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- "En varg"
28 Comments
It’s a bit funny. In English, the word is wolf and the LotR creatures are called wargs, based on Old Norse or Old English. In the Swedish translation it’s reversed, so the normal word is varg and the LotR creatures are instead called ulvar which is the same word as ’wolf’ in English, but is archaic in Swedish.
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There are two words in Old Norse, The varg variant is almost exclusively used for wicked/evil beasts and insults: 'vargraekr' is an adjective meaning 'one who is to be hunted down like a wolf'; ulfr on the other hand is often a perfectly good personal name and does not have the same negative connotations. Hence Tolkien went for the former...
Yes. It's pronounced 'VARG', with the 'g' like the 'y' in 'yolk'. They say it at 00:09 :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70GGwGU52xo=8=PLD7oHB1NRm4AQw84FYJrdM6IM911aflFo
I've found the etymology of the word on project runeberg. A good read! But it doesn't answer your question: runeberg.org/svetym/1183.html But then I looked up in Ali Nourai's etymological dictionary and found "Gurô" which is related to "ğorridan" to growl, hence the words "crow", "crack", "cur" and "crane".
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The word itself seems to be jättevarg in Swedish, but I don't remember how they translate it in GoT. Edit: I googled a bit and in the books they seem to be called skräckvarg. In the subtitles to the TV series they're maybe just vargar?