Some linguistic remarks regarding Romanian Viking Studies

Abstract

In Romania there is no academic program dedicated entirely to the study of the Viking period in Scandinavia and Europe, but Romanian historiography can still boast with a decent number of monographs, translations and studies relating to early medieval Northern Europe. The concern of the present study is that of offering a general view on the language variations used by Romanian historians or translators when referring to certain Viking historical characters, rituals, artefacts or any other aspects regarding the history of the Norsemen. One of the first terms that ought to be considered by this study is the Old Norse word “viking” (used in runic inscriptions in contexts such as the verbal group “fara í víking” – meaning “to go on a raid”, “to go a-viking”). The complexity of translating this verbal structure into Romanian comes from the difficulty of turning the borrowed ethnonym “Viking” into a verbal phrase. Thus, it has been rendered as “a merge in expediţie vikingă”/”going on a Viking [+fem. desinence] expedition”. The only downside of using this phrase is that it might imply pleonasm since the Romanian noun “viking” already refers to raids and seafaring activities. Other authors have instead proposed the translation of “cineva care face un înconjur”/”somebody who goes on an expedition”, or simply “care e departe de casă”/”someone away from home”. But a royal saga also tells us about a noble who was “stundum í kaupferdum en stundum í víkingu” which is translated into Romanian as “în acelaşi timp în călătorie de afaceri şi în expediţie vikingă [at the same time in business trip and in viking expedition]”. The translation of í víking as “a merge în expediţie viking [going on a viking expedition]” also appears. In the translation of Frans G. Bengtsson’s well know The Long Ships, going a-viking is translated into Romanian as “seceriş [reaping], incursiune de jaf [raid for plundering]”, which is interestingly the only identifiable metaphor for this activity. Vikings also rarely appear as “wikingi” instead of the very common “vikingi” in Romanian translations.