: Utterly debatable in a thousand ways. Most notably, the
: fact that Midgard is NOT a fortress of any kindit's
: the whole of the Earth, or a continent of it nor are
: any of the other lands in Norse Mythology which have
: the suffix of "gard," most notably Helgard
: and Asgard. Those are entire worlds and continents,
: hardly fortress like.
I didn't say anything about a fortress. I said a "habitation and/or cultivated region enclosed by defensive walls." Midgard, Asgard, and Helgard are all inhabited, obviously, and as Martel pointed out they've got walls too. (Midgard being ringed by a wall of mountains.)
Whereas anyone who considers Helgard a "garden" has a very twisted take on horticulture. :-)
: Therefore, Myrgard can mean either be the "Garden of
: the Mire (the Land of Mire, the Swampland, etc)"
: or "Fortress of the Mire." The latter seems
: very strange, and for good reason; "guard"
: is most likely from the Latin root, not the Norse one:
: "guardia." Dictionaries may have either
: etymology. So, we can speculate that the word
: "Myrgard", logically, can mean either
: "Fortress of the Mire" or "Swampy
: Land." They both make sense.
I'd be interested to see where you saw "guardia"; neither that word nor any cognate exists in classical Latin. "Guard" cognates do exist in Romance languages, but they stem from Old French, which in turn drew on Frankish. Again, from a Germanic root. I readily admit that "gard" and "guard" split evolutionary paths earlier than "gard" and "garden," but it remains a fact that "guard" as it is used today has more to do with the meaning of the Old Norse "gard" than "garden" does.
But there's no real English equivalent of "gard." Myrgard would be "The enclosed, inhabited and perhaps farmed area, having something to do with a swamp." And if that doesn't sound too good, perhaps we should consider the possibility that Bungie didn't actually create the name to be a meaningful Old Norse appelation, but just made it up because it sounded good and Dwarfy. :-)
--SiliconDream
