[Literature] The Terrible Swedish translation of the Lord of The Rings. A story of Bad Grammar, Arson, and Black Magic. - r/HobbyDrama (2024)

Note: I used google translate to translate a lot of the Swedish sources that I link to. Apologies for any translation errors, but I have 0 talent for languages.

Hello everyone, I am back again with another weird post. My last writeup was very, very, heavy, but I have a funnier, lighter, story for you all today. Enjoy!

What is the Lord of Rings? And who is J R R Tolkien?

The Lord of the Rings (or LOTR) is a series of fantasy novels by J R R Tolkien. It was published from 1954-1955. In total, it has sold over a 150 million copies and has been translated into over 50 languages. There is also a prequel, The Hobbit, published in 1937, a collection of stories/spinoff/am unsure what it is exactly, The Silmarillion, published in 1977, and a bunch of other books.

I am not going to explain the plot or lore of LOTR. If I did, this writeup would be fifty times as long. I am only going to stick to explaining relevant things.

The author, J R R Tolkien, was a very, very, smart man. He was a professor at the University of Oxford for many years. He was also a noted philologist (someone who studied languages). He created all of the languages in LOTR. It was actually something of a personal hobby for him.

So, Tolkien knew his sh*t. Therefore, any translation of LOTR that came out during his lifetime would be subject to his careful scrutiny…and disappointment if it did not meet his standards. Oh boy.

LOTR in Sweden

In 1947, The Hobbit was translated into Swedish. This was notable because it was Tolkien’s first book to ever be translated into another language.

The book was called Hompen. Yes, Hobbit=Hompen.

Tolkien did not like it:

I wish to avoid a repetition of my experience with the Swedish translation of The Hobbit. I discovered that this had taken unwarranted liberties with the text and other details, without consultation or approval; it was also unfavourably criticized in general by a Swedish expert, familiar with the original, to whom I submitted it.

May I say now at once that I will not tolerate any similar tinkering with the personal nomenclature. Nor with the name/word Hobbit. I will not have any more Hompen (in which I was not consulted), nor any Hobbel or what not.

In addition to Hompen, Bilbo became Bimbo, elf became älva, and goblin became svartalf.

Tolkien also hated the illustration of Gollum:

the picture of Gollum in the Swedish edition of The Hobbit makes him look huge.

Here is the illustration.

Personally, I think it looks pretty cool, but it’s not Gollum. It’s more of a ghost/nightmare demon.

Tolkien also hated the first ever translation of LOTR, into Dutch, published in 1956.

But the worst was yet to come.

In 1959, it was announced that LOTR would be getting a Swedish translation. The translator was a man named Åke Ohlmarks. Like Tolkien, he was also a philologist. He was an experienced translator. He had had translated many prestigious works into Swedish before LOTR. Among them were the works of Shakespeare, Dante, and the Qur'an.

So, he sounds like the perfect person to translate LOTR, right? WRONG!

Instead of doing a straight translation, Ohlmarks decided to take some creative liberties with the text:

Never have I undertaken such a tribulation and more scrupulously entered into an interpreting task than here. I first made a careful smooth translation of the entire book and then radically rewrote it, all the while guided by an aspiration to seek to portray a living fairytale world [...]

The irony was that he disliked the hobbit and had come very close to disliking LOTR too:

..from the first fifty-sixty pages "The Fellowship of the Ring" seemed to be written in the same spirit [i.e. of The Hobbit]: a pure nonsense-fairy-tale to suit the little ones, with an endlessly long account of a boring birthday party... I gave up even before the end of the long-drawn-out chapter about "A Long-expected Party"...

But he continued reading it (he did have a job to do!) and fell in love the trilogy. He became a massive fan of Tolkien, and decided there was no higher praise than butchering ahem reimagining his magnum opus.

The translation

Ohlmarks awful translation came in two flavours: nonsensical names and mangled mistranslations.

There are too many f*ckups to list here, but I will note some of the major ones.

