Skyrim talk:Volsung (creature)

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Horrow[edit]

His name stands for Horrow? Horrow is not a word to the best of my knowledge. Is Horror or Sorrow correct? (Or borrow I suppose, though that wouldnt fit with the rest of the names). JimmyDeSouza 15:35, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

You're right, I haven't a clue what the anon was trying to say. I've removed it for now. --Legoless 15:39, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps it was supposed to be "Harrow"? --66.8.202.140 11:25, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
According to the Wikia article on Volsung, Vol means "horror" in the Dragon Language. Our Dragon Language article seconds this. Völsung is also an ancestor character from Norse mythology -- a possible etymology, but of course irrelevant to lore. --Thiafy 18:59, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Air?[edit]

I'm not sure I buy the "Su-in-Sung = Air" bit. That would imply that "ng" is also a word, which, while possible, doesn't sound very Draconic. Or that "sung" is a form of "su" (you add -ng for conjugation? Or something), which there doesn't seem to be any evidence for. To my knowledge. Discuss? --Thiafy 20:36, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

For your trivia. Oddly -ng is a consonant in Pali and Thai. It is used in the word Singha which is a part dragon heraldic monster similar to the Griffon of European antiquity. It is also in Naga, pronounced in Thai Ngaga (The ng sound is almost impossible for non natives to pronounce) with Ngaga being a generic word for serpents, snakes and dragons. The westernized version of the word being Naja as in Naja naja Siamensis, the Thai spitting cobra. — Unsigned comment by Sniffles (talkcontribs) at 08:04 on 30 July 2012

Horrific Air[edit]

I can't imagine this guy's name is essentially Fart. More work needed :) Off the Rails 14:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Volsung Saga Reference?[edit]

This dragon priest's name seems to be a reference to the real-life Icelandic "Volsung Saga". This would fit with the theme of Skyrim, since the Volsung Saga is one of the most famous ancient Nordic legends, and since the main story from this saga features the protagonist (Sigurd Volsung) gaining magical powers by slaying a dragon. It also makes more sense than "Horrific Air" interpretation of his name, imho. — Unsigned comment by 69.118.161.143 (talk) on 16 March 2012

I can't really see any reference here, its just a Nordic name that got assigned to this particular NPC. --SerCenKing Talk 22:23, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
The game designers borrowed a truck load of Nordic sounding words for the game. Most are nonsense. Vol, pronounced ven, is just a prefix, a shortening of Vala, meaning great, or in reference to the 'gods'. See the principle work in the Eldar Edda, the Voluspa. See http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/vlsng/ for the reasonably well translated Volsung Saga. Sniffles 08:11, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
he could translate to frightening wind or something just throwing suggestions — Unsigned comment by ‎70.181.100.226 (talk) at 15:35 on 2 September 2012

Volsung as 'The Horrific One'[edit]

Volsung's name likely does involve dragon language, as all other Dragon Priest names do. However, I don't think his name is purely draconic, as the phoneme 'ng' doesn't seem to appear in dragon language- the only two instances we know of are Lingrah and Krongrah. Krongrah is formed from victory 'Kron', indicating to me that it is likely syllabized as Kron-grah. Likewise, I think its a fair assumption that Lingrah is Lin-grah. Now that this is established, Volsung in real life is the anglicized form of old norse Vǫlsungr/icelandic Völsungur, a name meaning 'chosen one', from a combination of vǫl (choices) and the emphasizing element -ungr. Tying this back to dragon language, and dragon priest names, the word Vol in dragon language refers to horror, a word also featured in the name of the location he is found in. Replacing the vǫl in the real life Volsung with draconic Vol, and we have Horror + nordic emphasizing element ungr, meaning 'The Horrific One'. -Zinitrad — Unsigned comment by 174.234.156.0 (talk) at 01:04 on 18 October 2018 (UTC)

That was probably there intention, but I don't see a way for us to use this research, unfortunately. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 01:08, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
Trying to work out the definition of his name in dragon language is perfectly reasonable as a topic, as you can see from the previous posts. Trying to use Norse to determine his name is not as it is completely irrelevant. Trying to mix the two together doesn't bypass this, particularly when you ignore the Norse translation for half his name but insist on using it for the second half. His name doesn't even have an "r" so you can't just add it from thin air to produce your translation. What his name is is an anglicized version of that name that they didn't think to apply the dragon language to. There are two priests without translations (Rahgot and Otar), and two with incomplete translations (Volsung and Hevnoraak). There are even 6 untranslated dragon names (granted some come from before the dragon language was invented). What makes more sense is to speculate that Sung is a derivative from air, such as float for floating horror, or even push it out to flying horror. Or course the most often ignored circumstance is that sung means something else entirely and we just don't know what it is, but until then we present what we know on the page and ignore half-baked ideas about translating the two halves of his name with two different languages, one of which doesn't exist in Tamriel. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 02:02, 18 October 2018 (UTC)