I have a question for people with better language skills (maybe an actual Swede?).
In the original Swedish, the name of the character in question is "Olof Summarfågel", which is rendered as "Olof Summerbird" in the English translation (at least I'm not aware of a different translation).
However! as some of you will know, in Danish and in Norwegian Bokmål sommerfugl, while literally being a "summer-bird", normally what it means is "butterfly".
The book says that Olof got his nickname "because of the magnificence and the beautiful colors of his clothing" (I don't know if these are the precise words. I'm reading the book in German). To me, this actually sounds much like Bengtsson wants us to parse "Summarfågel" as "Butterfly" (... because butterflies, much more so than the average bird, are known for their beautiful colors).
The problem with that hypothesis is that I cannot find the word "Summarfågel" at all in any of the Swedish dictionaries I looked up online. The normal Swedish word for a butterfly is "fjäril". Some Danish dictionaries give "migratory bird" as a secondary meaning of "sommerfugl", but that does not seem to be the intended meaning because Bengtsson explicitly says the name derives from Olof's beautiful and colorful clothes, and there is no special connection between migratory birds and beautiful plumage.
My personal suspicion is that "summarfågel" is an archaic word for "butterfly", or at least Bengtsson expects us to take it as such. Recently a troper wrote an example which mentions that the nickname comes from Olof's perceived "resemblance to a bird in mating season". I am not convinced that this is the right explanation; there aren't many birds with striking colors in Northern Europe. Maybe I would change it, but then again I don't really have proof that my hypothesis is the correct one.
Hence for now, I am just putting this out here and hope that somebody who is able to resolve this comes by here. The chance may be small, but then again there are all kinds of tropers.
Re: the nickname of Olof Styrsson
I have a question for people with better language skills (maybe an actual Swede?).
In the original Swedish, the name of the character in question is "Olof Summarfågel", which is rendered as "Olof Summerbird" in the English translation (at least I'm not aware of a different translation).
However! as some of you will know, in Danish and in Norwegian Bokmål sommerfugl
, while literally being a "summer-bird", normally what it means is "butterfly".
The book says that Olof got his nickname "because of the magnificence and the beautiful colors of his clothing" (I don't know if these are the precise words. I'm reading the book in German). To me, this actually sounds much like Bengtsson wants us to parse "Summarfågel" as "Butterfly" (... because butterflies, much more so than the average bird, are known for their beautiful colors).
The problem with that hypothesis is that I cannot find the word "Summarfågel" at all in any of the Swedish dictionaries I looked up online. The normal Swedish word for a butterfly is "fjäril". Some Danish dictionaries give "migratory bird" as a secondary meaning of "sommerfugl", but that does not seem to be the intended meaning because Bengtsson explicitly says the name derives from Olof's beautiful and colorful clothes, and there is no special connection between migratory birds and beautiful plumage.
My personal suspicion is that "summarfågel" is an archaic word for "butterfly", or at least Bengtsson expects us to take it as such. Recently a troper wrote an example which mentions that the nickname comes from Olof's perceived "resemblance to a bird in mating season". I am not convinced that this is the right explanation; there aren't many birds with striking colors in Northern Europe. Maybe I would change it, but then again I don't really have proof that my hypothesis is the correct one.
Hence for now, I am just putting this out here and hope that somebody who is able to resolve this comes by here. The chance may be small, but then again there are all kinds of tropers.
Let's just say and leave it at that.