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Poems in Icelandic translation

Hjaltlandsljóð: þýðingar (trans: Shetland Poetry: Translations) brings together poems by Shetland poets with Icelandic translations. It arose out of a translation workshop Alan Jamieson was instrumental in organising in 2005, which brought together Shetland Arts, the Scottish Poetry Library and the pan-European Literature Across Frontiers (http://www.lit-across-frontiers.org/). The Icelandic translator, Athalsteinn Asberg Sigurdsson, was a participant who continued to work on translations of Shetland poetry in the years following, leading to the publication of this book in 2012. Jamieson contributes ten poems, six of them new in the REF period and first published here alongside Sigurdsson's translations.

Jamieson's poems in this collection are all written in Shetlandic, a language which is traditionally understood as a dialect of Scots/English. Pairing them with the Icelandic translations in this anthology helps to reveal the ancient linguistic roots the two languages share. While the language of Jamieson's poems will appear unfamiliar to most English speakers, many readers of Scots will be able to grasp both some of their themes and the intimate colloquialism of their speech. The poems focus on topics of Shetland's land, history, identity and imagination. This dictionary may provide an aid: http://nornlanguage.x10.mx/index.php?nynorn_dic