Nonsensical names, (directly quoted from here):

Rivendell becomes "Vattnadal" [Waterdale], probably because Ohlmarks thought that "riven" had something to do with "river"

Esgaroth becomes "Snigelöv" [archaic: Snail leavings], most likely because Ohlmarks was thinking of the French word "escargot" which means "snail". Nobody in Middle-earth speaks French of course.

The ent Quickbeam becomes "Snabba solstrålen" [Swift Sunbeam] because Ohlmarks did not make the connection that all ents have names relating to trees. Sometimes he uses a short form, "Snabbis" [Swiftie], for which there is no support in the original text.

Shelob's Lair becomes "Honmonstrets lår" [the She-monster's Thigh]. The only explanation I can come up with is that the Swedish word for "thigh" is "lår" (pronounced "lawr"), which bears an extremely superficial resemblance to "lair".

But the name problem does not end there. In his eagerness to come up with ingenious Swedish versions of the names, Ohlmarks more often than not forgot what version he had used earlier in the book. The record-holder, in terms of greatest number of alternatives in the smallest space, is Isengard, which in the first volume is rendered as "Isengard", "Isendor" and "Isendal" within the space of four pages! Indeed, the first two of them occur within the same paragraph! And by the way, in the second volume a fourth term, "Isengård", is introduced, which is then used in the rest of the text in an uncharacteristic display of consistency. It should be noted, however, that this error has been corrected in the latest reprint; now it is "Isengård" throughout.

The inconsistent translation of names also seems to suggest that Ohlmarks did not read all three volumes before starting to translate them. The river Entwash is named "Slamma flod" [approximately: Muddy River] on the map in the first volume, while Celeborn later on calls it "Bukteån" [approximately: Bendy Stream]. Only in the second volume, where the reader is introduced to the word "ent", do we get the more correct translation "Ente älv" [Ent River].

Mangled mistranslations (directly quoted from the same link):

Ohlmarks also wreaked havoc with Tolkien's style. Tolkien's style is very laconic and simple compared to, say, Lovecraft - one of Sweden's leading fantasy critics, John-Henri Holmberg, compares it to that of the Icelandic sagas. This, evidently, did not suit Åke Ohlmarks. Ohlmarks preferred a more poetic, hyperbolic style, laden with adverbs, adjectives and unusual and archaic synonyms. Where Tolkien preferred words of Old English origin over Latinisms, Ohlmarks used foreign loan words that were stylistically out of place. Where Tolkien used "inn", Ohlmarks wasn't above using "corps-de-logi" (French again!) instead of the far more appropriate, all-Swedish "värdshus". Where Tolkien in one instance used "lost", Ohlmarks used "biltog", which is so archaic it appears in no modern dictionaries; it actually means "outlawed" and thus is a very bad translation for "lost".

Compare the following examples, from the original vs Swedish (translated back into English):

For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and the darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. (The Lord of the Rings 871)

For it was the morning that came, the morning and the breeze from the sea, and the darkness failed and the armies of Mordor whimpered and wailed as terror took them and they fled and fell and the many thousand hooves of galloping wrath trampled them and rode over them. (Sagan om konungens återkomst 130)

'Slam the doors and wedge them!' shouted Aragorn. (The Lord of the Rings 341)

Close the doors and wedge them! thundered Aragorn's commanding voice. (Sagan om ringen 383)

OT: "'Ha! ha! What does we wish?' he [Gollum] said, looking sidelong at the hobbits. 'We'll tell you,' he croaked. 'He guessed it long ago, Baggins guessed it.'" (The Lord of the Rings 645f).

ST: "'Ho ho ho, yes! What is it that we want?' he [Gollum] asked and looked from the side at the hobbits. 'We will tell you that,' he croaked. 'He guessed it long ago, Baggins here guessed it.'" (Sagan om de två tornen 263).

