hey, hi, um, I so sorry to bother you but have you ever come across an Old Norse translation of the comic book Mjölnir inscription? ("Whosoever holds this hammer, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.") I'd like to incorporate it into my cosplay and I figured you'd be the one to know, thanks :)
I think that the whole “worthy” factor in the 616 is one of the better points of Marvel!Thor comics on the whole– but I’m very into weapons that have a sort of personal consciousness (I’ve got a whole thing about lightsabers interacting with the force on their own) so I guess that’s a predictable outlet for me. But, despite how cool the worthiness-thing is, there is no parallel in the Norse mythos. Anyone can lift Thor’s hammer, so far as we know. The dwarf who made it had to lift it, of course, and then in Þrymskviða Thrym not only steals the hammer, he also buries it beneath the ground, and somebody brings it in and puts it in Thor’s lap at the closing of the poem (though we don’t see who that is). So: is the real Mjöllnir a hammer that can be lifted only by Thor? No. But it is a boomerang, that’s mythologically accurate. Nonetheless, let’s see what we can do with this famous line to get the 616 to look a little more like 1166 ad! :D (I’m so sorry).
Now, I’m only an amateur, in my second semester of Old Norse, so the likelihood that this will be 100% accurate is slim, but I’ll explain some points of the grammar to show my reasoning, as it were.
“Sá er haldr þessum hamri, ef hann er vert, skal eiga ríkit til Þórs”
(He who holds this hammer, if he be worthy of (it), shall possess the power of Thor)
So: let’s get into some options here. “Sá er” is literally “it who/which/is/when”, but it’s an extremely common Old Icelandic construction meaning “he who”. Since this is a phrase I see a lot in my schoolwork, I thought it would be a nice tie-in to the mythos to use it here; I don’t have a specific word for “whosoever”, this is the closest matching phrase (to my knowledge). However, you can swap “Sá” the masculine nominative, and “hann”, masculine nominative as well, for “þat” in both places, and then it will read “they who” and “if they” (while still literally being “it”). Also if you want this for a Jane Foster!Thor cosplay (lady-Thor comics were my jam for a while there), you could substitute “Sá” for “Sú” (feminine nominative) and “hann” for “hon” (also feminine nom). You could use “hverr” which also means “who” and eliminate the “sá er” construction entirely, but that would be without any pronoun, so just “who holds this hammer”.
I would’ve prefered to use “þessi” rather than “þessum” here just bc I like the sound in the nominative, but I had to match it with “hamri”, and “hamri” had to match “haldr”…. it’s all grammar stupidity, I won’t go into it. Now, I included that “it” up there in parentheses because it’s sort of implied, which is not at all uncommon in Old Icelandic sentences. In fact it happens all the time and it’s kind of obnoxious, but that’s beside the point: you can gloss “vert” as “worthy of”, “deserving”, or just plain “worthy” if you like. Do whatever (it’s like that post from somewhere: “who cares, we made grammar up, it isn’t real, let’s go outside”). Now, my placement of “skal eiga” could be off, because it’s an infinitive and a present form right next to each other, and I get wobbly in that area, but this is typically how these modals operate next to other verbs in the translations I’ve done before, so I’m pretty dang sure this is fine, grammatically speaking. “Eiga” is “to have/to possess/to own” and even “to have the power to” and that’s why I picked it instead of the more obvious “hafa”. “Ríkit” is the definite neuter singular accusative (did I mention that grammar is dumb) so it’s “the power” but it’s also “the kingdom”. You could substitute it with “Valdit” which is another word for power, and also “the control”. I just liked how “ríkit” sounded, tbh, like… you’d have the power over Thor’s dominion vs. you’d control his power. Bu it’s up to you, really.
Let me know if anything is unclear! I’m glad to change things around for you or whatever you need. Be forewarned: most of these words decline differently depending on placement/use/etc, so if you were gonna like… put “hamri” on a shirt, it’d literally be like “to hammer”, because it’s in the dative, so I guess…. use Old Norse with caution! :D There you go, a warning label. Inn varnaðr.
Hope this translation is to your liking!
