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Where Can You Find A Real Warg? Elfdalian and Tolkien's Languages · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Goulding and
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  I'm Director of the Centre. And today I have a special guest with us from Sweden called
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  Naryl and Naryl and I met because Naryl has just completed one of our online courses
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  and we got to know each other a little and I thought wow Naryl will be just the perfect
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  guest for this podcast because she is a representative of a minority language in Sweden
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  called Elf Dallion. Hello Naryl. Hello thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Now Naryl
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  we discovered all of us on the course that this language is pretty much very close to the
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  languages that Tolkien loved and used as the basis for his own language creation but before
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  we talk about him would you like to tell us a little bit about the culture that you come from
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  and the history of Elf Dallion? Yes it's a language spoken in Sweden. It's an archaic language.
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  It comes from Proto-Norse and it developed from there sort of on its own course so you can say
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  it's an Ornors dialect or a Norse language or it's hard to specify. And I think you were telling me
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  that you still use runes? Yes mostly used for writing your name into things. There's a tradition
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  of writing on your house. If you build a new house you're writing runes but here it's built and
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  who lives there and just small things like that but I also use it in everyday life because it's
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  faster to write to be honest shopping lists and so on and then you know other people that do too.
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  I'm just wondering if there's a keyboard for your runes. If not there should be one.
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  There is. Fantastic. The Elf Dallion Council provides one if you can speak it but I don't
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  think it's available for cell phones so only computers unfortunately.
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  But still I'm glad to hear that that exists. So how many people are there who speak Elf Dallion?
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  Is it a language that's under threat or are there new generations coming along?
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  Severe threat I would say. In 2008 it was about 2000 people and I've heard now that it's only
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  60 people on the day of 15 that can speak it so not good. Is there anything being done to
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  help the younger generation learn it? The problem is that Sweden doesn't recognize it as language.
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  They sort of ignore it while the European Union is telling them to get on the case.
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  So that's unfortunate. I hope we will change and then we can get some protection and some help
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  with the studies of the language. And what about resources like books written in Elf Dallion?
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  Is that available? There are books but they're mostly printed by
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  private people and that can be expensive and it's not
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  widely available. I know a few children's books and I know a few dictionaries and so on but it's not
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  it's not widely published which is unfortunate because that would help as well.
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  Indeed I mean in my own family my great grandmother was one of the last living
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  speaking speakers of the minority language of manks from the Isle of Man and it pretty much died
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  out within her generation and they're trying to revive it now. So in a similar situation to your
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  language it takes a huge effort particularly when it no longer becomes a part of everyday life
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  whereas over in Wales of course they've done a fantastic job preserving Welsh as a language
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  every time you go there it's on all the signs and it's taught in school so it does take an
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  effort but it is possible against the sort of predominance of say Swedish or in our case English
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  over here. So Nari, you're absolutely fascinating person in your own right. You're very creative.
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  I've been reading your writing so I know how creative you are but I'm also aware that you speak
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  many other languages so you're talking from a position of great authority on the structure of
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  your own language. Can you tell us the other languages that you are familiar with?
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  Yes. Obviously English and Swedish we get those two.
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  Barely English. Passible I say. The language that I speak day to day with my family is another
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  minority language. Oh. It's called North East Danish and it's only spoken in the smallest
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  of smallest villages by around 500 people so it's under more threat than Elftalia.
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  It's called North East Danish because it developed from all North under Danish rule so that's
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  why it's called it but it's not understandable by Swedes, Danes or Norwegians so it's sort of
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  its own language too. And then I know Gutnisch spoken on the island of Gutland.
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  Not by so many people anymore they mostly speak Gutnisch dialect but the old text and so on
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  is in Gutnisch. And then of course standard old Norse you can say that's the East variant and
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  the West variant. So the West variant was spoken on the West Coast of Norway, Iceland and
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  Ferro's Island and the East was spoken in Sweden and Denmark and a little bit in Norway too.
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  So when you think of the Vikings that came to England that they spoke East North.
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  And you were saying on the course the other day that our understanding of who the Vikings
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  are is incorrect because the word Viking is too widely applied. It actually isn't quite
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  the right description. Do you want to tell us what we should be saying about the people who
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  came over to parts of the UK? They're not Viking, is that correct?
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  No, they were Vikings. They are Vikings. The people who went East sort of in modern day Russia
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  and to Iceland and the Americas weren't really Vikings. And who were they, these ones?
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  Oh, they came mostly from Western and Northern Norway. And Viking was actually a place. It was
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  an ocean or a river as it was believed in and it's called Skogarat and Katigat today.
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  And that was Viking and the people who lived around it was called Viking Air.
