Far more than a simple translation
February 12, 2017 5:47 AM   Subscribe

ON DRACULA’S LOST ICELANDIC SISTER TEXT "Certainly the most surprising and intriguing Dracula-related discovery of this still-young century is the unearthing of the novel’s Icelandic sister. Its title, Makt Myrkranna (Powers of Darkness), has been known to Dracula experts since 1986, when literary researcher Richard Dalby reported on the 1901 Icelandic edition and on its preface, apparently written specifically for it by Stoker himself. "
posted by aldurtregi (26 comments total) 48 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm just here to squee out loud, and then I'll go RTFA right away. Squee!
posted by daisyk at 6:45 AM on February 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


I just bought this yesterday! I teach Dracula semi-frequently, so it will be interesting to see what the translator did with (to) it.
posted by thomas j wise at 6:51 AM on February 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


thanks! I bought it just now! I'll be back after I read it.
posted by putzface_dickman at 7:03 AM on February 12, 2017


My paperback edition of Dracula has a preface explaining that it's really all about Irish immigration. Were the Irish also going to Iceland, I wonder?
posted by thelonius at 7:19 AM on February 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Bram Stoker prefers
The Gothic longeur
For saltier fun
Try Ásmundsson
posted by Devonian at 7:30 AM on February 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


So cool
posted by mrdaneri at 7:46 AM on February 12, 2017


If we calculate the chance that all these congruences would occur by sheer coincidence, we arrive at one in a million—or less.

Some serious science there.

I also like the notion of Iceland as uncharted territory with limited contact with the rest of the world, up until the mid-eighties when someone finally figured out how to make it out of the Keflavík main building.
posted by effbot at 7:48 AM on February 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


I would easily have believed that this article was itself gothic fiction in the fusty academic tradition of which I am so fond, and that all these events were going to end up in a basement of bloodthirsty ghouls somewhere.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:00 AM on February 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


I am so excited about this book, I can't even tell you. Dracula scholarship is basically my favorite thing in the world. Far and away my favorite book I read last year was Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, and my mother gave me Emily Gerard's Transylvanian Superstitions, one of the books Stoker used for vampire research, for this past Christmas. Even while I'm moving more into ebooks I'm still maintaining a pretty extensive collection of Dracula-related books, like Leslie Klinger's Annotated Dracula, and a paper puppet set of Edward Gorey's designs for the 70s revival of the stage play. It's like they went "hmm, elsilnora's been pretty down lately, what with the state of the country and the rise of global fascism, what can we do to cheer her up for a bit?"

I am super excited about Powers of Darkness is what I am saying.

Anyway I hadn't heard anything about this at all until this post, thank you so much, aldurtregi!
posted by elsilnora at 8:41 AM on February 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


We got our Mom to make the chicken paprika recipe given in Annotated Dracula, after my brother got the book as a gift and became obsesses by it. It stayed in rotation for years.
posted by thelonius at 8:58 AM on February 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


We got our Mom to make the chicken paprika recipe given in Annotated Dracula, after my brother got the book as a gift and became obsesses by it. It stayed in rotation for years.

Oh my gosh that is a fantastic idea. I know what I'm gonna try to cook next!
posted by elsilnora at 9:08 AM on February 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is *fascinating*. Maybe I should do a version in parallel to our Draculablog.
posted by doctornemo at 9:38 AM on February 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Wow, this reads like an entry in Borges Ficciones. So cool it's real!
posted by es_de_bah at 12:22 PM on February 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Apparently Iceland is still uncharted territory with limited contact with the rest of the world, given the fact that this article is entirely about putting things into Google and seeing what comes out rather than, you know, asking an Icelander what's up.
posted by No-sword at 2:28 PM on February 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


That did strike me as odd. I distinctly remember my professor in a horror fiction course in my university mention how very different Makt Myrkranna was from Dracula, and that was about ten years ago. If mr. de Roos had just sent an inquiring email to the literature department of the University of Iceland he could have saved himself some trouble.
posted by aldurtregi at 2:45 PM on February 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Borealism strikes again.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:48 PM on February 12, 2017