OT: "According to the Red Book, Bandobras Took (Bullroarer), ... was four foot five and able to ride a horse." (The Lord of the Rings 14).

ST: "According to 'the Red Book', the 'bullroarer' Bandobras Took, ... was between four and five foot tall and was even said to be able to ride a normal horse." (Sagan om ringen 15).

There are hundreds more mistakes in the text. But by far the most egregious one came at the end of the third book, when Eowyn killed the Witch King.

OT: "Then tottering, struggling up, with her last strength she [Éowyn] drove her sword between crown and mantle, as the great shoulders bowed before her."

ST: "Staggering he [Merry] straightened up and summoning his last strength he drove with an incredible chop his sword right between the crown and the mantle as the broad shoulders bowed down toward her." (Sagan om konungens återkomst 135)

Yes, in a weird alternate Swedish universe, Merry kills the Witch King.

Full list of translation errors here and here.

Ohlmarks did get some things right. For instance, Middle Earth became Midgard and Marigold (Sam’s daughter) became Majagull Ringblom (keeping the reference to flowers and the colour gold). He also changed Hobbits to “Hobs” and “Hober”, a vast improvement from Hompen. Tolkien approved of all of these minor changes, but not much else.

Also, Ohlmarks translation did receive an initially positive reception in Sweden. Critics lavished praise upon it, calling it “magnificent” and “inspirational”. Tolkien may not like it, but Swedes did (for now).

Don’t piss off the author

Tolkien made his feelings about Ohlmarks translation very clear in numerous letters to his publisher:

A letter in Swedish from fil. dr. Åke Ohlmarks, and a huge list (9 pages foolscap) of names in the L.R. which he had altered. I hope that my inadequate knowledge of Swedish — no better than my kn. of Dutch, but I possess a v. much better Dutch dictionary! — tends to exaggerate the impression I received. The impression remains, nonetheless, that Dr Ohlmarks is a conceited person, less competent than charming Max Schuchart (Dutch translator) , though he thinks much better of himself. In the course of his letter he lectures me on the character of the Swedish language and its antipathy to borrowing foreign words (a matter which seems beside the point), a procedure made all the more ridiculous by the language of his letter, more than 1 / 3 of which consists of 'loan-words' from German, French and Latin.

It seems to me fairly evident that Dr.O. has stumbled along dealing with things as he came to them, without much care for the future or co-ordination, and that he has not read the Appendices† at all, in which he would have found many answers. ...

-Letter 204

Dr Ohlmarks, for instance, though he is reported to me to be clever and ingenious, can produce such things as this. In translating vol. i p. 12, 'they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough leathery soles and were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads', he read the text as '... their feet had thick feathery soles, and they were clad in a thick curling hair . . .' and so produces in his Introduction a picture of hobbits whose outdoor garb was of matted hair, while under their feet they had solid feather-cushion treads! This is made doubly absurd, since it occurs in a passage where he is suggesting that the hobbits are modelled on the inhabitants of the idyllic suburb of Headington.

Who is Who is not a safe source in the hands of foreigners ignorant of England. From it Ohlmarks has woven a ridiculous fantasy. Ohlmarks is a very vain man (as I discovered in our correspondence), preferring his own fancy to facts, and very ready to pretend to knowledge which he does not possess.

-Letter 228

Tolkien also hated the awful foreword that Ohlmarks added to the first book. In it, Ohlmarks got basic facts about Tolkien’s life wrong, as well as the themes of LOTR. My favourite part is that he thought Sauron was an allegory for Stalin:

Here the personification of satanic power, Sauron (perhaps read, in the same 'partial' way: Stalin) rules. From here, the magic rings are distributed as rewards to great men, who have sold themselves to the darkness (the nine black horsem*n, read: Paulus, the German atomic experts and 'the missing diplomats'). From here come the terrifying nocturnal terrorists on their black horses, merciless masters of the art of cold torture, the 'third degree' (read: GPU and Gestapo). From this abode of darkness, the unwilling creatures under the power of Mordor, a Bill Orb, a Skeletøgat (read: home Bolsheviks and World War II fifth columnists) are ruled.

