Translation of The Lord of the Rings into Swedish

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1957, J. R. R. Tolkien received a letter from his publisher that left him both puzzled and irritated. Inside was a nine-page list of names from The Lord of the Rings, all altered by a Swedish philologist named Åke Ohlmarks. Tolkien's reaction was immediate: he judged Ohlmarks a conceited person, less competent even than Max Schuchart, who had produced the Dutch translation the year before. That single letter planted the seed for one of the most contentious translation disputes in the history of modern fantasy literature. How did a celebrated Swedish scholar manage to produce a version of Tolkien's masterwork that so enraged its own author? And what did it take, forty years later, for Sweden to get a translation Tolkien might have approved?

• 2. Ohlmarks the Philologist

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  Åke Ohlmarks was born in 1911 and died in 1984, living a life defined by language. His career included Swedish translations of Shakespeare, Dante, and the Quran, a range that would suggest unusual range and discipline. When he took on The Lord of the Rings between 1959 and 1961, he brought that same ambition to Tolkien's text, but also a habit of embellishment that would prove his undoing. Where Tolkien wrote simply that Bilbo's wealth had become "a legend", Ohlmarks went further, declaring that Bilbo's travels were sägenomsusade, meaning legendary, a word entirely his own addition. His experience translating Old Norse did yield some genuine successes: Tolkien scholar Anders Stenström, writing under the pen name Beregond, praised Ohlmarks's choice of alv for "elf" and väströna, modelled on the Old Norse norröna, for "Westron". Yet the same scholar noted that Ohlmarks failed to use harg for "harrow" in Dunharrow, or skog for "shaw" in Trollshaws, choices Beregond called things that "should have been obvious". Ohlmarks's response to any and all criticism was to insist, as he wrote in his 1978 book Tolkiens arv, that he had always intended an interpretation, not a translation.

• 3. Tolkien Fights Back

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  The 1957 letter to publisher Rayner Unwin is Tolkien at his most cutting. He called Ohlmarks "a conceited person, less competent than charming Max Schuchart", despite rating Schuchart's 1956-57 Dutch translation as worse than an ideal version ought to be. Tolkien's specific objections were detailed and pointed. Ohlmarks had rendered Ford of Bruinen as Björnavad, meaning Bear Ford, apparently guessing from English "Bruin", when the actual Sindarin word brui means "noisy" and nen means "water". Archet became Gamleby, meaning Old Village, which Tolkien dismissed as "a mere guess, I suppose, from 'archaic'?" The Mountains of Lune were renamed Månbergen, Moon Mountains, by way of the Latin luna, ignoring the Sindarin origin of the name entirely. The Gladden Fields became Ljusa slätterna, Bright Plains, despite a description in the text that should have made the actual meaning clear. In 1967, Tolkien formalised his concerns into a document called "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings", written partly in direct response to Ohlmarks. The Guide pointed out that Rivendell had become Vattnadal, Water-dale, apparently because Ohlmarks read "riven" as river. The Ent named Quickbeam had been rendered as Snabba solstrålen, Swift Sunbeam, a mistake that ignored the fact that all Ents bear names connected with trees; Tolkien noted that both "Quickbeam" and "Quicken" are actual English names for the rowan tree. Ohlmarks sometimes rendered the same name in multiple different ways: Isengard appears in his text as Isengard, Isengård, Isendor, and Isendal, with no consistency.

• 4. How Sweden Received It

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  Swedish readers and critics did not speak with one voice about Ohlmarks's translation. The initial response included genuine warmth. Writing in Aftonbladet, the author and translator Sven Stolpe declared that Ohlmarks "has found wonderful, magnificent, Swedish compound words" and that "there is not a page in his magnum opus that does not read like original Swedish work by a brilliant poet". A reviewer in Dagens Nyheter offered some objections but used them only as contrast to a final verdict of "magnificent". As decades passed, however, the mood turned. In 2000, a researcher at Lund University's Institute of Linguistics catalogued Ohlmarks's confusion of the characters Éowyn and Merry in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and concluded that "the Swedish translation is defective and in many ways a failure". He argued that Tolkien had written for adults, while Ohlmarks had translated for children. In 2004, Malte Persson wrote in Göteborgsposten that the translation was "so full of misunderstandings, misconceptions, inconsistencies, and arbitrary additions" that Ohlmarks must have been either far weaker in English than in Icelandic, or else had not taken the work seriously. Andreas Brunner, writing in Sydsvenska Dagbladet, put it in stylistic terms: Ohlmarks's prose is hyperbolic where Tolkien's is simple, even laconic. A single passage illustrates the problem exactly. Tolkien's sentence about hobbits rarely having sailed the sea runs to twenty words. Ohlmarks expands it to forty-two. When Christopher Tolkien gave permission for a Swedish translation of The Silmarillion after it was published in 1977, he imposed one condition: Ohlmarks was to have nothing to do with it. That translation went to Roland Adlerberth.

