"This is an evil business," said Thorgils, and passing further in towards Thorey's bed he heard a rattling in her throat, and found her dead, the child feeding at her breast. On examining her, they discovered a small wound under her arm, as if she had been stabbed with the point of a slender knife, and the place was covered with blood. At this sight great grief fell upon Thorgils. He determined to watch over the child during the night; but there was no food, for it had all been swept away. "How he is to live longer," said Thorgils, "I can't see; but it will be a grievous matter to me if I am not able to help him. I will first try the plan of cutting off my nipple."* He did so, and straightway blood came forth, then a mixture of blood and milk, and lastly milk, with which he nourished the child.You have to admire the Vikings. They came up with way the best excuses for man-boobs.
* Oddly enough, this is also the first plan that occurs to me in any kind of crisis.
8 comments:
as if she had been stabbed with the point of a slender knife
Well, that rules out Þorbjörn as a suspect!
The anti-legume post.
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Well, hell, it never even occurred to me that I might need an EXCUSE for 'em.
But even so, I'm not gonna start whackin' away at 'em in some kinda forlorn hope that I'll have an excuse for what remains.
Sometimes I just think I'll shave 'em and flaunt 'em, y'know?
Well, that rules out Þorbjörn as a suspect!
Looks more like it was Þorarin (Þorgils' steward) who whacked Þorey, though he tried to shift blame to Snaekoll, one of the thralls.
Icelandic story-tellers and audiences were a sophisticated bunch and they did not require a lot of original names for them to remember which character done what.
Later on,
the boy Þorfinn was then handed
over to the care of one of the women, who gave him milk; but he said that it was not the same colour as his father's milk.
Then the child-welfare agencies heard tell of the whole business and they were not well pleased.
I hope they kept the blood to make nourishing black pudding for the little babby.
The anti-legume post.
Well, feeding the poor babby on soy milk might have feminised him.
I believe this is a mistranslation. It is well known that in dönsk tunga, the word for nipple and the word for choad are the same. Admittedly, it made for occasionally awkward locker room conversations. It also makes Thorgils a bit of a pervert.
It also makes Thorgils a bit of a pervert.
So, he took a page from Tiberius' ouvre.
then a mixture of blood and milk
Circumstantial evidence would seem to suggest that Thorgils sailed to Kenya, and introduced this delicacy to the Masai. I now await the discovery of the Saga of the Aethopianers in a Coptic monastery.
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