled on was choosing from a list of various names starting in the Old Norse "Dýr-", meaning "deer" or "animal". Dýrfinna/Dyrfinna was one of the few that does still seem to have some usage in modern Norwegian and Icelandic, rather than only the no-longer-spoken Old Norse. Dúfa, of course, is "dove". ...I mean, not exactly, really the name Dúfa comes from Norse mythology and is one of nine sisters who all have names that are different types of ocean waves. But I also found references to "dúfa" meaning "dove" or "pigeon" as well as "wave" in Old Norse (and it means dove/pigeon in modern Icelandic, too) so I counted that as close enough!

No, I haven't been to Shetland, nor Orkney, to my sorrow! I did once see a small bit of Shetland, in passing, from the deck of the ferry going from Denmark to the Faroes to Iceland. I'm totally fascinated by that area, the mix of Norse and British cultural background, as well as of course that stark Northern Atlantic landscape I love, but I haven't been. As with the Norwegian section of the story, I had to write about a place I don't actually know (which feels weird/insensitive/not totally appropriate, but was dictated here by the geography of this story), by using a whole lot of photos and Google maps, and also picturing similar-ish places I *have* been, like the Faroe Islands.

[nerakrose]

sorry about butting in, but in case this is relevant: the icelandic male name Hjörtur means deer. :) idk how common it is, but it's definitely not a "weird" name.
a quick search in norskenavn.no (norwegian name database), revealed that 5 men have the name Hjørtur. dunno about norwegian attitudes to that name, but 5 people out of the entire 5mil population isn't many :'D

it has a different sound than the names you've already chosen, but does have the literal meaning deer! specifically it means male deer (like hart?).

[starfishstar]

No, that's great, I always appreciate your Scandinavian languages expertise!

Hjörtur was indeed the very first name in my notes when I started researching possible names for this character... I needed a female name, though, and didn't find anything comparable. I see (looking back at my notes now) that I even noted down the patronymic, which apparently would be Hjartardóttir, for the possibility of maybe using that... But really, I wanted her to have her own name, and not just a daughter-of name, which was why I went looking for other names that would at least get close-ish in meaning. (There isn't anything somewhat like Hjörtur/Hjørtur but female, is there?? I haven't found anything so far.)

[nerakrose]

Excellent!

Hmm, there is Hind (female deer), but I didn't think to suggest it because I didn't think it was actually used as a name. but i just checked on the national registry (mannanafnaskrá) and found out that it is registered as a name, and then i checked on íslendingabók to see how many carry that name. it's apparently a rare name - only ten women carry it, and out of those ten, only one has it as her first (and only) name. the others have it as their second name. (i then naturally found out that one of those is a close cousin... XD)

[starfishstar]

Oh, fascinating that there are such direct parallels! (B/c "hart" and "hind" are male and female deer in English, too... Immediately puts me in mind of the silly rhymes in Shakespeare's "As You Like It": "If a hart do lack a hind/Let him seek out Rosalind"...)

I feel hesitant to use Hind as a name, though, I guess because once you get into the realm of *such* a rare name that it's literally just one person's given name, it's a bit like you're naming a character after that real, living person, and that's kind of uncool... Also, "hind" in English could easily be taken as another word for your rear end. ;-)

A little more poking around, though, brought me across the name Hinda, which according to Norske Navn is a Norwegian female name that 30 people in Norway have. Any thoughts about that? Does it sound like a likely/plausible name to you (as in, plausibly like a name that one might actually come across)? For that matter, does Dyrfinna work for you? Hm, I'm going to have to ask huldrejenta all this too, seeing as she's actually Norwegian. I'm trying not to bombard her with TOO many Norwegian questions as I'm writing this story, but this one seems relevant. :-)

[nerakrose]

I completely understand! i'd have no such compunctions though (and neither did JKR; Lupin is a very real surname in the UK...where it's carried by only 13 (living) people. presumably they are all related to each other.)