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  So that's where I come from.
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  Thank you. So I think listening to you, it goes to show just how easy it is to
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  lump things together in one set. You think everybody's a Viking, everybody spoke Old North.
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  And what you're saying is how many lots of little language groups there were in the Scandinavia
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  at this time. And I'm thinking now of Tolkien and his interest in languages. He obviously would
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  have known some of these nuances. He might not have known Elf Dallion itself, but his own
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  invention of different forms of Elfish and what have you, does seem very similar, not as developed
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  perhaps as your own idea of the languages in different valleys in different islands.
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  So have you looked into Tolkien's languages and seen any correlation between what he made up and
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  your own the languages that you speak? I think he knew Elf Dallion to be honest because I can see
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  similarities in writings that he has in his language. Oh, that's really exciting. So what
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  particular? Let's take the word Varig or Varig that people know both from the books and the movies.
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  Indeed. And Tom Shippey, I'm not sure if I pronounced that correctly. That's right. He's a Tolkien
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  scholar. And he claims that it's a mix of Old North Vargar and Old English were. But Elf Dallion
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  is the only language that spells it like Tolkien spells it. So maybe it's suspicious actually if
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  he knew both the spelling and how I think he would have pronounced it.
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  So for those of you who aren't as specialist on Tolkien, the wags are the super wolves, the
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  wolves at the Orcs ride. And Nariya is saying that the word for wolf in Elf Dallion is
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  Wag spelled exactly the same way as it appears in the Lord of the Rings. Anything else? Any more
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  coincidences you can bring to our attention? Or not coincidences? Any more? Well, more proof that
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  he knew Elf Dallion is the belief in the wolf who chases the sun or the elves. That's a pretty
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  common sort of belief in Scandinavia. So I'm a bit suspicious there as well because they could
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  speak both in Tolkien and in our sort of belief. So I think there's some proof that he knew.
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  And do you find that the stories and myths of your own sort of cultural tradition are echoed in
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  the stories that Tolkien made up for the Silmarillion for his own Middle-Earth? Because obviously we
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  know he's drawing on the myths and legends of Nordic countries. But it sounds as though
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  some of your own particular stories may have reached him as well. Yeah, I think people underestimate
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  how much he got inspired by North culture and beliefs. I mean the dwarfs are come from Scandinavia,
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  the elves, and then you have Middle-Earth, the name itself, Midgorn, and you have Odens Ring.
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  He has the one ring that creates nine new rings every night, every night night. So there's a lot
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  that, and then you have Gandalf itself comes from an area in Scandinavia. He was a real person or
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  two persons I should say. He was a king in present-day Western Sweden. And he had a descendant
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  called Gandalf the Younger as well that was slain by the Norwegians. But he was a real person
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  and Tolkien surely knew about him. And then you have the rooms that dwarf use. I recognize them.
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  I think it's called Sirth. It was created by an elf. And yeah, I see a lot of similarities in
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  those and the stallion rooms as well. So you're saying that the Tolkien, just to unpack that
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  a bit, the Tolkien ruins that the dwarfs use were created in his miss by an elf. Yeah. And you say
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  that you could actually understand and recognize the patterns of those ruins. Yes, I can.
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  Is that a phonetic correlation or is that something to do with? I'm not sure how ruins work.
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  Are they a phonetic alphabet or are they a pictogram alphabet? A pictogram I would say.
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  So they represent... They represent sounds. Oh, that's phonetic then. Oh, okay. A pictogram is like
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  Chinese where it's, you know, the word for dragon looks a bit like a dragon and the word for man
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  looks like a man. You know, there's an element of... Oh, but it's both. It's both. Oh, that's
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  exciting. So tell me how it's both. So if you look at the rooms both in the Scandinavian
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  rooms and the aftolian rooms, they tell a story. You have Ur. You say it's the first room when
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  you write, you begin with F, but when you tell a story, you begin with you. That's the second room.
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  And Ur means the first, the ancient, the beginning, so to speak. And it's represented like an upside-down
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  U. And that comes from an Aurox, which was an important animal in Europe back in today,
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  maybe you've heard of it. Big, big ox. And then it just goes on and on like that. And then
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  you have tea comes next. That represents the Yotans. English translated as giant sometimes,
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  but that's not entirely correct. There are more like these ancient beings that were here before
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  man, some have speculated that it could be memories from interactions with Neanderthals, but
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  I'm going to leave that sort of here, no there, but it's possible. And you can see these shapes
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  represented in the room sort of in how they represent the words and the meanings of what they're
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  trying to say. So in terms of your language of Elf Dallion, how does it cope with bringing into
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  it new words from a technological age? Is there a way of adapting it with ideas from existing
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  words or is it a question of kind of putting it into the grammar? If you were going to say,
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  I've lost my cell phone, for example, how would you cope with words like that, the cell phone
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  within Elf Dallion? I'm wondering if you can think of psych poetic that is the new object,
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  or if you put in the technological word within the setting of Elf Dallion?
