In the morning you will eat frogs - Swedish translation needed

November 17, 2023 11:34 AM

While going through some family odds and ends, I came upon an odd little bowl.

It's clay, rather sloppily glazed dark green, and it has a phrase on it which looks, to my non-Swedish keyboard, like "Glad dig du skaning / I marn ska du eda grod".

I hope that this is something polite or at least inoffensive, and should it prove to be some kind of monstrous nationalism, etc, I'll get rid of the thing.

Google Translate's first pass was "cheer up you skank, in the morning you will eat frogs", which is fantastic but seems unlikely.

I tried an online Swedish dictionary but could not pull up too many of the words, even with the correct diacritical marks.

On the bottom of the bowl is hand-incised "1912 Aug L. Svedala".

Svedala is a municipality in Skane, which is where my side of the family is from and I believe that in this context "skaning" may be "person from Skane". I dimly recall that I had a relative from around that time named August Lindahl.

So it seems likely that this object was made by or for this relative, but as far as I know he had emigrated by the late 19th century, so perhaps it was on a visit?

In any case, what does it say? It is green, so I can only hope that it is a bowl for traditional Skane frog porridge. Photos are attached although I could not get all the words into a single image.

Thank you very much!

posted by Frowner to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

Gläd dig du skåning / I marn ska du eda gröd

I guess it's a song?
posted by zamboni at 11:46 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can't help with the translation, but the first thing I thought of was the old joke about eat a frog first thing in the morning and the rest of the day is bound to be better!
posted by BlueHorse at 11:49 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here is Google Translates version of Zamboni's song

Oh
¶
Rejoice, Skåne, tomorrow you will get a harvest.
Dip it in honey and it will be so sweet.
Tra - la - la - la, tra - la - la - la, tra - la - la - la, tra - la - la - la.
Dip it in honey and it will stay
posted by willnot at 11:51 AM on November 17, 2023

It seems to be the first lines of a song as mentioned by zamboni, but not one I recognize. But I'm from the other side of the country so... The "Svenska Akademies Ordbok" (most official dictionary we have I guess) have a version in more modern Swedish:

Gläd dig, du skåning, / i morgon får du äta gröt. / Doppa den i honung, / så blir du tjock och fet

My rough translation to English: "Be happy, you Scanian / Tomorrow you get to eat porridge / Dip it in honey, / So you get thick and fat"

A few notes. "du skåning" means you from the area of Skåne. It sounds weird to be able to dip porridge in honey, but that is what the text says...

On preview, I have no idea how the google translate version posted by willnot got it so wrong.
posted by rpn at 12:01 PM on November 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: Thinking about it, it is probably a souvenir made for sale by August L and the names are a coincidence, and it was probably purchased by a relative (possibly August L!) on a visit back to Skane, since my family kept in touch with our relatives there up through the eighties.

Pretty neat! It was the Americans who got fat - the really good-looking, tall, blond relatives all stayed in Sweden, per our photographic record, and the chubby oddballs left for America. But at least we haven't been short of porridge, either here or there.
posted by Frowner at 12:04 PM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

The listed author for the PDF I linked is a folk song researcher, and in context, I guess it's an old-timey Skåne ballad. I guess you could ask the Folklivsarkivet if you'd like to know more.

Upptecknaren
Nytt från Folklivsarkivet
Nr 4 Juni 2006

(The recorder
New from Folklivsarkivet
No. 4 June 2006 - Translated via Google Translate with some minor tweaks by me - apologies for any errors.)

p8-9:

Skåne's folk music collections
Christer Lundh
For just over ten years there has been a folk music archive at the Folklivsarkivet in Lund. The archive consists of tape recordings. Hundreds of hours with so-called field recordings, where people sing, play and tell stories. In addition, there is a loads of handwritten songbooks and song records and of course that most of what has been published in print, as far as folk music in Scania is concerned. There are also some films with our traditional bearers and above all there is the folk dance documented on film.

Who can use the archive?
Of course, people with a special interest in folk music, researchers, fiddlers, folk dance groups and the like. Then we would also like to get in touch with the general public. Partly to get help in our further collection work, but also to be able to help people who are looking for chants and songs. Many people remember a little bit of what the old people sang and trolled and you would like to get hold of the complete visa, as you remember grandma singing. Then we can often help. Then we can also service people who want to get hold of a Scanian bridal march for the wedding, funny schnapps songs for the crayfish party or Scanian "madavisors" (food songs) for the ålagillet and much else.