Yeah, Icelandic scholars have been writing about Makt myrkranna for a while now. Heck, there was a national radio program about the book that aired in January and February of 2014. At least two different M.A. theses have been written about it, by Eva Dögg Diego Þorkelsdóttir and Magnea J. Matthíasdóttir. The book itself was republished in Icelandic in 2011. The person who first wrote extensively about the differences between Dracula by Bram Stoker and Makt myrkranna was an Icelander by the name of Ásgeir Jónsson, who also was one of the people who republished the original work. I'll note that De Roos credits Ásgeir Jónsson in his introduction.
posted by Kattullus at 11:41 PM on February 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


There's also this recently unearthed version of Dracula -- the original manuscript that was the after-action report of a British intelligence operation to recruit Dracula as an asset, before it was edited into a popular novel to create disinformation to shroud the real events. Presented with hand-written notes in the margin by a contemporary intelligence officer, and two more in later generations who had been referring back to it during subsequent disastrous attempts to recruit Dracula.

(It's a role-playing game prop. But I'm greatly entertained that it exists and I haven't even read it yet...)
posted by Zed at 9:41 AM on February 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you like that, Zed, you should give Anno Dracula a try. (Haven't read it, myself, but people whose taste I respect vouch for it.)
posted by tobascodagama at 1:28 PM on February 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh my gosh that is a fantastic idea. I know what I'm gonna try to cook next!

It is an awesome idea because chicken paprikash (shouldn't have that final "h", really, but either way pronounced pap-ri-kosh) is great food. Add galuska (ga-loosh-kuh) if possible, which I have to admit are probably indistinguishable from spaetzle. If you can get a spaetzle maker they are super easy to make although admittedly the dough becomes like paste and cleaning up is a pain. If you don't do the galuska bow-tie noodles were my grandmother's standby if she didn't have time.

Having grown up with it I was indeed excited when I read about it in the opening chapters of Dracula.

Oh, yeah, the original article is interesting too. :)
posted by mark k at 8:50 PM on February 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Zed: I've never heard of Dracula Unredacted and that's going right on my reading list, too, especially since I can always use more Dracula-related RPG material. Definitely seconding tobascodagama's Anno Dracula advice.

mark k: Would spaetzle be an okay substitute if I can't get galuska, which to be honest is another thing here that I've never heard of? Also, you remind me that I definitely need to get a spaetzle maker no matter what.
posted by elsilnora at 3:24 PM on February 14, 2017


Interesting, there might be a tv show based on Makt Myrkranna on the way.
posted by aldurtregi at 2:05 PM on February 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


I've never heard of Dracula Unredacted and that's going right on my reading list, too

I've seen the physical book, and I'm happy that when I backed the kickstarter I didn't choose a level that included it -- the annotations are a little hard to read at the size they printed it, and I'll be glad to be looking at larger pages on a 10" tablet.
posted by Zed at 12:30 PM on February 26, 2017


I got a copy of this from my library and was surprised by the physical dimensions of the book when I picked it up. "It's oddly wide," I thought.

and then I opened it and saw that the main text was confined to around 2/3rds of the page and there were [marginal notes / side notes] on almost every page.

I'm about a third of the way through reading it and just the notes alone have been worth it. The amateur linguistics nerd in me loves reading things like:
131 By repeating "hún þarna uppi" and by the use of the definite article ("towards the portrait"), the text indicates that the Count is still talking about his first cousin depicted in the large portrait he showed at the start.
or the socio-historical notes like:
144 Icelandic: "að̠ veita nábjargir." In the old Norse tradition, this means the service of closing eyes, nostrils and mouth on a dead person. See Boyer, 1994, p. 56.
posted by komara at 8:19 AM on March 2, 2017 [5 favorites]


OMG. I'm a total footnote nerd, so I really need to check this out now.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:23 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oooh there will be a board game:

Because the lcelandic version of Dracula seems to be based on a consistent architectural outline of Castle Dracula, we are working on a boardgame design that will use the floorplans we reconstructed from the novel. Each of the players will have a mission which corresponds to the personal goals of the characters from the novel.
posted by thelonius at 8:34 AM on March 2, 2017 [4 favorites]


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