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  Mostly it's going to be similar to the Swedish word, but with like an Elf Dallion dialect, but
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  there are some sort of humorous words that there are added to things like cell phone sort of
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  sort of translate to English, but sloppy horn maybe. It's a slang name for it.
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  Yeah, it's a slang name, so that's developed with new words.
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  I think if all the people I've met in my life, Nariya, you would be the one that
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  Tolkien would actually want to sit down with and talk that great length of his notebook out.
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  Is there anything else about reading him that you've found helpful in understanding your own culture?
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  Has the influence worked the other way around the way you see yourself in your own language?
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  Yeah, because his language is sort of developed from one another within his world,
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  and it's quite interesting because when the Middle Ages started in Scandinavia,
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  and they switched to Latin lyrics, Elf Dallion instead expanded the Roonik alphabet
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  to fill in the gaps, and I sort of see as an interesting parallel to the way Tolkien wrote his
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  languages. Yes, definitely, and I think that makes it understandable to a worldwide audience as
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  well, because he's doing it in a sort of a pure experiment for fantasy worlds, and he can create
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  the atmosphere of a complete history to explain it, whereas our understanding, like you were saying,
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  is sometimes more fragmented, sometimes the roots of things are forgotten, whereas in his made-up
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  version of it, we can see what comes from what and how the language evolves in a quite,
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  I mean, it's probably simpler than it is in real life with people moving around the world,
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  into marrying, and cultures coming across each other.
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  But Elf Dallion was, or the place it comes from, was so isolated that people didn't even know
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  he's still used to, until fairly the modern age, I think, 1800, 1700s around it.
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  I forgot to ask, so if you're looking on the map, where do you look to find the valley,
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  where this language is? It's in the middle of Sweden on the border to Norway. Do you think
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  most people know where Lilla Hummer is? I'm thinking of Lilla Hummer's.
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  And certainly find it on Google Maps, can't they?
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  So if you draw a line straight into Sweden from Lilla Hummer, then that's where it is.
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  And is it a landscape of hills and lakes, or is it the environment around there?
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  It's a very rural lakes, forests, older wooden buildings. It's very intact. That whole area is very
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  intact Swedish, I would say. But it also has influences from Norway because it's so close.
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  I mean, in some senses, in a very isolated community like that, that international borders are
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  a little bit of an academic exercise, aren't they, when people are on the hills?
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  So, Nari, I've got to know you a little bit and understand your deep passion for protecting
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  these languages. What can people do best to support minority languages? If you've got any tips
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  or any ask, or anything you want to actually tell us about what we can do to help
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  Alf Dalien as a language? Well, I think it's a huge problem that Sweden ignores that it is
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  a language. So what a private person can do is a bit difficult to say, but just being aware that
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  it exists because most people, even in Scandinavia, don't know about it. So I think it's important to
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  say it exists before it doesn't exist. And I was thinking about maybe writing books in the future
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  and having some words here and there. Nothing too intrusive because I don't believe in forcing
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  people to learn something, but just something that could make people interested in the language.
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  So there are small things like that that you can do, I think. And just the fact that it's
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  uses rooms, I think, would be a selling point to some people. Yeah, I think definitely if you
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  wrote about that, a lot of people would be very interested to see, you know, laid out all the
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  different connections that you've mentioned to Tolkien. He's obviously so famous worldwide,
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  that would be a really good way of making it more popularly known. And you can get in conversation
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  with Tom Schiffy and say, hey, Tom, I've got news for you. There's this language out here,
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  which is almost like one Tolkien would have wanted to speak.
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  When he wrote about the organs of Varga, I don't think he was aware of Rilftalian.
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  Yeah, well now I'm not, I'm not trusting him. No, no, no, no, there's so much in the world to know,
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  he can't know everything. Yeah, maybe I should say something in Rilftalian so people can hear
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  that would be lovely. Okay, Manlith Werthas, I'll see here Anand Slare. That's a quote from
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  Laura Riggs. Ah, is it one ring to rule a soul? No, it's a, but the horse of men are easily corrupted.
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  I had to pick something then an elf would say. Oh, of course, would you say it again so we can
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  hear it again. Manlith Werthas, I'll see here Anand Slare.
