Norse pronunciation

This might help:

http://www.cooldictionary.com/words/Fimbulwinter.wikipedia

My understanding of syllabic consonants like final 'r' in Norse is that they're a lot like "collapsed" final syllables in English. If you say words like "button" or "castle" (in a UK English accent at least), the "on" and the "le" don't really have a vowel at all. Also, 'r' is trilled in Norse as in Spanish.

And the letter 'v' is pronounced 'w'.

So, I would say the pronunciation is approximately: fim-bool-wet-rrr

I don't speak Norse, but I do speak Swedish. The Swedish spelling of the word is "fimbulvinter" and it is pronounced FIM-bull-VIN-ter - basically, exactly how it looks, with stress on the "fim" and "vin" syllables. How the 'r' is pronounced depends on your accent, but if the 'ter' in 'terrible' is fairly close to the neutral pronunciation of the last syllable of "vinter".

I have no idea how it was pronounced in old Norse though, and I don't know the Norwegian/Danish/Icelandic pronunciations either.

The first part is spoken like the "fin" in finland, but with an m.

-bul sounds like "boule", the game with small metal balls thrown at a smaller ball. Or like the word Bull, with short "oo" instead of "u".

Vintr has afaik a "v" as in "very", and "i" as in "tick". the "r" is supposed to be at the end of the tongue, like spanish. The "tr" sounds almost like "ter" or "tuhr" but compressed like the end of "theater", "thee-uh-tuhr"

'Fhimbool'Vintur

hope that helped.

seun said:

Fimbulvetr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fimbulvetr

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We were told it was 'Fim - bull - vet - rrr'

But more commonly Fimbulvinter - fim - bul - vin - ter

But that was nearly 15 years ago, so I'm a bit fuzzy. Sorry.

You're right about it being a great story, the Ragnarok is one of my favourite myths.

Old Norse, in particular, has no known pronunciation. We know that Icelandic and Faroese are the closest to its original pronunciation, but otherwise it isn't 100% known. However, through my study of Old Norse, you can't ever really be wrong with "fim bool wey tur". I was taught that it was most likely "v"s were pronounced close to "w"s, but who knows?

Nick Blaze said:

Old Norse, in particular, has no known pronunciation. We know that Icelandic and Faroese are the closest to its original pronunciation, but otherwise it isn't 100% known. However, through my study of Old Norse, you can't ever really be wrong with "fim bool wey tur". I was taught that it was most likely "v"s were pronounced close to "w"s, but who knows?

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This is a good point about any language, it's hard to be definate about pronounciation in old languages.

Along with Old Norse, I have and still study Norse literature. Since I'm not good enough to read runes or procure documents in or close to their original forms, I still read them in English. But either way, if you need any help with the story or concept of Ragnarök, feel free to ask or PM me. I'm currently working through the Heimskringla, which was written by Snorri Sturluson, whose Christianity influences his writing too much, IMHO.

shaldna said:

This is a good point about any language, it's hard to be definite about pronunciation in old languages.

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Actually, we're pretty sure about Old Norse; first, it's as close to modern Icelandic as Modern English is to Shakespearean, second we have transcriptions of Old Norse texts by native speakers and by native Irish speakers, third, all of Old Norse's first generation cognate languages are still extant, and we have contemporary documents in them from the saga period.

We have a native Icelandic speaker as a member; I'll steer him this way.