I don't know about Hinda, honestly - it doesn't actually strike me as Scandinavian. I don't know where it comes from (haven't been able to find a source) and all six people in denmark who carry it, are born within the past twenty years. :/ that doesn't really bode well - if it'd been scandinavian, there'd be records of it prior to the 90s.

hm, in re: dýrfinna and other variations (dýrleif, dýrbjörg, dýrley, dýrunn) they don't actually have anything to do with deer or animals. dýr can also mean expensive or valuable, and the icelandic word for saint is dýrlingur. it might be related to the word dýrð (glory, splendour, magnificence). these words generally mean 'valuable + whatever the latter part means'.
(almost the same is the case in danish: dyr = animal, dådyr/rådyr = deer, dyr = expensive)
so if you want the deer or animal connection it might be better to go for something more literal! i can give you a list of animal-related names if you want? it probably won't be 100% exhaustive, but at least i can promise they're real.

and new names can of course be created by putting a word with a female name ending (-dís, -björg, -unn, -mey, etc.) consider all these variations of bear + female name ending: Bjarndís, Bjarney, Bjarnfríður, Bjarngerður, Bjarnheiður, Bjarnhildur, Bjarnlaug, Bjarnrún, Bjarnveig, Bjarnþóra, Bjarnþrúður - and there's of course the name Birna, which literally means bear (female form of björn).
Hind for example is not a name that has (to my knowledge) been paired with a female name ending, but i don't see why not. Hindrún for example would translate to 'hidden/secret hind', Hindfríður to 'beautiful hind' and Hindveig to 'strong/powerful hind'. (Hindveig should also work in Norwegian/Danish (not sure about Swedish)!) it won't work with all endings and not all animal names can be made into human names - there's no hard and fast rule as far as i know, so better consult with an icelander! XD i can tell instantly if a name is Off.

and yes of course - i'm happy to help with a translation of anything you need :D

[starfishstar]

OOH, yes, I like that idea - "Hind" + feminine name ending. I like the idea of it being an invented name and yet plausible within the linguistic rules of Scandinavian (well, or at least Icelandic...) name formation. (And erg, that's annoying, the Nordic names database I was using *said* the "Dýr-" prefix definitely meant deer/animal, as well as dear/precious, and came from a proto-Norse root meaning deer/animal. Is that definitely untrue?)

Okay, let's see, thinking through some possibilities, actually Hindrún is pretty much perfect, because this character IS a secret deer - she's an Animagus. That sounds Icelandic and not Norwegian, though, so I'll have to think about whether I'm okay with that for this character... Gudrun is a Norwegian name, though, along with lots of other -run names, so maybe I can get away with Hindrun (no accent on the u). I'd also consider Hindveig (powerful deer!), Hindey (...is it actually "island deer," or is it something else?), Hinddís (deer goddess/woman?), if any of those sound plausible to you. Anything with an eth in it, unfortunately, is far too Icelandic. ;-) (Ooh, yes, it looks like there are lots of -veig and -dis names in Norwegian, too. Hurrah for linguistic conservation! Those names are so familiar to me from Icelandic, but I didn't realize how many of them are preserved across the other languages as well.)

Okay, my other question: So, what I'm writing is a fusion with H. C. Andersen's The Snow Queen, but adapted as The Snow Wolf (because Remus, because werewolf!); and I thought it would be fun for the Snow Wolf to mention all the names he goes by in many languages of the region, but again, of course only if I'm not going to get them wrong. Here's what I've got so far, and maybe you can correct/add/delete as needed? (For reference this is him, referring to himself, so it's a proper name / sort of a title, both. So I'm not quite sure yet whether I want to include definite articles or not.)

Danish: the original title of "The Snow Queen", is Sneedronningen, thus by extrapolation "the snow wolf" would probably be Sneeulv? except probably also with an article? (Sneeulven?)

Icelandic: "The Snow Queen" is apparently translated as Snædrottningin, thus the snow wolf --> Snæúlfur? (With article, not that it's really necessary, snæúlfurinn)

Norwegian: Snøulv / Snøulven?

Finnish: Lumisusi?? (That's from Google Translate, feel free to laugh at me.)

My guess for Russian: снежный волк (snezhniy volk) (not that I expect that to be within your expertise!)

I would also LOVE, LOVE to have it in one or more Sami languages, but I feel like that's one of those things I shouldn't even touch unless I can definitely get it right. So if maybe you know...

Also Greenlandic would be amazing!