Yeah WTF.

If you want read a proper takedown of the foreword, Tolkien himself wrote a scathing one in 1961. He eventually got it removed from Swedish copies of LOTR.

But Tolkien’s anger didn’t stop there. He was so, so, so, upset by the horrible Swedish and Dutch translations of LOTR, that he wrote a book called “Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings” in order to ensure that future translators did not mess up his work.

Despite his terrible translation, it’s clear that Ohlmarks had great affection for LOTR and respect for Tolkien as a writer. He was severely devastated by the authors harsh rejection. Even so, he continued translating Tolkien’s works into Swedish (I don’t know if it was because of a contract or if Tolkien couldn’t stop his Swedish publishers, but Ohlmarks ended up translating another 6 books).

But the worst was still yet to come.

The Wrath of Christopher Tolkien

In 1972, Ohlmarks published a biography on Tolkien called Sagan om Tolkien (Swedish: The Fairy-tale of Tolkien or The Tolkien saga). I haven’t been able to find much information about it, but I don’t think it was authorized by Tolkien or his estate. I wouldn’t be surprised if, just like the earlier foreword, it was full of mistakes about Tolkien’s life.

In 1973, J R R Tolkien died, leaving his son, Christopher Tolkien, as his literary executor to publish his remaining works. This included The Silmarillion, which was published in 1977. In 1974, Ohlmarks went to England and visited Christopher. Overall, the meeting went well. Christopher graciously complimented Ohlmark’s translation of LOTR and even showed him some of the then-unpublished The Silmarillion.

Ohlmarks left the meeting feeling inspired. He went home and started work on a new unauthorized book, a preview of The Silmarillion based on the material Christopher had kindly shown him. He even wanted Christopher to write an introduction about his family and home.

After a while, he sent a preliminary copy of the book to Christopher. Christopher wasn’t too enthused by this and replied with a disapproving letter telling him to stop.

Ohlmarks found this letter “insulting”. In his eyes, he had done much for Tolkien’s legacy in Sweden and was a therefore a true LOTR fan. His translation was a tribute, not an insult. Although, he abided by Christopher’s wishes and did not publish his preview of The Silmarillion.

I think that it’s likely a miscommunication arose between them, because of the language barrier.

But Christopher’s harsh words did not diminish Ohlmark’s love for Tolkien or LOTR. In 1976, he published a “Tolkien Lexicon” in Sweden. Another Swedish writer, Ingvar Svensson, claimed that it had over 6,000 errors. In 1977, he published his own lexicon in response to Ohlmark’s version.

In 1977, Humphrey Carpenter published “J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography”. Unlike Ohlmark’s book, it had been authorized by the Tolkien family and was thus a much more faithful account of the authors life. It mentioned Tolkien’s distaste for Ohlmark and his translation, as well as Christopher’s anger at the unauthorized Silmarillion book.

Ohlmarks responded:

What is the real purpose of Christopher Tolkien, via Carpenter's typewriter, emptying a bucket of slops over my head? Is this happening only because I sent him a small well-meant manuscript, or part of it, in a photostat copy in order for him to give his opinion about it, to send word whether he thought I could print it or not? Is it really possible to show greater respect? Had I sent him a finished copy I could probably sympathize with him. But now?Ohlmark’s fury grew when it was announced in 1977 that The Silmarillion was getting a Swedish translation, and that Christopher had only authorized it on the condition that Ohlmarks was not involved in it in any way.

In the end, The Silmarillion was translated into Swedish by Roland Adlerberth. By all accounts, he did a fantastic job. He did retain many of Ohlmark’s names but handled the text and flow of language much better. He also translated many of Tolkien’s other works into Swedish until the end of the 1980s.

Ohlmarks love for Tolkien turned to hatred. He had to take action, make Chrisopher pay, So, what did he do?