Previous folk music research in Skåne
It was only in the 19th century that people began to take an interest in folk culture seriously. During the era of Gothicism and national romanticism, people searched with light and lantern for the popular national culture. In that context, a more systematic fundraising activity also began, with regard to folk music. The very largest folk music collectors that we have had in Sweden are actually Scanians. Nils Andersson (1864-1921) Lund and his assistant and successor Olof Andersson (1884-1964) Åhus. They went around and collected about 8,000 melodies throughout Sweden, as near as upper Norrland and Gotland. The collections were published in the large work "Svenska Songs”. These books are a gold mine for any fiddler. As the men behind the work were Scanians, Scania is abundantly represented, with four books. "Svenska Låtar" consists for the most part of instrumental music, dance songs, but already in the 1880s Nils Andersson was out and signed up songs in Skåne, on behalf of the National Language Archive. These records have been forgotten in various archives, but lately Bo has Anders Dahlskog, formerly employed at Skåne's folk music collections, searched produced about 200 songs, which will hopefully soon be published. During the 20th century, Lennart Kjellgren was the great collector of folk music in Skåne, and this applies to songs. He started from his mother's repertoire, i.e. last century's shilling printing and has collected a a lot of hymns, which he has since published in several hymnbooks. “Rejoice you Skåning", "Poems from grandfather's time", etc. He has also researched a whole part according to the authors behind the songs.

posted by zamboni at 12:10 PM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Google Translate's first pass was "cheer up you skank, in the morning you will eat frogs", which is fantastic but seems unlikely.


Honestly, I think you should stick with this!
posted by Omnomnom at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2023 [20 favorites]

There are various versions of the song on Youtube, of course. In contemporary use, it seems to be just referred to as Du Skåning or Skåningen eller Stoppen.

Gustaf "Stålfarfar" Håkansson & Helena Sköld - Du Skåning
Teckenspråk - Du skåning - MegaVega (Swedish Sign Language)
Skåningen eller Stoppen (Du Skåning)
Du skåning (med text) | Traditionell skånsk visa med danslek

As that last link suggests, there's apparently a dance that goes with it, with little sudden pauses, hence the stoppen, I guess.
Du Skåning
posted by zamboni at 1:29 PM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

> Tomorrow you get to eat porridge / Dip it in honey

Regarding "dipping" the porridge, in some countries there is a tradition of letting porridge solidify, then cutting into slices. It's a bit like bread, and could easily be dipped in honey, for example.

I don't know if that is or was a thing in this part of Sweden, but I know it was in, for example, Scotland & Ireland. It is a natural thing to do with, for example, left over porridge so it wouldn't surprise me at all to see it done anywhere porridge is commonly made.

Fried porridge - Pour your oatmeal in a drawer - Pocket porridge - Calders
posted by flug at 5:32 PM on November 17, 2023

More background on the dance and regional variants.

Provenance: The dance, and similar music, is also known to have occured as Stop in Denmark, Stopp on Åland and elsewhere in Finland, Stoggen & polkastoppen in Norway, Stoppen & 'Skåningen' in Sweden. According to Gammaldans i Norden, related dances are also known in Denmark as 'slibstensstykke', in Finland as 'piratyspolkka' [pidätyspolkka] and 'stopp-polka', and in Norway as 'stoggen' and 'Skåningen'.

posted by zamboni at 8:31 AM on November 18, 2023

What a delightful set of answers to a charming question! I might contact the folk song people to ask about a snippet of song that my Norwegian grandfather sang. As my contribution, I have a question and a suggestion...

What was the word that Google thought was 'frog'?

Since your family is from Skåne you might enjoy the Danish TV series Badehotellet (Seaside Hotel) on PBS streaming. It's set in the late 30's on the sea where the nearest town is Skåne. My husband and I just finished the last season and we very much enjoyed it.
posted by CathyG at 1:25 PM on November 18, 2023

What was the word that Google thought was 'frog'?

Grod vs gröd. Umlauts are not just röck döts, they actually mean something.

groda: a frog
gröda: a crop (or, as rendered in willnot’s Google Translate version, harvest)

Neither of these are right- I assume the song spelling is archaic and/or in a Skåne dialect. As rpn points out, standard Swedish would spell it gröt: porridge.
posted by zamboni at 3:44 PM on November 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: What actually held me up was either dialect or spelling changes since 1912 - I popped the thing into Google Translate (but was having keyboard trouble with the umlauts) thinking that it might give me an incorrect but interpretable phrase that was obviously part of a phrase/song/prayer that I already knew from Random Swedish Information, and then I started looking up the individual words in an online dictionary that gave you words with similar spellings and meanings and I did check the umlauts. But I was still running into trouble due to changed spellings/dialect.

Also, until I photographed it, I couldn't see that the first word was "Glad" and not "Glao" - the top of the d shows up on camera but not really on the bowl.

Mainly, the part about the frogs was too funny not to share with metafilter.
posted by Frowner at 6:20 AM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]