[nerakrose]

no, it's not untrue. it's a similar case to peningur (and fé), which means both livestock and money. the original meaning of the word is livestock and before money was a thing, riches were measured by livestock. later, when money became a thing and words were needed for all these shiny gold coins, they used the word they already had as a shorthand for wealth. (you don't even have to go far back to find peningur = wealth but it still meaning wealth as in livestock. in the sagas if it says 'hann átti pening miklan' or something along those lines, it does mean literally 'he owns a lot of livestock and therefore he is rich'). it's more about semantic shifts. dýr does come from a root meaning animal much like peningur originally meant livestock and not money. (deer in icelandic are, specifically, hjartardýr. dýr seems to have predominantly been a general animal word that only later (and in english specifically) took on a specific deer meaning. looking at the proto-germanic root it meant 'animal' and the proto-indoeuropean before that, 'living thing'.) so it *is* possible that originally the names had the meaning of animal as well - they just don't today, and none of the name meaning sources i have access to ascribe that meaning to it, even as an archaic thing. imo i think it's more likely that these names were created on the basis of the later 'valuable' meaning and not the earlier animal meaning, precisely because hind & hjörtur already exist as both animal and people names, and icelandic names tend to be very specific. (and also because christianity.) for example there aren't any names that just mean 'tree' but there are specific tree names that are given names, such as Hlynur and Ösp. this is the case in iceland at least! the situation might be different in norwegian. just because a semantic shift happened in icelandic, it doesn't mean the same shift happened in norwegian. :) language evolution in the nordic region was MESSY, and while icelandic (and danish) kept the proto-germanic meaning of dýr as animal while also tacking on the new meaning of valuable/expensive, things may well have developed differently in norway. old norse wasn't uniform across the nordic region either and is really more of a shorthand for the stage that came after proto-norse (or runic-norse) and before it branched out into old danish/swedish/norwegian/danish/faroese languages. (btw, the oldest recorded instance of dýrfinna is from 1025! i can't find where exactly, but by nature it must've been one of the sagas.) it's a little late for runic inscriptions, though anything's possible...

you should be able to use -run without the accent. :) Hindey would mean 'deer island'. it's still valid as a human name, but would look more appropriate on a map. (sóley, on the other hand, works both ways, but that's also a common name. as well as a name of a flower! for something so rare as hindey, the first association people would have would be with a place named after deer, and not a person.) Hinddís doesn't work, sorry :'D it sounds too awkward :'D (it's the double d that does it.) ask huldrejenta if it would be accepted in norwegian though, with the -dis ending? they might have a different outlook. just because it doesn't look great in icelandic doesn't mean it can't be great in norwegian. :) (case in point: in Danish Gudrun is an "old lady" name, not very popular, a very awkward thing to name your kid these days. in Iceland however, it's a very common name across generations and nobody would wink an eye at meeting a newborn with that name.)

[nerakrose]

Ohh! interesting :D I love the idea of a snow wolf. :D

ok so first, Snee is German ;) it's just sne in Danish. (i know that the original title of the fairytale is Sneedronningen, but, uh, it's not correct. it may have been back when it was written (thing is Old, spelling conventions have changed since then), may also have been that HCA just misspelled the thing.) sneulven would be the name. Danish generally likes to put definite articles on names that are words/professions. he would refer to himself that way 'they call me the snow wolf - sneulven' would be accurate. i think in danish a character with that name wouldn't state it as their name, they would use the verb 'at være' (to be) instead of the verb 'at hedde' (to be called). 'jeg er sneulven' and not 'jeg hedder sneulv'. you could use 'mit navn er sneulv/en' and then either way, you'd still have the definite article. (for the record, 'jeg hedder sneulv' is suuuuper awkward and it's 100% because this is a fairy tale/mythical creature. they never introduce themselves that way in danish, mostly because mythical creatures rarely have actual names, but rather are a thing. if it's his actual real name, he could still say it like that, but (again, in a Danish context) if he's got any situational awareness he wouldn't say 'jeg hedder sneulv' because it's kind of. not very dramatic, very down to earth, could even be construed as childish. it's too simple, is what i'm saying - for someone who's got status (like the snow queen) he'd refer to the name as something other people bestowed upon him (=respect) or state the name in definite form because it makes him an entity rather than a person, and those are to be respected and/or feared. use this information however you will :D)


hmm, for icelandic you could go with either snjóúlfur or snæúlfur (a name that occurs in...the skaldic edda i think, i don't remember exactly). snæ- is slightly more archaic than snjó- i think. both are fine grammatically and all, but snæúlfur is more "established" as is. no definite article on this one!

lumisusi is indeed correct. :) sounds a bit funny, but then again werewolf is ihmissusi, so it's not like finns wouldn't recognise it.