Write another book.

In 1978, he published “Tolkiens arv” (Swedish: The Legacy of Tolkien). The back of the book is pure gold:

ÅKE OHLMARKS has spent twenty years of his life introducing Tolkien in Sweden, translated nine works by and two on him, and also written the first biography on Tolkien in the world and created the only Swedish lexicon on Tolkien. On top of that, he has given lectures and established the national Tolkien Society.

After the death of Tolkien in 1973, Ohlmarks has been given a shameful treatment, to say the least, by Christopher Tolkien, the literary executor of his father's unpublished writings. The whole history, and especially the relation to the son of Tolkien, is here given an account which nearly amounts to a detective novel.

He also insulted The Silmarillion:

One thing a god-given fiction writer of Tolkien's high class must not be: boring. "The Silmarillion" is definitely a boring book. If I had it translated, I would have had to, in the name of loyalty, beat myself up in order to mask this boringness as far as possible in the Swedish translation. I had sought to vary the stereotypical style of declamation and did my very best to develop the small approaches to excitement there are.

Arson and black magic

In 1982, Ohlmark’s house burned down. Instead of accepting it as an accident, he claimed it was arson and blamed fans of Tolkien and LOTR.

What did he do to take revenge? Write another book of course!

Published in 1982, it was called called “Tolkien och den svarta magin” (Swedish: Tolkien and the Black Magic). Again, the back of the book was gold:

It has come to attention that, especially during the last years, the multitude of Tolkien societies (thousands in America, and not a few in Sweden) have degenerated to a kind of KU-KLUX-KLAN with a worship of open violence, crude orgies, alcohol and drug abuse. Murders have been committed, recurrent cases of assaults, kidnapping and desecrations of churches and sacraments.

Åke Ohlmarks, the man responsible for the translation and introduction of Tolkien in Sweden and who is also internationally recognized as one of the foremost experts on Tolkien, reveals in this uncanny book how far it has evolved even in our country.

Y-I-K-E-S

This description did not even scratch the surface of the delusion and paranoia in the book. For one, it was dedicated to Edmund Wilson, one of Tolkien’s harshest critics. In the foreword, Ohlmarks also referred to LOTR as “Tolkien’s trash” and “the damned thing”.

In his eyes, the first book of LOTR was now just as bad as The Hobbit:

The first book [Book 1 of LOTR] is poor rubbish for children and tells almost exclusively of a lengthy, tiresome birthday party among the 'creatures' called hobbits... These hobbits... make pretty boring reading... Tolkien invented his hobbits in a miserably bad fairy-story as early as 1937 ... [LOTR] is the naive folk-tale, painted in black and white, at its worst...

One chapter was called “The half-witted old man Tolkien” He also insulted Tolkien’s philology skills:

The old man John Reul was in many respects an odd character and by no means without faults. He believed he had mastered practically every language in the world, including... Swedish.Sure enough, with the help of dictionaries he could passably spell his way though a Swedish text... But he lacked every sense of the nuances of Swedish words, which did not stop him from tyrannically dictating what everything was going to be called in Swedish...

However, he regarded my independence as an insolent criticism of his omniscience and never forgave me. The fact that I have given nearly forty lectures about him and his work and ... that for twenty years I have done more than anyone else to spread Tolkienism in the whole of the Nordic area did not bother him at all.

Other outrageous things he claimed:

Tolkien was a closet Nazi sympathiser, at least before the war. The basis for this erroneous claim was that many leading German philologists had been members of the Nazi Parti during the war, and Tolkien was a philologist. Also, the character Saruman, who had been on the side of good but turned to evil, was "obviously" based on Hitler. And the name "Saruman" was obviously the same as "SA man" with a Germanic "Ruhm" in the middle meaning "honour". (Ohlmarks does not, however, mention that he himself spent the years 1941 to 1945 teaching Swedish at the university of Greifswald. Which, by the way, is in Germany.)