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  So, Nareal, clearly being fluent in all these different languages gives you sort of expertise
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  that many others don't have in Nordic culture. And one of the things you've been putting us right
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  about on the court is some of the stories that have been passed around by historians and some
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  artifacts that they've trusted thinking they understand their context, but because they're
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  unaware of the languages they've been getting a bit wrong. So there were two of these you mentioned.
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  The first of all is something called the Kensington Stone, is that correct? Yes, it's
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  people call it the most famous runestone in the world. I think mostly by Americans where it was
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  discovered in 1890. And it's in a museum, I believe, still. And it's being treated as if it's
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  a real runestone, but it's a fake. And you can see it on the runes because they are, first of all,
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  they are medieval runes and they were made by Swedish immigrant Ulov Irman and a priest called
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  Sven Fugelblad as a prank, I think, as a joke. And if you don't know where these runes come from,
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  you can be fooled into thinking it's a runestone. And that's a problem.
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  Yeah, absolutely. And I think it makes me appreciate talking all the more because he doesn't
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  pretend it's real. He's making things up and says, hey, I'm making stuff up and isn't this fun,
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  whereas in that case, it looks like somebody's fallen for fake. And the other one is perhaps
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  a slightly more complicated story of how a symbol which came from a different cultural context got
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  associated with the Vikings. So would you like to say a little bit about that?
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  It's called Bergbissir in English. In Old Norse it's called Eger Jelmer or Eger Helmet.
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  And it's a popular symbol for people who are interested in North culture and Vikings and all
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  that. And it's been made extra popular with the American TV series such as Vikings.
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  And the problem with that is that it's not a old symbol in the context old. It's a medieval
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  symbol and it doesn't even come from Northern Europe. It comes from southern Europe. It's a Christian
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  symbol that came with the missionaries to Iceland who liked it and started using it. But you can
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  find the original in the book The Seals of Solomon. And that just goes to show that you really have
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  to know the language and the culture inside out to understand where things come from. And
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  because most people think it's a North symbol. They don't know any better and it gets spread and
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  spread and spread. And if you spread something too much then it becomes a truth in that. And then
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  we don't have a real history anymore. I suppose we see that happen so much with rumours and lies
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  that are spread by social media in like super quick time. And that symbol is like a very slow motion
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  version of the same thing, isn't it? So yeah, Naryl, we always finish our podcast with
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  aware in the world, in all the fantasy world, is it best to be something? And this week in
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  honour of you and your language ability, I thought I'd ask you, where in the world do you think
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  it is best to be a speaker of many different languages? Is there a place where such a person
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  could have lots of fun? Have you got a fantasy world where you'd like to pitch up and speak lots
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  of languages? The first world that came to mind, honestly, is a sci-fi fantasy. And I thought
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  of Star Wars just because of all the planets and everything, but that's a little bit more sci-fi,
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  where I guess it's a space opera, they call it. Oh no, that's fine. I was thinking I'd like to
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  be C3PO as well, because he always says how many languages he speaks, doesn't he? That's his job.
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  The more languages you can speak there, the more powerful you're going to be, unless you have a robot
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  that can translate everything. Yeah, absolutely. And he also does the etiquette as well, so you know,
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  he will put you right if you're doing something culturally inappropriate, which is helpful.
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  Yeah, but he's also a bit annoying to both.
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  True. So I agree with you. I was thinking Star Wars too. And obviously we would both like to
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  go to Middle-Earth as well. That's fairly clear. I was thinking the worst place to go. The
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  alternative is Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because he just gets rid of languages
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  by giving everyone a babelfish to put in their ear, which kind of irons out all the differences,
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  so definitely don't want to go there. I was thinking Orwell's in 1984 that got rid of
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  online, which is except new speak, so people can't express themselves and criticize anymore.
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  But that's not the pure fantasy, but that's what came to mind. No, I think that
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  any of these are dystopians, so that that works as a fantasy world as well.
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  So, Nariya, thank you so much for talking to us. I'm sure a lot of people once they've listened
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  to this or been looking up Elf Dallion on Wikipedia if nowhere else. Are there any other resources
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  or places that you would suggest people go if they are interested in it? Or is Wiki quite a good
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  place to start? No, it's a really bad place to start. Most things on there are wrong, unfortunately.
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  If you're interested in the language I would suggest contacting the Elf Dallion Council,
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  because then we know what they're talking about, and they also have some material on their website
• 27:23
  that you can buy, dictionaries and so on. Okay, well, we'll put a link to that in our show notes
• 27:29
  if people can look that up, and I just love, I'm just appreciating the Elf Dallion Council,
• 27:35
  which sounds as though Elf Dallion should be in charge, definitely, though I'm sure it's not.
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  So, Nariya, thank you so much for talking to us, and thank you to everyone for listening.
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  That's all for this week. Goodbye.
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