Talk:Töres döttrar i Wänge

Needs an explanation...
What does the youngest one mean by saying his father is Tyson? Are they really his sons? What metaphor is this alluding to? Who is "Per Tyson" in the 6th to last line? Surely that is a typo? What does it mean that he has iron around his waist? Who are the speakers of each spoken line? MarcelB612 (talk) 08:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, their father was Per Tyrsson, they were really his sons. In medieval Scandinavia it was a custom among rich and prominent families to have their children brought up by other families, preferably some with slightly less status in the society. The purpose of this custom was, I think, to forge bonds between familes that may not have been related, but still needed to be on a friendly footing. It's not a metaphor for something else, it's supposed to have happened just like the ballad tells it.


 * The speakers of the different lines: It's the "highwaymen" ("vallare" literally means cow herders, but it would sound silly to translate it as "cowboys", I guess) who say: "And would you buy silken shifts, By nine maidens knitted and stitched?". They are trying to make a profit out of the fine clothes they looted from the corpses. Lady Karin is suspicious of the men, as can be seen when, by a slip of her tongue, she says "Perhaps I know all THREE" despite just having been told that the clothes were made by NINE maidens (they say sixteen in some versions). Karin tells her husband what she has concluded ("There are three highwaymen in our yard, Who have our daughters slain") and he kills them, but remembers to ask about their names and families, so he can report the slaying to the family of the unfortunate cowboys. Doing so was mandatory, otherwise he would have been considered a murderer. But even though he was not guilty of murder according to the law, he had committed the grievous sin of slaying his own kin, and as a penitence he decides to clap himself in irons and have a church built, hoping that God might forgive his sin because of his repentance. 83.251.27.165 (talk) 10:47, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Mistake in translation
Kaller var is translated into "The Forest", but it has something to do with the cold. In Swedish they don't say "It was cold", they would just put "cold [it] was". For example, a few lines above it says "Kaller var deras skog", which literally translates to "Cold was their forest", skog(en) being "[the] forest", not kaller. I've only been learning Swedish for almost 9 months now, so perhaps someone better aquianted with the language could fix it? BulbousCow (talk) 14:07, 13 May 2023 (UTC)