i know absolutely nothing about russian or greenlandic, sorry :'D i also know very little about saami, and wouldn't be comfortable trying to piece something together. i could maybe do lulesaami as that's the saami language i'm most familiar with, but i can't guarantee that it's correct. i mean for starters, lulesaami has a billion different words for snow and i don't know which one to pick as each would give the snow wolf a very specific meaning, you know? like would you want a word that means "hard, as in the top layer has melted from the sun and re-frozen" or "new snow in a light layer that reveals tracks after animals, specifically reindeer" or maybe "thin layer of frost in autumn" ?? the word for wolf in lulesaami is stálppe. using a word that means "snow that has fallen in cold weather and that results in 'tungt føre' (difficult road/driving conditions because of a thick layer of snow)", you could have sahkikstálppe, assuming that's the correct way to make compound words in lulesaami... (the nominative form is sagij, and my lulesaami dictionary app informs me that the genitive stem is sahkik- and i assume there's some consonant gradation going on there, but - pardon my french - fuck me if i know. :p) you'd be better off finding a saami person willing to help out, but i'm not sure where you'd find one!

(sorry this got so long orz)

[starfishstar]

​Oh, of course, yes, that makes so much sense - I even knew that about how words for livestock got extended to use for currency as well (noticed that in the first Halldór Laxness book I read, how everything gets compared to how much of a cow it's worth...and I think one of our teachers last summer talked about that, too). I hadn't thought to make that connection here, but of course that explains why "dýr" would have both those meanings...cool!

Yeah, English does seem to be the weird outlier with the word "deer" meaning one specific animal - in German, too, it stayed general ("Tier" = "animal").

Sneedronningen/Snedronningen - aha, that makes sense. I'd seen it spelled both ways in Danish, which was confusing, so I traced it back and found that the original was spelled "ee" and so I went with that - but that makes sense that that's an archaic spelling, which has since changed, which is why I was seeing it both ways!

The German would actually be "Schnee" - Die Schneekönigin, I suppose, though I've never thought about this story in German!

And double cool, my instinct was indeed to use the article in Danish but not in Icelandic, so, yay. :-)

As for use of articles and whether it's a name or a title... At least how I've got it written right now (this is all very new and rough draft), it's actually kind of the opposite: not him saying "this is my name," but saying "I am ancient and powerful and whatever you choose to call me, does it really matter? I'm more powerful than any name you choose to attach to me." So definitely what you said about using the article and considering it a title, not a name, applies. But also maybe moot in this case because he's not using it as a name anyway. But *also* definitely I will bear your advice in mind - especially what you said about using the verb for I AM rather than I'm CALLED. (In fact...I may have to remake the part I described above, based on how much I like that - the idea of him saying, I'm not CALLED the Snow Wolf, I AM the Snow Wolf.)

For Icelandic, I thought of snjó/r first, but then saw that "Snedronningen" gets translated as "Snædrottningin," so figured that might be more archaic/fairy-tale-ish, which it sounds like you're saying is the case. Also, all that Old Norse names research told me there's a King Snær in Norse Mythology who's the personification of snow, so that fits too, as a reference for "snær" in the context of stories and legends. :-)

Finnish: ha, google translate was correct for once! And for Finnish, of all things. That's kind of hilarious.

Russian: I've got another friend I can ask about that. Weirdly, for that one I think my own translation might actually be okay, since the words are simple and I actually do remember a bit of grammar. But we'll see if I'm right about that...

Greenlandic was a very long shot, that's fine! And for Saami languages, yeah, I wouldn't want to do it unless I was absolutely sure I had it correct. And given that this is basically just a tiny throw-away bit I'm doing pretty much for my own amusement, it's probably okay if it's not totally comprehensive. (Though Saami languages would of course be some of the *most* relevant to this part of the world!) I love that about all the different words for different types of snow. So cool.

THANK YOU for all of this, so helpful, and so interesting to me, too!

[nerakrose]

ahhh yeah, i forgot german does the sch thing. it sounds the same to me as just a regular s, so i always misspell it :D

oh, interesting about this king snær. i'm not sure i've heard of him! but he might be the same person as vetrarkonungurinn, who i definitely have heard of? i remember reading stories about him when i was a kid, and i think maybe there was an animated movie (or i dreamed it, which is also v possible).

you're very welcome! i love talking languages like this - it's been as much fun for me. :)

[starfishstar]

Also, nerak_rose, any chance I could ask you a small translation question? Just a phrase I'd like to have in several Scandinavian languages for this story, but of course only want to use if I can actually get it right!