Talk:High, Just-as-High, and Third

Merge suggestion

It's a little weird that this article, Hár and Hárr, Jafnhárr, and Þriði all exist. It seems like most of the literature is going to be on these three as a group, so to avoid duplication, there should be just one combined article in my opinion. I've tentatively suggested this article as the merge target, but I can see an argument that perhaps this article should be moved to Hárr, Jafnhárr, and Þriði first. Any page-watchers out there with opinions on this? SnowFire (talk) 14:03, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Support merge and move to Hárr, Jafnhárr and Þriði. There is obvious overlap and a merger is exactly the right decision. Using the Old Norse names would be preferable given the precedent on this topic and it avoids any potential issues around translation. I'm unsure on whether it's better protocol to move first or second. Ingwina (talk) 20:25, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Ingwina: To be clear, I already merged Jafnhárr and Þriði, which were super-tiny. I held off on Hár and Hárr because some of the material was on the non-Prose Edda mentions, and the main article author of Hár and Hárr seems to have left English Wikipedia on somewhat bad terms complaining about people who didn't know the literature messing with his articles. So I wanted to only merge H&H if I was really sure I'd read all the sources first. There's a copy of one of the cited books at the library waiting for me the next time I visit, so this should be in the near future. That said, I do suspect a merge is still a good idea barring finding something really surprising.

As far as a move, the main reason I didn't do it was that both the Jesse Byock and Anthony Faulkes translations of the Prose Edda use the "translated" High, Just-as-High, and Third. (I only found this out after writing the above comment.) So I'm not so sure a move would be wise anymore - a move would honor the Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur translation which was the scholarly translation before Faulkes, but it is kind of a dated translation at this point. SnowFire (talk) 00:14, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I would argue they should still be merged as any discussion of the three figures should also speak of the references outside of Gylfaginning (as this page currently does). All the information on those two pages either is already here or should be here.

The usage of Old Norse isn't an attempt to honour Brodeur. I understand that some prominent translations do translate it but many translations also translate other names yet it is best (at least in my opinion) for us to use the Old Norse names as titles, just as has been done for essentially every other figure in Germanic lore. Even if the translations are fairly established, it removes any issues over synonyms, rewordings or debated new ideas for the translation. We know that the Old Norse won't change so that provides a stable, objective foundation that we can build the rest onto. Ingwina (talk) 07:11, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I went ahead and merged it for now, since as is the two articles really are duplicative. I'm a bit suspicious of how much text is spent trying to show that Harr really means "One-eyed", but like I said, need to look more closely at the sources myself later.

On article titling philosophy, I'm very much a WP:COMMONNAME fan. When I was proposing the move above, I was working on moving the Brodeur translation to Wikisource, so I was thinking it should be moved because Brodeur left it untranslated (barring replacing the thorn with th in Thridi). But yeah, I'm pretty much a "use the term in English for the person (we aren't moving Odin to Óðinn any time soon), and various Norse mythology characters aren't exactly 'owned' by Old Norse exclusively, appearing in German and other Scandinavian languages as well. Very often for sufficiently obscure characters, Old Norse wins by default, but I think these three have enough coverage for some common name analysis. It's definitely a borderline case, but I'll try and do some Google Scholar / books searches later. SnowFire (talk) 03:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Odin is staying as Odin because of the use of the term in wider popular culture, as with others like Thor. These three are still fairly obscure and their translations are not nearly as abundant as the gods mentioned before. Like you said, they sometimes are left untranslated and Jean I Young uses "High One" rather than "High". I've at least already made my point about translation ambiguity so let's see what your searches find so we can factor that into the discussion. Ingwina (talk) 07:13, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

• As an additional complication... Lindow & Faulkes both transcribe to the first two with one less r (even in Old Norse): Hár, Jafnhár, and Þriði. "sat var konungr ok heitir Hár, en þlar næst sá er heitir Jafnhár, en sá ofarst er Þridi heitir". Faulkes The Jonson transcription, however, has "ok heitir Hárr, en þar næst sá, er heitir Jafnhárr, en sá ofast, er Þriði heitir." [1] I'm not sure if there was a change in the standard transcription to Latin, or if different manuscripts used a different number of r's. Any idea what's up with this? SnowFire (talk) 21:03, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not sure.. I will look at the manuscripts when I have time but given the use of abbreviations in it it may not be clear at all. Ingwina (talk) 06:22, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

@Ingwina: Okay, Jesse Byock never got back to me, but Carolyne Larrington did. Here's what she wrote on the topic:

With regard to Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði (well not so much Þriði), yours is a good question. You need to remember that each of the people you cite are not transcribing -- that is, printing exactly what they find in the various manuscripts, but rather editing, making conscious decisions about what modern letters or spelling they will use to represent different symbols in the manuscripts.

Looking at Codex Wormianus, one of the earliest manuscripts, I can see that the diplomatic transcription here spells the name Háár , whereas in the Codex Regius ms it's spelled Har, but is often abbreviated to just H.

Grammatically, the adj. high would be hár in the nominative, but Anthony Faulkes notes the following in his glossary:

but in some cases the name Hárr may have been intended, i.e. ‘hoary’ (cf. Skáld, Háttatal), though other etymologies have been proposed, e.g. Háarr, ‘high ruler’; (p. 166)

So Finnur may have assumed that the name should be Hárr (hoary); Jafnhárr (Just as Hoary), but this possibility has, I think, fallen out of fashion now.

I hope that helps! I am no expert on the paleography of Snorra Edda manuscripts nor on paleography in general, but that seems to lie behind the different spellings.

Okay, Template:Cite email may not be a thing, but this is interesting. Given that this isn't a FA and some of it is in Faulkes' book, we can probably integrate this into the footnote. Seems a good reason to perhaps favor the single r spelling used in the modern transcriptions, as well. SnowFire (talk) 22:27, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for missing your last post before this - that's great that you got in touch though and great to have her opinion. Thanks for this! Ingwina (talk) 09:38, 12 December 2023 (UTC)