The Creative Exploration of Language



















Ertu Hagr? New Essay in Eternal Haunted Summer

I had an essay published today in the Winter Solstice issue of Eternal Haunted Summer called “Ertu Hagr?  The Gilded Sow and Esoteric Symbolism in Hreiðar’s Tale” which breaks down the surprising layers of meaning at play in Hreiðar’s Tale.  The phrase translates as “Are you skillful?” and is asked of the titular character, Hreiðar, by King Magnus the Good.  The essay unpacks the different levels of meaning in the question and the resulting answer.

You can read the essay here and my translation of Hreiðar’s Tale here.

Thanks for reading,

S.R. Hardy






New Translation Published: Hreiðar’s Tale

I am excited to announce that I have published a translation of Hreiðar’s Tale, a medieval Icelandic þattr (a short comedic tale) here on Anarcheologos.

The tale comes from Morkinskinna and tells the story of a “holy fool” character from Icelandic literature, Hreiðar Heimski, and his adventures in Norway as he becomes embroiled in a feud between King Magnús the Good and his uncle and co-ruler, King Harald Hardrada.  The tale works on two levels in that it is a conventional story with comedic elements, but the (unknown) author also makes use of esoteric symbolism that adds a layer of meaning that is intriguing.

You can read the story here.   Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Thanks for reading,

S.R. Hardy

The Boys Will Be the Boys









Boor, the Gentleman Farmer of Yesteryear

I have long been interested in the word boor, in terms of its relationship to its obvious cognates, the Dutch boer and the German bauer.  All three words ultimately stem from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word *buraz, which means “house” or “dwelling.”  This word in turn seems to come from *bhu, which means “to be” or “to become,” with associated meanings related to “growth” or “increase,” which seem to build off the idea of “becoming.”

While the modern Dutch and German words simply mean “farmer,” the English boor has lost this literal sense and now means “rude” or “uncouth.”  While farmers are often characterized as rude and uncouth, I suspect that the transition that the word boor has undergone, whereby it has become a term of disparagement with its literal meaning being overtaken by a word of French origin is a legacy of the Norman invasion and the corruption of the language that followed.  This does in fact seem to be the case, with farmer entering English in the late 14th century and the negative connotations associated with boor in evidence by the 16th century.

While I always find these types of investigations interesting, a chance encounter with the Irish word bóaire allowed me to consider boor from another angle.  Bóaire literally means “cow noble,” being composed of bó (cow or cattle) and aire (noble, from the Sanskrit arya).”  Breaking the word down in this way reveals another level of meaning and makes clear the word’s ancient Indo-European derivation.  A noble is a noble, defined by blood and family, but in an archaic society where wealth is measured in cattle, a “cow noble” is someone who has achieved a high level of social status, a form of nobility, through economic means.  In modern terms, we might call someone like this nouveau riche or, more in keeping with the word’s agricultural theme, a gentleman farmer.



I’ve been working on a translation of the comic tale Hreiðars Þáttr from Old Norse and stumbled on the word þreyta (the letter þ is called “thorn” and is a voiceless dental fricative pronounced like modern English “th” in “think”.  It has a voiced counterpart called “eth” that is written ð and pronounced as “th” in “this”).  I didn’t recognize þreyta and had to look it up, but once I did, I felt dumb; it is a fairly obvious cognate with the English word threat.

As it turns out, threat goes back to the Old English noun threat, which means “pressure,” and the verb form threatian, “to press.”  Knowing that dental fricatives such as “th” often change to or from alveolar plosives such as “t” and “d,” I considered whether I could think of any other words that fit this pattern and quickly came up with tread (tredan in Old English, troða in Old Norse, and treten in German).  While the literal meaning of tread is “to step on” or “to walk on,” the connection with applying pressure to something is obvious.  Throttle is similar in that the three key elements are present and the connection to the theme of applying pressure is obvious.

This pattern seems particularly rich in Old Norse, where the word þreyta means “to wear out or exhaust.”  Þraut means “hardship,” þrátta means “dispute” or “quarrell” and þrúd (as in Þrúdheim, Thor’s hall) means “power” or “might.”  This vein runs so deep in Old Norse that Þra- is a common element of compound words indicating persistence or obstinance (e.g., þrálátr=”stubborn”).

Based on this, it seems that the concept of the application of applying pressure or force is denoted in the Germanic language family by the following series of sounds:

  • alveolar trill (“r”)
  • alveolar plosive (“t” or “d”)

I was able to find an Indo-European connection to this theme quite easily with the IE root tred-, which means “to drill” and is connected widely to various words in the Indian and Slavic branches of the language family.  I don’t know where I fall on the ongoing debate related to sound symbolism in language, but the “genetic” connection within language families seems to be indisputable.










From Llyfr to Livre to Leaf

