Side note: Ohlmarks had actually been accused of being a Nazi earlier in his career but denied the allegations.

The Tolkien Society is a huge international conspiracy or mafia bent on world domination, and anyone who tries to go up against them will be quietly "silenced".

Tolkien fans are degenerate people who are contemptuous of the noble working class, abuse alcohol and drugs, indulge in kinky sexual orgies, beat up old people, sacrifice children, and worship Satan.

Tolkien was a bad writer and the good parts of The Lord of the Rings must have been written by C. S. Lewis.

He thought that LOTR was a forgery. Chiefly that the Hobbit and The Fellowship of The Ring were written by Tolkien, while a different, better, author aka Lewis wrote the rest of the books:

.. because it could definitely not be him [Tolkien]. If it were, the entire academic exercise of "philological determinance of authorship" would be worthless. ... there are fundamental discrepancies in style, vocabulary, syntax, narrative technique, story-telling, visionary power - everything

In addition to the book, Ohlmarks also ran a campaign of harassment against LOTR fans and the Tolkien family. He did numerous interviews with various newspapers and radio shows, further insulting Tolkien and his legacy.

Åke Ohlmarks died in 1984. Sweden wouldn’t get a new translation of LOTR for another 20 years.

2002-2005: The Retranslation of the King

By the early 2000s, the reception to Ohlmark’s translation had become much more negative:

In 2000, the author Leif Jacobsen [sv] of Lund University's Institute of Linguistics, noting among other things the confusion between Eowyn and Merry in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, wrote that "There can be no doubt that the Swedish translation is defective and in many ways a failure". Jacobsen argued that where Tolkien was writing for adults, Ohlmarks translated for children. Further, in his view Ohlmarks seemed to be trying to make the text his own, supplanting Tolkien rather than directly translating him. In 2004, Malte Persson wrote in Göteborgsposten that the translation was "so full of misunderstandings, misconceptions, inconsistencies, and arbitrary additions that it must mean that Ohlmark was either significantly worse at English than Icelandic, or that he had not taken the assignment seriously". Also in 2004, Anders Stenström, known as Beregond, stated that the translation contains numerous factual errors, mistranslations of idiomatic expressions, and non-sequiturs.

In 2002, it was announced that LOTR would be getting a new Swedish translation. The translators were Erik Andersson and Lotta Olsson. Andersson would handle the prose while Olsson would handle the poetry. Notably, neither of them had read the books. Of course, they used Tolkien’s guide, but they also had help from a group of twelve Swedish LOTR fans to act as fact checkers.

The project drew a lot of attention. The translators were invited to numerous talk shows and interviews with newspapers.

As for what they thought of Ohlmarks translation, Anderrson was very forthright:

As a creation in its own right it is excellent, even if it does not always follow Tolkien; you have to be modest when you criticise careless mistakes and such. And many people will probably be disappointed in my version. It is like the Bible: you’ve got used to older editions and even if the translation is wrong you don’t care.

The new translation came out in 2005. It received a very positive reception. It was seen as a massive improvement on Ohlmark’s mess. Andersson and Olsson did use a few of Ohlmark’s names for certain subjects, such as the well-received Midgard for Middle Earth, but redid most of the text. Their translation was much more faithful to Tolkien’s original style. Some Swedish LOTR fans were so thrilled that they invited Andersson to a 3 day celebration, dubbed him a knight of Tolkien, and awarded him prizes.

It did receive some criticism. Full breakdown here by Charlotte Strömbom of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She goes much more into the nuances of the translation and highlights some of its flaws.

Here are some of the differences between all 3 translations. More of them are on Wikipedia.

In 2007, Erik Andersson worked on a Swedish translation of The Hobbit, which was published that same year. He also published a diary about his experiences translating LOTR, called Översättarens anmärkningar (“Translator’s notes”). Here are some excerpts from it.

Meanwhile, Dutch fans of LOTR are still waiting for a new translation.

Thanks for reading!