And for today, I’d like to share with you a Norwegian folk song. I’ve shared quite a lot of Norwegian music on this blog, even before I’ve started kinda sorta learning Norwegian this year, but I feel it’s mostly been pop, and not so much folk. Sigrid Moldestad is one of the most recogniseable and awarded contemporary folk artists in her home country as it seems, and she blends folk music with more modern influences. Aside from being a singer, she is also a violinist and aside from playing your typical violin, she also plays Hardanger/Harding fiddle, which is a national instrument of Norway. She originates from Breim (I still haven’t really wrapped my brain around the geography of Norway but I believe it’s somewhere in the west) and she sings in nynorsk. I chose to share with you a song from her 2017 album Vere Her (Being Here). Something in it kind of spoke to me when I first heard it and understood more or less what it’s about, even though this song is a song about motherhood and I am not a mother. In this song, Sigrid ponders what it will be like when her daughter reaches adulthood, and how she, as a mother, can still be withh her, despite her child will be out of the nest and it may not be possible for her mother to always be close in a physical way. It spoke to me because sometimes when I think about motherhood, and being a mother in general, it seems to me like it must be extremely hard for mothers to let their children go when the time comes, despite having cared for them, bonded and being very close to them for many years. I think if I were a mother, I would find it really difficult to move on, so despite I am not and most likely will never be, I believe I understand her perspective in a way.
I tried to translate these lyrics, and I (sort of) did, despite having a lot of doubts, because I don’t really feel very confident yet when it comes to nynorsk and had to look up loads of words. This is by no means a reliable or complete translation, some bits may be totally incorrect or look kind of weird, but I thought I’d share it anyway, to give you a glimpse of what it’s about, and to give myself a bit of a challenge. Maybe someone who has a better idea about nynorsk/Norwegian in general will see this and help me fix it and I’ll learn something new, or I’ll look back at it in a year or two and be able to fix it myself.
I want to be here
I want to be here for long
So I can see how it goes
I want to follow you
I want to hold your hand
So that you find your way, my dear child
But life is not like that
We never get to wholely see
How it goes
How it goes
So I’m saying this now
I want to be a wind
That blows on your cheek
And a feather you find
[think? ] what you will be like
when you get old
Will you need me then, when you’ll have grey hair
We are light at night
Where you are, there I am
When the new path comes [?], you will become a great-grandmother
But life is not like that
We never get to wholely see
How it goes
How it goes
So I’m saying this now
I want to be a wind
That blows on your cheek
And a feather you find
No days shall come back
Everything is here and now
We breathe life and [stare? Believe? ] in a little [hope?]
That everything isn’t sleep and then it’s over [???]
But that there are other promises
So you (hear???) me
When you need me
And I sing for you
Then I shall send down a feather
Then I will cherish you as before
Because maybe life is like that
That we always get to see
How it goes
How it goes
Because sometimes I go and see
A feather that I find
Get a kiss from a wind
That blows on my cheek
Because maybe life is like that
That we always get to see
How it goes
How it goes
Because sometimes I go and see
A feather that I find
Get a kiss from a wind
That blows on my cheek
My Inner MishMash 
Hi Emilia:
In English the word “wholly” is used – or maybe it could be “fully” in the context of the song.
A lot of people on Wikipedia know nynorsk – that has been my main encounter with Norwegian through the past 20 years. [both first language and learners like you].
The feather and the wind are very vivid.
And so is We are light at night.
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Oh yeah, thanks for your input regarding “wholly’! I guess fully could also work, perhaps even better, but the reason I went with wholly was simply that the original word was heilt, so it sort of came naturally to me.
That’s very interesting info about nynorsk and Wikipedia! 🙂
I do agree about the feather and the wind being very vivid and very fitting here, I like the idea of them being sort of symbols of a connection between a mum and a daughter.
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Wikipedia and its connection to minority and regional languages more generally has been a big revelation to me.
Especially when following their listservs and mailing lists which I had stopped doing after 2008ish.
Yes – go with the original first [as you did with HEILT] – and then the connotations.
And trust your translating instincts – they did take time and other factors to develop.
[And I did wonder if “wholly” sounded like “holy” or “holly” or even “holey” which is what I wanted first].
These word chains in our lives.
What are you thinking about “when the new path comes”?
And [Think] – maybe imagine / see / feel?
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With the “new path” thing, this looked a bit strange to me and I’m just not quite sure what she means in the original. From what I found out the nynorsk word “kjem” which is used in there means to come, so I think very literally this bit could be translated as “Come(s) the new path/track”. I’m not sure though if kjem can’t have some other meanings, or maybe there’s some weird grammatical construction I’m not familiar with yet, or maybe it’s some kind of idiom or something, like perhaps in this specific instance the word “spor” is supposed to mean something like generation rather than what it does literally, i.e. track.
The original equivalent of “think” is “tru”, which can also mean believe, and I don’t think it has the same kind of vibe as feel or imagine does, it’s more about thinking as in having an opinion the way I understand it. Or at least that’s definitely the case with the word “tro”, with which I’ve been familiar for much longer than “tru”, and “tru” appears to be a close variation of that. But perhaps “tru” has some wider meaning, or maybe only in some regions, because otherwise it seems odd to use a word like this in a context where she’s more like wondering about something, rather than expressing an opinion. Or I could be misinterpreting this line in some way.
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