marmorset t1_iuw5o66 wrote
"The Great Heathen Army" was led by Ivar the Boneless and his brothers. The reason for his nickname is unclear. We know he couldn't walk, he was carried everywhere on a shield. He's described as being very tall and very wise.
It could be he just couldn't walk or had a leg deformity. Normally he would have been killed at birth, but his father was (possibly) Ragnar Lodbrok*, a king.
There have been people who are have a condition that makes them extremely tall, but who can't walk without leg braces, so that's a possibility.
Some suspect he might have had Osteogenesis imperfecta or "brittle bone disease."
Ivar, it was said, had "no love lust" in him, which people equate to impotence, but he did produce several children. The Norse were big on nicknames, some truthful, some ironic, it's hard to know what they meant.
Ivar and his family were the focus of the show Vikings, but that was completely fictional and even its references to real-life events were changed dramatically. Ivar is portrayed very negatively, his actual reputation was mixed. Obviously the Anglo-Saxons were not fans, but in Scandinavia he was either loved and admired or thought cruel and mean. Everyone agrees he was extremely smart.
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*Ragnar Lodbrok (his surname was probably Sigurdson, Lodbrok, or Loðbrók**, was a nickname. His nickname, "hairy breeches" or "shaggy pants" came from the story where Ragnar battled a dragon and wore special clothing for protection.
**The ð letter was called an "eth" an was pronounced like the TH sound in "this" or "path." The Norse god Odin's name was actually Oðin.
Bo-Shrewsy t1_iuxnpoe wrote
Odin wzs Othin???? This revelation completely distracts me from everything you said. It's like giving an hour long lecture on Constantine the great, and at the end, very abruptly, irrelevantly, and life-changingly just going "oh yeah, and Jesus's actual name was Larry"
marmorset t1_iuy2pe9 wrote
It's like Odin with a lisp, it's hard getting used to. The ð looks like a d so very often it was just translated to d, like in Odin or Miðgarðr becoming Midgard.
Bo-Shrewsy t1_iuyf0ss wrote
Midgard is Mithgarth? Is every gard a garth? So like Asgarth?
marmorset t1_iuzhhis wrote
Yes, gard is garðr. Ásgarðr and Miðgarðr.
Also, Jesus' actual name was Yeshua, which in Greek became Iēsoūs, and then Iesus in Latin, and finally Jesus in English. There's a slightly different version of the same name in the Bible, Yehoshua, but that came directly from Hebrew to English, we pronounce it Joshua.
In Greek however, it's the same name, there's no difference. And in English we'd pronounce Yeshua as Joshua as well if it hadn't gone through Greek and Latin first.
Bo-Shrewsy t1_iv0c78g wrote
I knew about Yeshua, I'd looked it up at some point, but thanks for charting its transmutation. But I never looked up Odin, it never occured to me it could be that different seeings as how it came from the same language family.
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