14 ár (14 Years) - transcript/translation

This is a transcript of “14 ár”, the ninth song on Hatari’s Neyslutrans album, wherein Matthías is in an abusive relationship.

If you’d like to see other Hatari material transcribed/translated, feel free to drop an ask in my askbox!
Icelandic transcript

MATTHÍAS:

Þú blekktir mig

í fjórtán ár

Þú laugst að mér

Sagan er orðin kunnugleg

Hringrásin væri grátbrosleg

ef ég væri ekki fangi þinn,

þrællinn þinn,

þú drottinn minn

Ef ég væri ekki fangi þinn,

þrællinn þinn,

þú drottnarinn

Hö!


Þú svívirtir mig

aftur og aftur

Sagan er orðin kunnugleg

Hringrásin væri grátbrosleg

ef ég væri ekki fangi þinn,

þrællinn þinn,

þú drottnarinn


KLEMENS:

Komdu nú til mín

Vertu nú hjá mér,

hjá mér

Sýndu mér miskunn

Mér er nú vorkunn,

já, vorkunn

Allt sem við höfðum,

allt sem þú gafst mér

Ég mun trúa


MATTHÍAS:

Ef ég væri ekki fangi þinn,

þrællinn þinn,

þú drottinn minn

Ef ég væri ekki fangi þinn,

þrællinn þinn,

þú drottnarinn

Ef ég væri ekki fangi þinn,

þrællinn þinn,

þú drottinn minn

Ef ég væri ekki fangi þinn,

þrællinn þinn,

þú drottnarinn


English translation

MATTHÍAS:

You deceived me

for fourteen years

You lied to me

This story has become familiar

This cycle would be tragicomic

if I weren’t your prisoner,

your slave,

you my lord

If I weren’t your prisoner,

your slave,

you the master

Huh!


You humiliated me

again and again

This story has become familiar

This cycle would be tragicomic

if I weren’t your prisoner,

your slave,

you the master


KLEMENS:

Come to me now

Stay with me now,

with me

Show me some mercy

I’m to be pitied, now,

yes, pitied

Everything we had

Everything you gave me

I will believe


MATTHÍAS:

If I weren’t your prisoner,

your slave,

you my lord

If I weren’t your prisoner,

your slave,

you the master

If I weren’t your prisoner,

your slave,

you my lord

If I weren’t your prisoner,

your slave,

you the master


Translation notes

“This cycle would be tragicomic” sounds kind of awkward in English. The Icelandic word is “grátbrosleg”, literally “cry-smile-like”, an adjective describing something that’s funny and sad at the same time that’s a lot more normal and standard than “tragicomic”. It’s ambiguous whether the point here is that, being a BDSM slave, he doesn’t mind that the master keeps lying to and deceiving and humiliating him (and thus, that the emphasis is on how it would be sad but it’s not), or that he’s trapped and helpless in this arrangement (and thus, that the emphasis is on how it would be funny but it’s not). I’m personally inclined towards the latter, largely because Matthías sure sounds angry about it, but then again Matthías never sounds like any kind of sub at all. It might also be deliberately ambiguous.

While earlier performances of the song have “þú drottnarinn” (you the master) every time, later performances including the Neyslutrans album sometimes have “þú drottinn minn” (you my lord). It’s a little funny because “drottinn” is almost exclusively used to mean lord as in God in modern Icelandic; “Drottinn minn!” is an exclamation similar to “My God!” I am too vanilla to be familiar with whether calling your dom “drottinn minn” is common in the Icelandic BDSM scene.


Other notes

Hooo boy. Whether the Matthías character in the song understands it to be or not, this relationship is toxic and abusive and horrific. Not only does the partner (Klemens) persistently lie to and deceive him, Klemens’s entire verse is an attempt to emotionally manipulate him - no, you can’t leave me, I couldn’t take it, pity me, show me mercy. And from the sound of Matthías, it’s successful. This song is hair-raising.

Relationship PSA, to everyone but especially teens: do not do this, and do not let people do this to you. If someone tells you that they couldn’t deal with it if you left them - that’s a huge red flag, and if this discussion is happening because they’ve been doing other toxic things - such as repeatedly lying to you - then this should be all the reason you need to definitely leave them. Lying to and deceiving your partner is never okay, but trying to guilt someone who wants to leave into staying with you is even worse.

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Anonymous:

hey, firstly, love your blog ❤ you're a blessing to us hatari fans that don't speak icelandic. secondly, I was wondering if you ever elaborated on why "14 ár", "ógleði" and "helvíti" form a story? I've looked at the translations and tried to see it, but my reading comprehension isn't the best sadly (especially in English, aka my second language lol). I was wondering if you had already made a post about it and if you could link it, or if you were ever going to make a post at all? im really interested in seeing your point of view

I don’t think I’ve ever made a post about this, and don’t quite have a definitive take on it, but I’ve more or less settled on this:

The most straightforward way for them to form a story is of course if they feature the same characters. I remain confident in my take on “14 ár”: the Matthías and Klemens characters are in an abusive relationship, where “Matthías” is trapped as “Klemens” employs manipulation and gaslighting to guilt him into staying.

The most obvious way to go from there, then, is that these characters are the same characters in “Ógleði”. The latter is all about Klemens talking about everything crumbling, not being himself, and then Matthías commenting on how he’s so stuck in place he can’t see the chains he’s dangling in. Assuming the characters are the same, then this, to me, suggests that Matthías did finally tear himself free, and Klemens, the abuser, has been left feeling miserable, nauseous, like everything’s fallen apart, maintaining that the person who did all that wasn’t him. His misery is genuine - but now his former victim, rather than pitying and coming back to him like before, is able to look at him from the outside and see that his misery is ultimately self-inflicted, that he refuses to change and can’t even see that he’s the problem.

Then we have Helvíti, which is a lot more vaguely connected, and of course sung by Svarti Laxness rather than either Matthías or Klemens (though Klemens does backing vocals on live performances). However, the lyrics seem to be addressed to somebody, a ‘you’. I think it might make sense if this is the Klemens character, the abuser who refuses to change, who winds up in Hell, maddened by memories, sustained by pain, trying to cling to hope. Can’t quite work out much more than that, though.

