The Water-Method Man

I had a rare thesis topic, I confess. My thesis was going to be an original translation of Akthelt and Gunnel, a ballad in Old Low Norse; in fact, it was going to be the only translation. Old Low Norse is not well known. It's referred to, scornfully, in some some satirical poems in Old East Norse and Old West Norse. Old East Norse is a dead language, North Germanic, which grew into Icelandic and Faroese. Old West Norse is also dead, and also North Germanic. It grew into Swedish and Danish. Norwegian evolved out of something between Old East Norse and Old West Norse. But the deadest of them all, old Old Low Norse, came to nothing. In fact, it's a crude dialect that only one thing ever was actually written in it: Akthelt and Gunnel.

~ John Irving