Early Modern Proof Reading: a case study

Off very soon for another holiday, this time, a week in Iceland. I thought this might give me a topic for a post, but the country itself is not much written about in 16th and 17th century English literature - allusions to 'Iceland dogs' are quite common, and the occasional mention of an 'Iceland hawk', but geographical knowledge seems scanty. 'Geyser' doesn't get recorded in English till 1763, and when the British talked of 'vulcanos', as they did from 1613 onwards, they were thinking of 'Fogo' or 'Aetna' rather than Heckla.

But in the 1621 edition of Joshua Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas ('Fourth Day of the First Week'), I found what seemed to be an allusion:

Those that, in Norway and in Finland, chase
The soft-skinned Martens, for their precious Caces
Those that in Ivory Sleads on Ireland Seas
(Congeal'd to Crystall) slide about with ease
Were witness all of his strange grief; and ghest
That God, or Nature was then deep distrest...

The subject is an eclipse, with the Sun out of view over a large part of the northern hemisphere. Du Bartas imagines the locals doing their northerly things - hunting for furs, and travelling around in sledges with runners of ivory: in Norway, Finland, and Ireland. While waiting for my brother-in-law to appear on Robbie Coltrane's 'B-Road Britain' last night (which he duly did - he was the stonemason at Woodchester Mansion) I idly traced the appearance and duration of this ancient misprint (ah, Notes and Queries, I have missed you too long!). The first two English editions got it right: sledging in 'Izeland'. But the error crept into the 1611 text, and stayed there uncorrected through 1613, 1621, 1633 and 1641.

Not that this proves much, beyond the way that typesetters do not (and in general should not) think about what they are setting, also the absence of editing work even on a text the 17th century loved. There must be other allusions in early modern literature lurking under the spelling 'Island', but this was a pleasingly fanciful one. My other image is an early engraving of the original 'Geyser'. It seems to have lumps in it. Since then people have messed about with it so much as to turn its eruptions into an intermittent thing, but here it goes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy6sF_92cRI

How different my life would have been had I been called 'Uno von Troil'.

A Strand from a Saga

By that time, Gunnar had wounded eight men and killed two. Now he received two wounds himself, but everyone is agreed that he flinched neither at wounds nor death itself.

He said to Hallgerd, ‘Let me have two locks of your hair, and help my mother plait them into a bow-string for me.’

‘Does anything depend on it?’ asked Hallgerd.

‘My life depends on it,’ replied Gunar, ‘for they will never overcome me as long as I can use my bow.’

‘In that case,’ said Hallgerd, ‘I shall now remind you of the slap you once gave me. I do not care in the least whether you hold out a long time or not.’

‘To each his own way of earning fame,’ said Gunnar. ‘You shall not be asked again.’

Rannveig said, ‘You are an evil woman, and your shame will long be remembered.’

Gunnar defended himself with great courage, and wounded eight more so severely that many of them barely lived. He kept on fighting until exhaustion brought him down. His enemies then dealt him many terrible wounds, but even then he got away and held them at bay for a long time.

But in the end they killed him.

~ I strayed onto Njal’s Saga in my last post about hair, surmising that Hallgerd Long-Legs would in the end do for the hero Gunnar, her third husband. I didn’t know then just how importantly her attribute of flowing hair would feature at his death. It must be a celebrated episode: the hero holed-up, with his homestead surrounded. At the first approach, Thorgrim foolishly climbs onto the roof (“Gizur looked up at him and asked, ‘Is Gunnar at home?’ ‘That’s for you to find out,’ replied Thorgrim, ‘But I know that his halberd certainly is.’ And with that he fell down dead.”) Thorbrand Thorleiksson, before dying on the same weapon, managed to slash Gunnar’s bowstring. And so, in the end, Gunnar turns to his reliably recalcitrant wife. Roberto Calasso says somewhere in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony that betrayal is a woman’s heroic act: Hallgerd refuses with that kind of heroism, and Gunnar accepts it – that’s his fate, and how it must be. He doesn’t get his mother to subject Hallgerd to an impromptu trim, but implicitly acknowledges that her superb implacability is her gambit for fame, and replies with a laconic rebuke that ensures his own dignity, and carries on fighting his own lost cause.

The image is the Franks casket, in the BM, with its lid depicting a lone defender with his bow, and a woman watching. It's whalebone, so I have not completely strayed from whale-relatedness. I'm off to Iceland in the summer: my first saga-holiday, you might say.