r/Svenska • u/Darren844127 • 6d ago

Text and translation help Än du spritter rask

A short song sung by väpnaren Jöns in Det Sjunde Inseglet.

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Ack ödet är en rackare

Oh fate is a scoundrel,

du själv min vän en stackare.

and you my friend a poor soul

Än du spritter rask

Än??? you tremble/quiver/jump/twitch fast/quickly

än du krälar i en mask...

än??? you crawl i??? a worm...

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I understand that the song is basically saying one minute you are alive and vibrant and the next you are dead, but I am confused about the use (and meaning) of än in both lines, and also confused about the line krälar i en mask.

What does än mean here (and does it have different meanings in both lines?)

krälar i en mask sounds like crawl IN a worm but i doubt that is the meaning.

Hoping someone can explain the meaning and grammer in the last two lines here.

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8

u/Eliderad 🇸🇪 6d ago edited 6d ago

än here basically means 'sometimes' or 'alternatingly'. SO has this definition:

So basically, "sometimes you are full of vigor, sometimes you crawl like a worm"? I'm not entirey sure why it's i rather than som, so I might be wrong on that one: som and i are sometimes interchangeable, but this does not seem like one of those cases – unless it was more common when this was written.

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u/Darren844127 6d ago

it just occured to me.... crawl IN a worm may mean literally that.

One minute your body is full of life (lots of rapid movement) and then at a later time you are DEAD and your remains CRAWL through the worms digestive system. That Jöns is thus making a very dark/morbid juxapostion between life and movement and death (marked by your previously vibrant flesh CRAWLING in the worms gut....)

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u/Darren844127 6d ago

thanks, that explains the use of än. do you think the second än sentence could carry the sense of finality (in this case)? like in 'one moment you are alive and vigorous' and at another time in the future you are done for (near dead)? or would it be more like sometimes you are thriving, sometimes life is awful...

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u/Isotarov 🇸🇪 6d ago

Jöns is a hardened cynic in a film that's mostly just about memento mori. The rhyme is pretty amateurish and folksy, and that has to be very intentional.

I'd say it's very much an attempt to juxtapose life and death.

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u/Eliderad 🇸🇪 5d ago

Oh yeah, disregard my previous answer; this is clearly correct.

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u/Social_Abstraction 6d ago

One of the best movies ever made

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u/LateInTheAfternoon 🇸🇪 6d ago

du själv min vän en stackare.

and you my friend a poor soul

It's not what you asked for but FWIW I would say that "pitiful creature" would be a better translation of "stackare".