Talk:Grœnlendinga saga

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Did You Know An entry from Grœnlendinga saga appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on December 29, 2005.
Wikipedia

Contents

[edit] 1 in contents list

For the first item, there is an ugly 1 in the title because of the footnote. Is there a way of getting rid of the 1 without removing the footnote? It appears as "1.1 Colonization of Greenland1" on the TOC. --Naelphin 02:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Good point, I hadn't noticed this. Trying a few things with preview doesn't yield a solution. - Haukur 02:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Grœnlendinga þáttr

What is this þáttr, or is it just another name for the saga? Stefán Ingi 01:31, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

No, it's a completely different thing - you can read it here [1].
The terminology is very confusing - both of those pieces of prose are about the same length and both of them are found only in Flateyjarbók. In fact Grœnlendinga saga is something of an artificial construct. It's a narrative combined from two disjoint chapters of Flateyjarbók (plus a small third piece) which have the manuscript titles Grœnlendinga þáttr and Eiríks þáttr rauða. But the thing which we now call Grœnlendinga þáttr is also called Grœnlendinga þáttr in the manuscript. The table of contents at Flateyjarbók is misleading - within Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar are some þættir. - Haukur 01:42, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page location - Google searches

I fooled around with Google a bit. Both Britannica and Encarta use Tale of the Greenlanders to refer to this saga but I think that's an awful title since it could also apply to "Grœnlendinga þáttr" - which is why I made a disambiguation page. (I aim to include some information on the confused terminology here in the article itself.)

[edit] google.com

  • 906 English pages for "Greenlanders' Saga" -Wikipedia
  • 586 English pages for "Grœnlendinga saga" | "Grænlendinga saga" | "Groenlendinga saga" | "Granlendinga saga" | "Grenlendinga saga" | "Graenlendinga saga" -Wikipedia
  • 525 English pages for "Tale of the Greenlanders" -Wikipedia (including Britannica and Encarta)
  • 297 English pages for "Greenlander Saga" -Wikipedia
  • 238 English pages for "Saga of the Greenlanders" -Wikipedia

[edit] books.google.com

  • 39 pages on "Greenlanders' Saga"
  • 26 pages on "Saga of the Greenlanders"
  • 18 pages on "Grœnlendinga saga" OR "Grænlendinga saga" OR "Groenlendinga saga" OR "Granlendinga saga" OR "Grenlendinga saga" OR "Graenlendinga saga".
  • 11 pages on "Greenlander Saga"
  • 7 pages on "Tale of the Greenlanders"

It seems that Greenlanders' Saga may be the most common title for the story in English texts (though these numbers obviously aren't conclusive). That's an acceptable non-confusing title so I wouldn't mind a move there. - Haukur 23:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I get 834 and 8, as results for "Greenland Saga", which is more natural in English, and should also be considered. (Presumably the naturalness is why it occurs despite the imprecise translation.) My only reservation about "Greenlanders' Saga" is the hyphen - and it will need a redirect from "Greenlander's Saga". Experto crede. Septentrionalis 23:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Sigh, okay, I guess :) The spelling with the incorrectly placed apostrophe actually had an incoming link when I started writing this so a redirect is probably necessary. I'll add the Greenland Saga option to the mix. - Haukur 23:17, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Wait a moment! Now I actually get far fewer hits for "Greenlanders' Saga" than last time I was doing this. Fickle Google. Or maybe I made a mistake originally. I'll rerun all searches - but it can wait till tomorrow. - Haukur 23:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Some further fiddling with Google shows that the apostrophe is frequently omitted or misplaced in Greenlanders' Saga so the theory that it is the most common title is cast into doubt. It's a clumsy title anyhow. It seems that Greenland Saga is the title of some Dungeons & Dragons publication. Bah. Of the English titles I'd prefer Saga of the Greenlanders as reasonably non-clumsy. I'm also starting to note that sometimes when the original titles (or scholarly titles or whatever you want to call them) are used in English texts the word Saga is capitalized. Thus Grœnlendinga Saga occurs in some English language works but Grœnlendinga saga in others.
It's probably not worth it spending so much time analyzing this, next time I'll work on the article instead :) - Haukur 00:33, 13 January 2006 (UTC)