• 5. Erik Andersson's Revision

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  Erik Andersson and Lotta Olsson published their new translation in 2005, forty-four years after Ohlmarks had first put Swedish words to Tolkien's pages. Andersson worked with a team of Tolkien fans as advisors and kept detailed diaries throughout the project, later published in 2007 as Översättarens anmärkningar, meaning The Translator's Notes. His governing principle was fidelity to Tolkien's own framework; he followed the 1967 Guide to the Names closely, where Ohlmarks had effectively ignored it. Some of Ohlmarks's choices Andersson deliberately retained. Vidstige, roughly meaning Wide-walker, had been Ohlmarks's rendering of "Strider", and Andersson kept it on the grounds that it was widely recognised and did not contradict Tolkien's wishes. Midgård for Middle-earth and Fylke for the Shire survived for the same reasons. Stefan Spjut, reviewing the new translation in Svenska Dagbladet, noted that Vidstige "even outdoes the original's Strider", while predicting that readers would adjust to other changes. Lotta Olsson's task was the poetry, which Aftonbladet described as a thankless assignment that she executed well and economically. The Rhyme of the Rings, in Olsson's version, runs: "En ring att styra dem, en ring att se dem, en ring att fånga dem och till mörkret ge dem, i Mordor, i skuggornas land." Where Ohlmarks had written "i Mordors land där skuggorna ruva", meaning "in Mordor's land where the shadows brood", Olsson's version aligns more closely with Tolkien's own cadence and restraint. Henrik Williams, in Dagens Nyheter, called the result "a readable, even and in large part correct translation", one that deserved deep respect alongside a careful review. Malte Persson, who in 2004 had savaged Ohlmarks, wrote in Göteborgsposten that the new version follows the original so closely "that only a linguistic pedant could find anything to object to".

• 6. Titles, Names, and the Art of Choice

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  Charlotte Strömbom's close comparison of the two translators reveals how fundamentally different their philosophies were, even in the most visible elements. The title of the whole work tells the story plainly: Ohlmarks chose Sagan om Ringen, The Saga of the Ring, which Strömbom notes shifts attention to the Ring itself and lends an epic feeling. Andersson chose Ringarnas herre, The Rings' Lord, which stays far closer to Tolkien's title in both form and meaning. For the first volume, Ohlmarks dropped the word Fellowship entirely, giving Härskarringen, The Ring of Ruling; Andersson rendered it as Ringens brödraskap, The Ring's Brotherhood. Name choices reveal the same divergence. Treebeard in Ohlmarks is Lavskägge, Lichen-beard, where Andersson uses Trädskägge, Tree-beard, the more transparent literal version. Rivendell in Ohlmarks is Vattnadal, Water-dale; in Andersson it is Riftedal, Rift-dale, a rendering that works because Swedish does contain the word riven, meaning torn or split. Strömbom acknowledges a complication: Ohlmarks's choices sometimes come closer to the sound of Tolkien's names, even when they miss the meaning. The name Gaffer Gamgee is one striking case. Ohlmarks rendered it as Gubbtjuven, a derogatory term for an old man, where Andersson used Gammelvar, meaning Granddad. Ohlmarks also introduced inconsistencies into names that Tolkien had fixed: his multiple renderings of Isengard as Isengard, Isengård, Isendor, and Isendal were the kind of instability that Tolkien's 1967 Guide had specifically warned against. Andersson's 2007 notes on his own translation process document exactly how he navigated those choices, name by name.